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 - Visiting Author

This morning Waikowhai Primary was lucky enough to have a visiting author join us for some presentations and workshops. We were privileged to spend time with Des Hunt, an author of 'kiwi stories for kiwi kids' that interweave action, science, and the natural world.

The entire senior school enjoyed the knowledge that Des shared with us.  He started by sharing his background, making a connection with us. Des then cleverly used science concepts, specifically chemistry and physics ideas to illustrate the challenges and successes that he has faced during his writing career.  The way that he approached this problem solving was inspiring and you will see the impact this had on some of us as authors by reading our thoughts on our individual blogs.

Following this, 20 of our senior syndicate students participated in a 90 minute workshop with Des Hunt.  We look forward to the impact that this has on their own writing and the sharing of the learning that they can do with the rest of Te Waka Ako.


We would like to thank Des and his wife Lynne for coming to visit and also Mrs Law and Ms Sands for organising the day. We also have a hot dog sale coming up later in the term that you can support that helps us to get more of these exciting opportunities in school.
Ka kite.

Waikowhai Intermediate Writing Buddies

Tena Koutou.

To end our exciting first week back we were lucky enough to have a visit from our Waikowhai Intermediate writing buddies.  Last term we started some online shared writing.  Our buddies at Waikowhai Intermediate gave us some feedback about our writing and since then we have also connected to write a shared piece together about a picture prompt.


It was very exciting to meet our buddies and put a face to the name and the person we had been communicating with online. It was especially great to connect with some of the students who were previous Waikowhai Primary Students.


Throughout the session we found out about the learning maps of our older colleagues and then we spent some time crafting a new piece of writing together.  At the end of our session some of the very brave students decided to share.


We look forward to working together to create stunning pieces of writing.  Keep an eye out on our individual blogs to read the things that we are creating and sharing together as we connect with other students in our community.

Please leave us some positive, thoughtful or helpful feedback and ask us any questions to connect with us too.

Week 6 - Pick a Path Stories

We have extended our narrative writing over the past two weeks to create pick a path stories.  This is where we have the traditional problem in a narrative story, but the audience gets the choice of two possible solutions.

To start with we had to sequence our ideas in a plan.  Here is an example of a completed plan from Dorothy.  This was a really visual way to organise our ideas.

From this we have worked on using google slides to create the pick a path options. We used a template that Mr Riceman made on our site.  It had a few errors in it which we found as we made links inside and we had to fix them up as we went.  Lily has almost got her story finished (just a few editing touches to go) and here it is below.

 Over the next week we will be finishing and posting these on our individual blogs.  Please investigate these further and give us some positive, thoughtful and helpful feedback.  We really appreciate it!

Week 2 - Creative Character Writing

Hi fellow bloggers,

Last week Room 8 were working on character descriptions.  On Monday we went to the site build your wild self and we got to create a character that was half human, half animal (or whatever we chose).  Then we created a y-chart each, that had our character and the main features of their looks, actions and personalities.  I have included this below for you to have a look at.  This is the creature that we created with Mr Riceman our teacher.  If you would like to find out about more of our characters please check out our individual blogs on the side of the page.

Here is the character description I created from this...

Mix-up (Room 8's shared writing)

Mix up has two green arms that stick out from the top of his body.  The four sucker fingers pads are extremely useful for him. Unusually, he has brown hair that is similar to a normal human.  Eight legs cover the bottom half of his body.  They are purple tentacles perfect for slithering up trees.  His buffalo snout is grey and brown, covered in coarse hair that helps him sniff his prey.  All in all, he is a very weird looking character!

The sticky finger pads help him with his favourite pass-time, climbing up walls and washing windows for a living.  The eight tentacles means he can manages 4 buckets and 4 brushes at the same time, while holding onto any smooth surface.  Once it hits 10:30, his snout twitches in search of the nearest long black coffee, he must get his fix!

Mix up is generous, he often donates his time to wash the windows of his local school, free of charge. There is a cheeky side to him.  Amongst his friends, he loves a practical joke and often plays tricks.  His friends also describe him as bookish, when not learning or causing trouble, his nose is buried firmly in the latest and most interesting work of Non fiction freshwater reading!