We became designers in our expedition lesson. We followed Miss Marsh’s instructions carefully to make our castles, then once they were finished we tested their strength using tennis balls.
We came to the conclusion that paper is not a suitable material for a castle and that stone is better because it is much stronger to withstand an attack from an enemy.
This week in crew Tymon we have been exploring life skills within an indoor and outdoor environments.
Crew Hamil got to go in the forest area today where we climb tree, played 1,2,3 where are you? , fishy fishy, pac man, sardines and abit of litter picking
Crew Welburn got to explore our forest school area today where they were searching for bugs
Two members from Doncaster Council visited our school this week to talk to all of our Year 5 and 6 pupils about ‘Dark Nights’. As the nights are starting to draw in, the volunteers discussed Halloween and Bonfire with us all and how we can ensure that we stay safe during these exciting occasions! We have learnt a lot about firework safety including how to hold sparklers and how to dispose of these safely, we are fully aware that only adults should be in charge of fireworks. We also learnt a lot about fire and how dangerous this can be, especially bonfires. The two adults also discussed anti-social behaviour such as breaking people’s windows, ‘knock a door run’ and swearing in public, and the consequences of these if we get caught. They also talked about ‘peer pressure’ and how common this is as we get older and mix with older children in the local community. They also briefly touched on water (ice) and road safety. They concluded the visit by showing us a clip similar to this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfFenwyoZcg to reinforce how important it is to keep ourselves and others safe during the upcoming ‘Dark Nights’. We learnt a lot from our talk and now feel fully prepared on how to enjoy Bonfire night and Halloween safely!
Our entry ticket allowed us to get into role as Lenny and write a short letter back home to either mum or dad. We wrote about all the things that had happened so far and this really allowed us to recap events from the story. We enjoyed reading our letters in mini crews and then to the whole crew. We even tried to read them in role. When reading the next part of the story, we used a chorus read, partner read and independent read. We discussed language as we read and thought about Lenny and Mick’s characters in more detail. We used the text during our demonstration comprehension, skimming and scanning for words to support our answers. We worked in mini crews to find evidence from the text, text marking then sharing with our partner. Our exit ticket allowed us to reflect on what we had read thinking about what Lenny and Mick may be saying to each other as they left the garden. We also thought about Lenny’s thoughts and how these had changed.
Yesterday in our expedition lessons we became design technologists. We started by looking at different buildings around the world and shared our notices, praises and wonders. We then learnt about the architect James of St George who designed lots of castles in Wales.
Today we had a go at being an architect and designing our own castle wall. We decided it must have battlements, arrow slits and a small door so enemies will find it difficult to attack.
Tomorrow we are going to build and test our designs
Today in Crew we celebrated National Fitness Day by completing a Joe Wicks Active 8 workout!
Whilst we were having fun in the sunshine in our outdoor area, someone (or something) visited our classroom and left us a little gift! We noticed that there were footprints near our reading area, along with a mystery gift bag. We talked about what might have left the footprints and what might be in the bag.
Miss McGlone then told us that the mystery visitor had been caught on camera and showed us pictures of a bear stood in our classroom! We said that the bear looked cute and fluffy and that it must be a kind bear because it left us a present! We predicted what we thought might be in the bag before finding out it was a… book! A book called ‘The Everywhere Bear’. We used our noticing lens to talk about what we could see on the front cover and thought the story might be about children at school who find a bear. We cannot wait to read our new story and we feel very lucky that the bear decided to leave us such a lovely gift!
Our expeditionary learning continued this afternoon where we tasted the wartime food that we made yesterday! We then moved onto thinking about the features needed to write a set of instructions. Our do now allowed us to read our recipe from yesterday, we read out-loud with our partner practising our fluency and pace of reading. We then voiced the steps needed to make the cauliflower pie and ensured our steps were in chronological order. We then started to think about the method in more detail, creating anchor charts for time words, conjunctions and imperative verbs. We then took part in a shared write using the steps and putting them into sentences with the features we had just discussed. We have made a good start and will continue with our instructions tomorrow.
