To consolidate our learning on common and proper nouns, Crew Hamill took part in a practical grammar lesson. We began by playing corners. Miss Hamill showed us a selection of nouns on the board and we had to decide whether they were a common (general) noun or a proper (specific) noun that needed a capital letter. Once we had done this, we recapped looking at these nouns within a sentence and how we would decide which was which. Miss Hamill had disguised the capital letters to make it that little bit more tricky for us but we were able to work in mini crews to underline proper nouns and circle common nouns within the same sentence. We then took part in a kahoot! quiz to assess how much we had remembered.
To consolidate our learning, Crew Hamill took part in a practical lesson in which we became a number line to 10,000 in order to deepen our understanding on how to estimate numbers on a number line. We began by each being a different number, starting with our start and end numbers (0 and 10,000) and adding in the interval half way (5000) and half way again (2500 and 7500). Remaining children were then given a number between 0 and 10,000 and had to decide where they would place themselves along the line, thinking carefully about which of our interval numbers they would stand between and which one they would be closer to based on the value of their number. Once we had done this, we then worked in mini crews to mark on different interval values on number lines to 10,000 and placed a range of numbers where we estimated they belonged onto each line.
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.
Today we discussed the need for making rations spread further and creating meals from the foods people had available. We explored a range of recipes, looking at the ingredients needed and the method involved. We discussed that ingredients were limited and recipes were simple. We worked in mini crews to make a wartime food- cauliflower pie, using a set of ingredients and a method. Once we had created our wartime food we discussed how the dishes in world war 2 were different to our favourite meals today.
Today we consolidated our learning on being verbs. We were introduced to this on Friday with Mrs Ibbotson and we had a further lesson to ensure we really understood the concept. We started the lesson by recapping past and present tense. We then voiced how different sentences could be past or present by highlight the verb ‘to be’. We remembered that present tense verbs included am, are and is and past tense verbs use was and were. We then recapped singular and plural, thinking of our own examples and sharing these in mini crews before the whole crew. From here we moved onto pronouns replacing Mrs McClare with other pronouns and thinking about both males and females. We then thought about which pronouns can be singular and which are plural. We explored the ‘you’ pronoun in more detail as we realised that this pronoun can be both singular and plural! We looked at different examples and discussed if the sentences were singular or plural, past or present. Our next few activities allowed us to consolidate all these concepts we had worked on. A really great lesson today 🙂
Today we used the next two pictures from the story for our entry ticket. We thought about what was happening in the pictures, what time of day we thought it was and how we thought the characters were feeling. We used our inference skills well here to discuss different ideas. We then read the next part of the story with our partners. We discussed our initial ideas and how these linked to what we had read. We thought about the noises being described and explained what these meant. We then tried to act our part of the story, putting ourselves in Lenny’s shoes. From here we used the page we had just read to answer an APE question. We made sure we answered the question, then proved it by using evidence from the text. We then used an independent read and chorus read for the next part of the story, thinking about why rhetorical questions were used and the impressions we now get of Joyce, one of the characters. Our reasons to read allowed us to explore ideas in more detail thinking lots about feelings of characters. Our exit ticket allowed us to think more of Lenny’s feelings, our main character. We again used evidence from the text to support our ideas. A great reading lesson MI 🙂
We’ve had lots of fun today working as a crew to build houses and tunnels using our polydrons outside. We listened carefully to the instructions on how to make the different structures, and worked together to find the pieces, rotate them round and fit them together until we had built the house and the tunnel. We loved playing together in them!
In Scotties we had to work in pairs and individually as he tested our teamwork and fitness skills. We had to complete a variety of different actives such as piggy backs, frog jumps, wheelbarrow and then a range of running activities too.
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!
