Before starting our next case study, we reflected on what we had learned during history. We used padlet to collate our facts and thoughts while working in pairs. We were given some headings where we could put our facts. We then put all of this on an anchor chart which we used to help us answer the guiding question.
Today, we looked at what happens when you are building single-sentence clauses but you have ‘leftovers’ that could belong to either clause you are creating. We followed our script to identify verbs and subjects, then labelled the leftovers that were easier to identify (the leftover at the end belonging to the second clause). We then looked at how the leftover in the middle could belong to either clause. It could be the ending of the first clause, adding extra information, or it could be used at the beginning of the second clause with a comma being used after it. We had a go at doing this in pairs and playing around with the structure of our clauses before completing our exit ticket to illustrate what we had learned.
We continued our grammar lessons by identifying where we would place a full stop and capital letter. This was modelled on the board and then we watched a video. It was lovely to hear the children talking along with the video.
Today, we continued to activate our inference skills by looking at a poem. We were introduced to the poem yesterday and worked hard to pull the text apart, identifying key vocabulary and labelling the text with key information and notes that we felt were helpful in our mission to understand poetry and what they poem was actually about. We then used these notes today to delve deeper into inferring the feelings of the characters. We began by working as a crew to identify the key points in the text for the first character, Chloe, and discussed how we thought she was feeling at each of these points. We used evidence from the text to support our ideas (E.g. she was happy at the beginning because she was looking out into space with open eyes). We then created a line graph to detail our findings. Following this, we worked in pairs to do the same for the second character, Max. Once we’d done this, we brought both graphs together to compare their feelings throughout the poem. We identified that Max was a much happier, more positive character, whilst Chloe was much less positive as she worried a lot and was scared by the idea of adventure.
We moved on from air resistance to start looking at another type of friction – water resistance. We built our background knowledge by watching a few informative videos and reading some key information to help us understand that water resistance is a type of force that uses friction to slow things down that are moving through water. Once we’d learned that the shape of an object in water can impact on the amount of water resistance, we tested our hypothesis that thinner, more streamlined shapes, would travel quicker through the water than wider shapes with a larger surface area. We worked in pairs to create two different shapes using plasticine and then conducted an experiment in which we dropped each shape, at the same time, into a jar that contained the same amount of water. We tested these shapes a few times before recording our results and concluding whether or not our hypothesis was correct. We were pleased to discover that we were correct!
In grammar, we started to build single clause sentences with the understanding that a single clause sentence has a subject and a verb. In addition to this, we also had some pronouns which replaced the noun. This avoids repetition. We were encouraged to use the script, what’s the first verb? Who or what is doing? This gives us focus when we are completing the activities.
On our return from half term, our first crew session was to use the time to get to know others. We had to find someone in our crew who liked swimming or who liked pizza for example. This allowed us to use our speaking and listening skills as we had to ask questions and listen to their responses. We then did a quick hands up at the end to see who else liked a particular thing.
We continued to identify leftovers (parts of our clause that are not a subject or a verb) during our grammar lesson on Monday. However, we discussed how the sequence we had been spotting during the last few lessons (subject, verb, leftovers) doesn’t always apply and it will not be like that in every single clause we write. As such, we looked at a few examples of where the positioning of these differed. We made sure we followed our script which required us to identify the verb first, then the subject, then the leftovers in order to label these accurately.
Today, we created some single-clause sentences. We had to identify the subject (s), the verb (v) and add the correct punctuation.
To celebrate Bonfire Night, Crew McGlone created firework pictures. We used cardboard tubes to print glitter paint onto black paper to look like fireworks exploding in the night sky. They looked really effective!
