Wartime Organisation

This week we continued our history case study by starting to learn about the organisation of wartime. We learned there were 4 organisations that people belonged to which were: Armed Forces, the government, special operations and the home front. We discussed that regardless of which group people were part of that everyone played a vital role in the war effort. Children then took on the role of someone from the war and interviewed each other asking questions about when they weee born, where they were stationed and their role. This was an opportunity to practice our reading within our expedition lesson and support each other.

Among us – Vocabulary

In our book talk session, we started the session with a game of among us. Children were given either a word or the definition. They then had to find their match. We’ve been discussing the importance of understanding the vocabulary we read in a text as this helps us to comprehend the text and later apply this to our reasons to read. In addition, we’ve started to really read around the word to see if we can use the text to help us infer the meaning of a word.

Entry Ticket Drawing in Reading

In Crew Shields, Y3, Reading this morning we read a section of The Lion and the Unicorn and the completed our entry ticket. Our task was to draw the garden based upon what we read in the text. Our crew shared their drawings and we gave critique. We praised what we loved and how they could make them even better. Great HoWLs throughout today.

World War 2 visitor

On Tuesday, we were fortunate to have Time Travel Education come into school to learn about different aspects of World War 2. First, we were introduced to the beginning of the war and the key people: Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill. We learnt about the air raids and the role of the wardens. Then we had to opportunity to help get rid of the fire bombs that had been dropped. This required teamwork to keep everyone safe.

Evacuation was our next area to learn about. The children got to learn about the upheaved to family life to ensure the safety of the children. They packed their bags and were given an insight into rationing. We had a shop keeper and some customers who came to spend their vouchers. We’ll build on this later in the case study.

In the last session, we learned about how the Wardens would deliver first aid and met Ernie (dummy) who had become trapped in a building that had been blown up. Once we seen how to treat a broken femur, we had the opportunity to treat our partner for the same condition.

In between the sessions in the hall, we had access to boxes of artefacts which came with reading materials to help us learn about each one.

Our favourite one was as craft that had a map printed on it. Aircrew would wear this so that if their plane went down they’d have a map on them to help navigate their way to safety.

Reasons to read

During our book talk lesson, we have worked together to answer a range of questions. We focused on the importance of using the text to support us to answer the question. Some of our questions asked for evidence from the text and this was an area we will continue to develop as we more through this year. It was great to see the children working collaboratively and working to each other’s strengths.

Book talk continues in MI

Today we recapped the story so far by thinking about what the characters may be saying to each other and their thoughts. We worked in mini crews to think of our own ideas then shared these with the whole crew.

From here we unpicked the vocabulary that would appear in the text before text marking it when reading. We used an echo read, partner read then an independent read. We tried to think about the fluency of our reading today. Our reasons to read allowed us to show our understanding of the text which we all did really well. Our exit ticket allowed to order the events in the story. A great reading lesson in MI 🙂

Chapter One Celebrations!

This year, as a school, we have taken part in Chapter One.This has meant that many of our pupils in KS1 have had the opportunity to read 1:1 with a volunteer at least once a week for the whole year, that’s reading at least a whopping 40 times this year! Not only has this reading opportunity supported our pupils to develop their reading skills and better their fluency it has also boosted their love of reading! All of the pupils that have taken part in this have made fantastic progress with some now reaching the top book band level! We are super proud of them all! Yesterday, we got to take part in a live call with our Chapter One representative, as well as many of the volunteers that have been reading with our pupils. It was lovely for us all to put a face to people, as well as listen to the lovely feedback that our volunteers shared. It was such a lovely moment to share with our pupils, and the great news is there will be much more of this in the next academic year!