Book talk in MI

Our entry ticket allowed us to recap the text so far! We were all excited to tell Mrs McClare what happened on Friday! Mrs McClare then asked us a few questions, ‘Who was knocking at the door? Why did the man wear a turban? What is a merchant? Why did the man smile wickedly? Define concealed, what about slaughter? We then used our knowledge of the text to order events from the story in a sats style question. We then thought about what one of the characters may be saying and wrote out thought bubbles. This got us thinking about the next part of the story. We then moved onto reading the next part of the story where we used a partner read, echo read and independent read. Mrs McClare modelled using punctuation when reading. She gave us two examples then we voiced which was better and why. 

Our main part of the lesson today was looking at language in the text. We read different parts of the text and looked at different questions involving language. We unpicked how we answer the questions and where we go in the text to find the answers. 

Our exit ticket allowed us to think about one of the main characters and if she was right doing what she did. We gave our reasons for our answers.

Book Talk in Crew Hamill

This week, Crew Hamill have delved deeper into the story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We looked further at key vocabulary within the story and practised our skimming and scanning skills by finding them in a word search. We have had a big fluency focus this week and each day we have focused on a different element – pausing, pace, accuracy and expression/intonation. For book talk, we read through the text and focused on pausing at punctuation to ensure our reading made sense. We then text marked our section of the text, identifying vocabulary words, important parts, parts that were exciting and parts that we loved. Once we had completed this, we answered quick fire questions about what we had read. For our second book talk lesson, we focused on pace as we read, ensuring we were reading at an appropriate pace – not too fast or too slow. We then continued with our retrieval and fluency focus, answering questions – first guided and then paired – about what we had read.

Demonstration comprehension in MI

Our entry ticket allowed us to work on our inference skills where we used a picture to answer questions. We really thought about the reasons for our answers and used the picture well to support us. We then read the next part of the text using a chorus read, independent read then a read around the robin. We tried to apply the skills we had been using all week- using the punctuation when reading along with expression. We explored the text as we read unpicking some of the vocabulary together. Next we moved onto our demonstration comprehension questions where Mrs McClare modelled her thought process in order to answer the questions. We were all so eager to voice the answers to the questions and used the text well to find the answers. We thought about the questions were asking us, comparing what, why and when questions. We had so many great answers and the excitement in our lesson today was fantastic. It was clear we had a good understanding of the text which was fantastic. Our exit ticket allowed us to think about the characters feelings where we wrote thought/speech bubbles for them. We then explained our answers explaining why we thought this.

Book talk continues in MI

We loved our entry ticket today where we tried to work on our fluency and speed by reading as many words as we could in 1 minute. It was important we didn’t read too fast as Mrs McClare would be asking questions after reading! Once we had read, we shared something that had happened with our partners then with our table, then with the whole crew. Mrs McClare asked us some questions too, “what verb was used instead of said? What does the word disguise mean? Can you put the word into your own sentence? Who else has to have a disguise? What is a corpse? What is a vow of secrecy? Why is this important after what we read yesterday? Do you agree with secrecy?’ We then unpicked any vocabulary we had text marked. We then read the text again using a chorus read and read around the robin. We really tried to use the punctuation when reading, pausing at commas, using expression for speech and taking a breath after a full stop. Our reasons to read really showcased that we had understood what we had read and our exit ticket allowed us to make predictions about the next part of the story. A great session in MI today 🙂

Book talk in MI

Our entry ticket today allowed us to recap the story so far, we used pictures from the story to help us and we shared what we remembered with our partner and the whole crew. We then used the information we had just heard and discussed to read a variety of sentences from the story out loud with our partner. We ordered these sentences to show the order in which they happened. Everyone read outloud in a read around the robin. Mrs McClare then asked us a variety of questions on other parts of the story to ensure we could remember other main parts, this included information on the characters, the setting and some of the previous language we had come across that is on our reading anchor chart. We recapped word class too! We then looked at our new language for the next part of the story and used some pictures to help us visualise these words a little better. 

Next we started to read the text, Mrs McClare read the first 2 sentences where she tried to use the punctuation accurately when reading. She still tried to work on her expression and fluency too, these are things we have been working on over the last few weeks. We then read with our partners and text marked our new vocabulary. Mrs McClare asked us to underline any other language that we wanted to discuss further or language we were unfamiliar with. During the second round of reading we read independently and tried to really work on the speed of our reading. Mrs McClare then read the text, questioning us as she read. Why did the tailor have to be blindfolded? What does ‘large bonus’ mean? How can you tell the tailor’s work was good? We then moved onto our reasons to read, using the text to support our answers and thoughts. 

Our exit ticket allowed us to think about the thoughts of 2 of the characters. We created speech between them, using our writing lessons to support us with this. Some of us even went for green standard where we explained our answers further, using the text to do this. 

Book Talk – Retrieval

In our second book talk session, we have been focusing heavily on the skills needed to answer fact and retrieval questions. This ended up lasting 2 lessons because we had some good discussions about the skills we need to use. We had some questions modelled and then we had an opportunity to apply these skills. In addition, we have still be drip feeding inference questions as we continue to develop our written answers to these type of questions.

Cacao Bean

In history, we have been learning about where the cacao bean comes from and how it’s grown. We used QR codes to access some reading materials providing lots of information. We then had to use our skimming and scanning skills to help us locate the relevant information to answer questions.

We the looks at the differences between how the Maya processes cacao beans and how they’re processed now to keep up with the demand.