Exploring vocabulary in reading

Today we really focussed on some of the vocabulary in our text. We looked at synonyms, finding and copying a word that means the same. We have become much more confident with this skill. Again we used a range of strategies to read the text, some of these being echo read, partner reading and independent reading. When reading with our partner, we focussed again on fluency and expression, giving a praise and wonder after our partner had read. We also tried to use the punctuation a little better when reading. Our reasons to read focussed more on our inference skills and we used APE to support our thoughts and answers.

Sneek a Peek

So again we could not get out into our forest area but that didn’t stop us from doing some team building activities. The children got split into 3 teams and then they sent 1 person from each team to come and have a look at what I had built under my blanket using cubes and blocks. After 10 Seconds they had to go back to their team and describe what it looked like and then try and build what they could remember. They had lots of fun doing this and had some brilliant communication skills with their team. Well done Crew Hamill!

Text marking in MI

When reading our text today, we had 3 things to focus on when text marking. We used and recorded the symbols well then shared our thoughts and ideas in mini crews and with the whole crew. We are getting much more confident with text marking 🙂

Grouping animals in MI

Our expeditionary learning today allowed us to recognise that living things can be grouped in a variety of different ways. First of all we looked at a variety of objects and thought about how we may group them. We worked well in mini crews to do this. We then moved onto looking at similarities and differences between certain living things and animals. We thought back to our previous lessons on food chains and skeletons to help us with this task. We then moved onto sorting animals into groups using similarities and differences to help us. We thought more about how animals can be grouped including through habitat, physical features and through diet. We discussed the term classify in more detail and related this to ‘taxonomy’. Again, there were lots of reading opportunities where we used fastest finger first to find answers. From here we worked in mini crews to find as many different ways as we could to sort a variety of animal pictures. There was some great collaborative working which was fantastic to see. Our debrief then allowed us to share our groups with the whole crew.

Equity & Equality

As part of our ‘Fight For Our Rights’ expedition, we considered the differences between equality and equity and how that looks in the real world. We looked at how everyone has equal opportunities in life but some may require support for a multitude of reasons and ran a race with this in mind. In mini crews, we then honed in on examples of equality and equity within school and their home lives. Have a look at the examples that we came up with as a crew!

Expert Music Visitor

We were very lucky to have a visit today from a music expert. Mr Hull brought along more than 10 instruments which he entertained us with. We listened to different types of guitars, drums, wood wind instruments and even a harmonica!

We are very grateful that he took time out of his day to come and visit us. Hopefully he has inspired some children to take up an instrument!

Skeletons and muscles in MI

The activate to our expedition lesson today allowed us to recap the human body by making a skeleton. We did this in hook week and it was incredible to see how much quicker we had got today and how much we had remembered!

From here we discussed the differences between vertebrates and invertebrates where we did lots of reading out loud. We played fastest finger first and did lots of discussion! Some of the facts really surprised us when reading. We then explored the types of skeletons linking these to vertebrates and invertebrates. We did some partner reading, echo reading and also some independent reading. We then tested our understanding so far with a quick quiz! We all enjoyed this.

From here we worked in mini crews to sort animals into the two groupings- vertebrates and invertebrates. We discussed our ideas and explained our reasons. We then moved onto the human skeleton, we looked at scientific names for our bones, explored how many bones an adult human skeleton has and looked at what a skeleton does. We linked our skeleton to the digestive process, thinking about the organs that are protected by our bones. From here we discussed our muscles, we even had a go at contracting and relaxing our biceps and triceps! Tomorrow we will assess our understanding with a kahoot quiz!

Basic Needs

Today we were scientists again and discussed what humans and animals need to survive. The children knew they needed food and water to survive and we also discussed the importance of air.

They produced lots of beautiful work. Well done everyone!