This week we have been exploring the Mayans and learning about what they were known for. This was a perfect opportunity to do some additional reading as we had lots of information to read so we could highlight the key information.
Once we had collected our information, we started to create posters that shared these facts.
We were surprised to learn that the Mayans had an 18 month calendar and they had various gods who were responsible for a range of things such as war, sun and rain.
In our book talk session, we’ve been focusing heavily on how to answer inference questions and thinking about the skills we’ll be using to help us do this. As part of the lesson, we have are able to see a guided question and see the model of what an answer should look like before working alongside our peers to answer a different question.
In addition, we have been focusing on our fluency and the importance how being fluent helps us to understand the text and therefore answer the questions. We have been working on our pausing, pace and accuracy which is something we’ll continue with in th coming weeks.
Today, Crew Hamill explored the skills required to play a game of rounders. We watched a video on what rounders actually is and chotted down the main rules of the game. We then looked at our focus for the lesson – throwing and catching. We watched demonstrations of an overarm throw and an underarm throw and discussed the need for each of these during a game of rounders. We identified that an overarm throw would be required when throwing over a long distance and an underarm throw would be better if the person we were throwing to was closer to us. Following this, we went into the hall and began our warm up activities in which we practiced bouncing a ball and catching it and throwing a ball above our heads and catching it. We were challenged to make this even trickier by clapping whilst the ball was in the air, before we caught it. After this, we got into pairs and had a practise of our overarm and underarm throwing. Once we were more confident in this, we got into mini crews of 4 and practise passing the ball around the square whilst one of us ran around the posts, like a batter would. We then made this even tricker by placing a hoop in the middle of the square. One person stood in the hoop and threw out a number of tennis balls for the rest of our crew (fielders) to collect whilst we tried to run around all 4 posts to get a rounder. We can’t wait to develop our skills further and put them into practise with a full rounders game later in the term!
Crew Hamill have just begun their maths unit on money. Today, we focused on pounds and pence, identifying what each of the notes and coins that we use look like and discussing their value. We then worked in mini crews to create different amounts using imitation money which we loved! We couldn’t believe how real it looked! We also looked at groups of money and had to use our counting skills to work out the total amounts.
This week, Crew Hamill have really enjoyed our reading book. To begin with, we were a little confused as to what ‘The Invisible Clothes’ might be and we made predictions that it might be clothes that turned you invisible once you were wearing them – a little bit like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. Once we had analysed some of the vocabulary and read a brief introduction to the story, we realised that it was actually about a tailor who was tricking someone into buying ‘invisible’ clothes. He was actually stealing the Emperor’s money and pretending to make clothes for him! We have loved reading this story and finding out if the Emperor would be silly enough to go along with the tailor and do his usual procession around town in his ‘invisible clothes’. We found it very funny that he went along with it! During demonstration comprehension, we deepened our inference skills by focusing on 3 inference questions. This allowed us to further develop the skill of finding evidence in the text to support our own thinking.
In writing today the children had to taste some sweets and then describe what they looked, taste and touched like
In writing today we started with chotting round the picture using adjectives
This week Crew Robson have loved starting their first case study all about Christianity.
To begin with we explored what historians are and how they use primary and secondary sources to find out information about that past. We learnt that photographs, weapons and clothes are primary sources whereas newspapers and documentaries are secondary sources.
We then looked closer at what religion is.
Did you know…
In Doncaster, half of the population are Christians (51%)
Christianity is the largest religious group. This is 156,747 people
For our next two lessons we explored why God is important to Christians and what they believe God is like. We have had some fantastic discussions and I have been amazed by the questions they have been asking.
This week, we have started writing diary entries based on our anchor text, Pig Heart Boy. We’ve enjoyed the experience days. To help us understand the main character, Cam, we acted out some freeze frames from the book and tried to guess which part of the story each group had chosen.
Following this, we were in a position to start our writing. To help build our ideas, we completed a silent conversation so we could “all talk at once” and show our creative side! It’s much easier writing when we can magpie the best ideas.
All this planning opportunity has really helped us with our first plot point and we enjoyed being able to share what we’d written with our friends. Keep an eye out for our published work when we finish them!
In our Scotties session this week, Mick really worked us hard to make sure we saved the castle. We had to do a variety of different exercises before we got there. We were tired by the end of the session but it was good to move our bodies and work our muscles.
