Today we were very lucky to have a visit from famous New Zealand author, Melinda Szymanik. Ask us to tell you about some of the books she's written.
Melinda told us that if you are a reader, you are a superhero! Reading books is a super power! She told us how readers can:
Melinda decided she was going to be an author when she was about 8 years old - that's the same as us!!
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We've had some pretty cold, frosty, winter mornings recently, so we thought we'd write about the frost that covers our cars and lawns, and even the Village Green outside our classroom! Here are a few examples of our amazing 'Show Not Tell' descriptions. Can you spot the amazing WOW words we've used? Do you notice the language features we included? The rest are hanging up in our class - come in and check them out! We're immersing ourselves in Matariki (Māori New Year) at the moment. We'll post more about that later. Right now, we want to tell you all about the diamante poems we've created about the Matariki stars. Diamante poems are shaped like diamonds (obviously). To get this shape there is a word limit on each line. Because we have a limited number of words to choose from, we have to think very carefully about the words we choose to use. We brainstormed a huge list of amazing verbs, nouns, and adjectives that relate to stars and Matariki, and used these within our poems. Some of us even managed to include language features like similes and alliteration. It was fun publishing and decorating our poetry. We're really proud of them. Mrs T has put some on display in the library and hall foyer to share with our school community. You could have a go at writing your own diamante poem in the comments below! We've been working on writing Information Reports about native New Zealand birds in Room 12 with Mrs Anderson (we'll put on a post about these once they're finished). As part of this, we've created some stunning Flox-inspired watercolour pieces of art. We used some special coloured pencils - they are watercolour pencils that you draw with, and then paint over with water to get a watercolour effect. We think they look stunning! What is your favourite native bird? We know it's important to hook our readers when writing, but it's also important to keep them hooked and reel them in to the very end. We're learning about 'Show not Tell' this week. This writing technique is all about using our senses to describe something, rather than just telling what it is. Mrs T acted out some feelings, and we had to guess what feeling she was showing us. Then we talked about all the things we could see - for example, Mrs T didn't tell us she was angry, instead she showed us by stomping around with her hands clenched into fists. Next we buddied up and had a first go at writing our own little Show not Tell sentences. Ask us to "tell" you all about it! We are making GREAT progress with our writing. Recently we have been looking at using different language features to add interest and description to our writing. Here are some small descriptions we wrote about a little ladybird sitting on a feather. The challenge was to use at least one example of alliteration - can you spot this language feature in our writing? Not sure what it is? Ask us - we're experts! This week we've been working on a piece of writing about a little chimpanzee in the rain. We got our inspiration from the picture below. The photo was taken by Photographer Andrew Suryono.
We wanted our writing to be interesting for our readers, so we had to think about quite a few things: - Hooking our readers with an interesting beginning - Using WOW words - Including language features like similes, onomatopoeia or alliteration - Writing super sentences - Making sure our sentences start with different beginnings - Including the senses Not to mention all the work we put into proofreading and recrafting our writing once our draft is finished! You can read our stories here. Come back and tell us what you think! |
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