Activate: We looked at an image and created as many inferences as we could.
“I think they are leaving and going to a new planet because of the toxic liquid.”
Consolidate: Vocabulary recap.
Demonstrate:Practicing reading- To read 110 words per minute and to read with understanding.
We really loved the activate part of our reading lesson today, an inference activity. We read a short passage and discussed the questions in mini crews. I was blown away with some of the ideas the children came up with! We then moved onto another non fiction extract on evacuation. We used lots of our expeditionary learning when discussing the text further. There was some great skimming and scanning of the text today to find answers during our reasons to read. I was particularly impressed with the questions children were asking and how engaged they were. Our exit ticket really showed children’s improved confidence with skimming and scanning.
To activate our lesson we looked at a variety of photos and thought about what we knew from looking at the pictures. We thought about who the pictures were, what the people are doing and how they are feeling. We tried to give reasons for our ideas and thought about how they relate to the story we have just read. We then looked at our text for the lesson, recapping fiction and non fiction and how this text was different to the story. We used a partner read, a read around the robin and an independent read. We unpicked the language as we read, text marking unfamiliar language. Our reasons to read allowed us to demonstrate our understanding of the text where we texting marked as we skimmed and scanned the text. Our exit ticket allowed us to consolidate our learning through a summarising question. We ensured we text marked as we ordered each statement.
On Friday, Crew Hamill were able to spend a little bit of time in the library! We loved being able to choose a book to read for pleasure and sitting with our friends to enjoy them.
A quick do now to recap some of the language we have been working on before completing a written comprehension. Great use of the text today to find answers 🙂
It was such a pleasure to have Lily-Ann offer to read her book to the Crew today. She read with such a confident voice and demonstrated good sounding and blending when she came across a word she wasn’t sure of. Great work.
In reading, we continued exploring The Lion and The Unicorn. In this lesson, we took on the role of Lenny and acted out when he ran away. They scampered through the raspberry brushes, weaved through the trees, went through a hole in the hedge and ran through the night.
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.
On Monday, Crew Hamill began focusing on a new text which was an extra from An Astronaut’s Handbook. Our extract focused on what an astronaut was and where they travel to – space. We started our session by watching a video of Richard Branson and his team travelling into space, allowing us to see what it would be like to launch into space in a rocket. We then travelled to the blue room to immerse ourselves into a similar situation – a confined, dark space with the lights of the milky way and stars. We then listened as Miss Hamill read through the text for the first time, pulling out different vocabulary words and ensuring we understood what we were reading. Following this, we went back to class and skimmed and scanned the text for words, phrases and sentences that we felt comfortable reading. We then re-read the text as a whole crew with everyone joining in when they reached a highlighted word, phrase or sentence. Finally, we text marked our extract, underlining and defining key vocabulary, starring the key information and drawing an exclamation mark when we thought there was an important fact.
Our new text this half term is a non fiction book called Space Explorers, which included 25 extraordinary stories of space exploration.
In our book talk sessions we have learnt new vocabulary such as, ‘conflict’ ‘devoted’ ‘override’, ‘pacing’, ‘vast’, ‘mesmerised’ and ‘observation’. We ensure that we all know what the words mean and discuss how they had been used in the text by the author. Miss models reading the first couple of pages then we practise our fluency by taking it in turns to read paragraphs/whole pages each. We listen and observe carefully so that we can critique how well our partner had used the punctuation such as commas and full stops in the text. We then go through some reasons to read together which required us to use our skimming and scanning skills to allow us to retrieve information from the text. As a class we need to improve on explaining how we go about finding the answer to a question.
We take it in turns to read the different questions and unpick the vocabulary used to help us to understand what information was required such as, ‘How long…’ meaning that we needed to look for a time (minutes, years, months, years etc.). We use our skimming and scanning skills (with a little help from miss thinking aloud) to retrieve the answers from the text. Once we have located the information we check the amount of marks required and if 2/3 marks we explain our answers using the evidence that we had found to support our answer (A.P.E). Later on in the week in demonstration comprehension, we have unpicked questions and accuracy with answers. Miss can already see an improvement from our first Demonstration Comprehension lesson!
