Week 4/5 - Persuasive writing

Hi Bloggers,

We have been focusing on persuading people when writing. Persuasive writing is when we share what we think and use examples to convince readers to think like us.  We used the traditional tale "Jack and the Beanstalk" as our motivation.  First, we read the book.  From this, we discussed reasons whether or not Jack should have taken the hen that laid golden eggs.  Our thinking is shared below in the padlet.

Next, we decided whether we wanted to argue that Jack should have taken the hen left it with the Giant. We made sure our writing had an introduction and some convincing reasons.  Kaiwhare did a great job with this writing. Here are two examples below.  Have a read and please let us know what you think with by posting positive, thoughtful and helpful comments.

Najwa's persuasive writing:
I think that Jack should not have taken the golden eggs because it is never good to steal other peoples property. 

First Jack climbed higher and higher until he reached the top he quickly took the big brown hen and ran as fast as he ever could. It was not his stuff and it is very wrong to be a thief.

Secondly when Jack climbed up and stole the hen the giant saw him and stomped after him. The giant got hurt because Jack cut down the green magic beanstalk. It is like if you pushed someone got hurt and it is not ok to hurt other people they could feel in real pain.

Lily's persuasive writing:
I think that Jack should have climbed the beanstalk and taken the hen/chicken that lays golden eggs because they could have more special things in their life.

My first reason is they can buy a big clean new house. When they have the new house it  won't be dirty moldy or stinky any more.  It will have new nice stuff in the nice new house. It will be nothing like the house they had before.

Secondly  they can now afford juicy food from the shop.  If they have food to eat they will be healthy not hungry. It was really hard for them when they didn't have any food. However they would have food if they had the hen/chicken  

Finally they would never be poor again They want be poor if had the hen/chicken. They would have money and they would have friends. However they might go out together with their friends. When they have the money they would get to buy whatever they want And maybe they will be really rich. If they had the hen/chicken...

I have told you three reasons why Jack should have taken the hen/chicken that lays golden shiny eggs.

Week 3 - Bullyfree NZ Week

This week is Bullyfree week across New Zealand. We have been focusing some of our learning around this important topic. Today, Mr Riceman challenged us to create some word clouds that showed the type of people we want to be and to be around.

First, we came up with some ideas for words. Reading the book 'Oat the Goat' helped us out yesterday.  We added these words into the site www.wordart.com . Mr Riceman then helped us to format our words in different ways. This was lots of fun. Then it was time to share them so that they can be added to this blog post. You can see some of these word clouds below. We may add in some more as they are finished too.

 Please have a look, have a read and let us know what you think with a positive, thoughtful and helpful comment.

Week 2 - Taha Tīnana

Kia ora!

This term, our learning in Te Reo Māori is linked with our Inquiry focus on healthy living - hauora tīnana.  We have been learning about different types of food and how it helps keep our bodies healthy.

Here are the different names of food we have learnt in Te Reo.

This poster is displayed in our window so we can practise finding the word matching the picture.
Here are Paige, Lewis, Ashwin and Cyan matching some. You might like to have a go when you come visit, too.

This week we also practised our manners for mealtimes... asking where a food is, asking someone to pass it, and responding politely.

"Kei whea te _______?" means "Where is the _______?" E.g. Kei whea te pata?=Where is the butter?
"Homai he _______," means "Gave me (pass) a/some ____." E.g. Homai he pata. = Pass some butter.
"Anei he _______," means "Here is a/some _______." E.g. Anei he pata. = Here's some butter.

Here we are, practising asking each other to pass an item of food.

Ka kite ano!

Week One - ANZAC Literacy

Talofa Lava bloggers and welcome to Term Two,

We have had a busy start to the term this week. During our Literacy learning, we have been focusing on the theme of ANZACs and ANZAC day. This is because ANZAC day was acknowledged during the second week of the school holidays.

For creative writing, we described what we thought it would have been like in a Trench and wrote home to describe this experience using our senses.  To help get a better understanding we read two picture books, Jim's Letters by Glyn Harper and The ANZAC Puppy by Peter Millet and Trish Bowles. The illustrations in these books helped us to learn and plan what we would include in our writing.

Using our plan, we then created a piece of writing, focusing on using simple and compound sentences to describe what we saw and what was happening.  Here are two examples of writing below,

Daiki's writing:
 Dear Mum and Dad,
How are you both feeling? Here in the trench it is not going well!  It is not good for children to stay here. I am feeling sad because bandage around  my friends bodies. Now we are going to get our guns out. On the top of the hill I can hear the gunshots coming close to me and I can also hear the Bullets going into the water or sea. I Could smell the blood  from the people that died  in the war. I can feel the pain in the injury that I have and I can also feel the dust going into my eyes. I miss home because we don't have time to have showers. I can’t sleep that well because of the explosion of the bombs. BOOM! CRASH! BAM! I wish that I could be at home right now. My clothes and socks smell like the sewer YUCK!. MY tummy is saying I want to have a Barbecue.
I hope you guys are having fun.

TJ's writing:
Dear family
How are you all? The trench is not a safe place for the children. We are feeling sad because people are getting shot, even some of my friends. When I run  through the water, I can hear lots of splashes. The gunshots and bombs smells like smoke.  My dirty stinky clothes feel gross .I can see rain dropping. I am worried because I hope the children won't do this when they are my  age .I am scared because I think I'm going to be dead. I am afraid  because we're getting less soldiers. I'm looking forward to getting home I can't wait to taste  mums best biscuits. And I can't wait to play with the children.
From TJ

We hope to use our creation skills to publish these on a postcard too. Please feel free to leave some postiive, thoughtful and helpful comments.