Activating our inference skills

12th November 2024Laura Hamill

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.

Reading in Crew Hamill

8th November 2024Laura Hamill

After having a heavy focus on retrieval skills during Autumn 1, Crew Hamill have shifted their focus this half term and begun looking at inference skills – using clues from the text in order to provide an appropriate answer that is backed up with evidence from the text. To help us with this, we began by taking part in a hot seating activity in which we worked in mini crews to create questions that we would like to ask the main character of our story. One person then pretended to be this character and attempted to answer the questions, using what they knew from the text as support.

Following this, we then looked at some demonstration comprehension questions that we again focused on our inference skills. After working through how to answer this style of question with Miss Hamill on the board, we were given three questions of our own and three matching answers. We had to work in mini crews to match the question to it’s correct answer, using what we knew from the text to support us with this.

Testimony of Evacuees

30th October 2024Ruth Shields

In our history lesson, we explored further the experiences of children during wartimes and what life was like as an evacuee. This required us to use our reading skills so we could skim and scan the text before making inferences. Once we had read and understood the text we completed some details about each person. We discovered that some children had positive experiences during wartimes but unfortunately there were children who had quite negative experiences as an evacuee.

Demo comprehension in MI

18th September 2024Stacey McClare

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.

Are you cut out for space?

17th September 2024Laura Hamill

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.