Following our book talk for the first half of this week, we spent yesterday completing some demonstration comprehension questions. We watched as Miss Hamill explained how to identify key information within the question which we could then find in the text and read around in order to support us in finding an accurate and specific answer. We then worked in pairs to use these strategies to identify the answers to some further questions about the book.
This week, we focused on our new book – Dear Vampire. We have spent a lot of time making ourselves familiar with the vocabulary within the book to ensure we can read fluently. We made initial predictions on what we thought the story might be about before we read the introduction which gave us a sneak peek. Following this, we predicted what we thought would happen next and were interested to have our first read to see if we were correct. We have delved deep into what the story is actually about within our book talk lessons and answered some retrieval questions using Fastest Finger and some inference questions that have made us think!
Today, we completed our book talk lessons which consisted of us unpicking the text and ensuring we understand the vocabulary we’re reading. We had some good discussions about the vocabulary and used different skills to help us understand the meaning and context of the words.
Our entry ticket allowed us to reflect on yesterdays lesson and what we learnt about Mauritius. We created our own flag using our knowledge. It was great to see how much we had remembered.
We then unpicked our new language and discussed which text marking symbols we would focus on as we read. We read independently and with our partners today and we also listened to Mrs McClare read the text focussing on expression and fluency. Our reasons to read allowed us to get practical, sorting statements into two categories. We worked in mini crews to read each statement and decide if it was a fact for Madagascar or a fact for Gabon. We then shared our facts as a whole crew 🙂 We then looked at another impressions question, using the text to support our ideas. We are becoming more confident when answering this type of questions.
Our exit ticket assessed our whole understanding of the texts we had read. We sorted our cards again but this time thinking about the order they appear in the text. We used the text too to help us do this.
In reading, we have been focusing more on inference style questions as this is an area that we need to develop. We have been unpacking the questions and thinking about the skills needed to answer these type of questions.
Our entry ticket allowed us to build on previous reading lessons, thinking back to the African countries we have studied and read about. We thought back to the facts we had learnt about these countries and worked with our partners to voice facts. I was blown away by what we remembered! We have really loved learning about each country and learning about what it has to offer.
We then read our next bit of text all about Mauritius! This was a complete contrast to some of the countries we had previously looked at. We took part in a partner read, independent read and then a chorus read. We read the text over and over to ensure we were taking in the information. Mrs McClare questioned us on our reading as we read. We unpicked some of the language and made inferences based on the information.
We then moved onto our reasons to read, using the text to support our answers. We looked at different types of questions, some of these were ones we had struggled with in our latest assessment. We thought about our impressions of Mauritius and used the text to support our ideas.
Finally our exit ticket allowed us to think about Ammeenah Gurib, we voiced all the facts we had learnt about her whilst reading. A fantastic reading lesson today 🙂
On Wednesday afternoon, Crew Hamill took a visit to our school library. We were able to browse a fantastic selection of books and choose one that we would like to take home to read for pleasure. We also spent some time reading with our friends.
In this week’s book talk, we had a game of fastest finger first. Miss Hamill asked us retrieval questions about the book and we had to find the answer within the text as quickly as we could!
We began today’s Book Talk session by completing an entry ticket to support us in developing our inference skills. We had to infer as much as possible from the picture given, it was tricky but with a few prompts from Mrs Elmer we were able to list lots! We then recapped the title, purpose, audience and genre of our current text and revisited the map (of Africa) that we had looked at in the previous session. We located Ethiopia and looked at the other countries that surrounded it. We soon realised that it was a ‘landlocked’ country. We then made predictions using the picture clues on the map to predict what we thought Ethiopia might be like. We then ‘echo read’ the text and everyone had a go at independently reading a sentence or two using the ‘round robin’ reading approach. As we read we discussed some of the new, more challenging, topic related words that we came across such as Rastafarians, murals and seized. We then looked at some reason to read questions that required us to ‘trawl for evidence’ in the text. 🕵 At the end of the lesson we then completed an ‘exit ticket’ to share some of the interesting facts that we had learnt about Ethiopia, such as did you know that they started the habit of drinking coffee?! ☕
Our entry ticket today allowed us to think about differences between two maps and we also gave our own personal opinions about the map we preferred. We explored each map together, thinking about what we can see. We thought about why the author may have chosen to show the maps in a different way and we voiced reasons for this. We used our inference skills to try and work out which part of Africa we would be looking at and thought about what we noticed about certain places. From here we read the text using a partner read, an independent read then we used a chorus read. As we read we explored specific vocabulary, unpicked phrases and discussed what we had read. We then looked at our reasons to read which showed us we had taken in what we had just read. Our exit ticket pulled all of our learning together. We drew a picture and described East Africa 🙂
