Pulling Apart Written Comprehension

This week, Crew Hamill have looked in depth at their written comprehension answers, pulling apart the questions and identifying the steps needed in order to answer them correctly. We have identified as a crew that we are much stronger at answering comprehension questions on texts that we are familiar with so we have been challenged over the last two weeks to complete our written comprehensions on unseen texts. These have been much trickier as we have no awareness of the text before we answer questions on it, similar to how it will be in our SATs and assessments. We worked as a crew to discuss how we identify question types from the wording of the question and then how we use the information within the question to find the answer in the text. For any questions we got wrong, we purple penned our answers.

We are Scientists – Series Circuits

In expedition we have continued to be scientist by starting to learn about electricity. Children were given some equipment in small groups and they had to problem solve together to create a working circuit. This was a chance for children to demonstrate their resilience as they’d only been given the equipment and no further instructions. It was great hearing the children talk through what they’d done already and what they could try next. The majority of the groups managed to construct a working circuit and either make the bulb light up or the buzzer work.

Working on our Heat Maps

Crew Hamill were inspired by last week’s TTRS battle for NSPCC in which they came first in the school and earned themselves some scooter reward time. Since then, we’ve worked hard to improve our times tables and have tried our best to improve our heat maps. We’re excited to see if we can use our new times table knowledge to beat Mrs Ibbotson in today’s times table battle!

Silent Line up

This morning in Crew we were set a challenge to line up with a predetermined characteristic but we weren’t allowed to speak. We had to order ourselves in height, shoe size and hair length. We worked in 2 groups which worked very differently. One group had 2 children who took a lead and directed the rest of the children with hand signals or guiding them to where they needed to be. The other group figured it out between them and didn’t have anyone that appeared to be leading the rest of them, however, both groups were successful.

Reading Prosody

In reading yesterday, we focused on our reading fluency and reading with expression. Miss Shields did an echo read to model how to read with expression then the children worked in small groups to work on a small section together. They had some time to practice before performing to the rest of the class. I was very impressed with how quickly they picked it up.

Subordinate Conjunctions

In writing on Friday, we learned about subordinate conjunctions and how they add further information to the main clause. We learned I SAW A WABUB to help us remember the subordinate conjunctions. Then we worked in pairs to experiment with the position of the subordinate clause. We realised that the subordinate clause can either be at the start or end of the sentence. However, if it is at the start of the sentence, we must remember to use a comma to separate the main clause and the subordinate clause.

Bob Marley is 80!

On Friday, we celebrated the birthday of Bob Marley by singing a melody of his songs. What a wonderful way to start the day. It was lovely to see the children singing along and some of them starting to move with the music.