Literacy Update

Writing

This term we've focused on two areas of writing - persuasive and informative texts.  Children learned more about the art of persuasion by examining techniques known as logical fallacies.  They are tricks used by many to persuade and they're very popular in advertising.  The children discovered that they are known as 'fallacies' as they can be misleading.  One example is the "Bandwagon" - a trick where you try to convince someone that "everyone is doing it and you should too."  We also explored different types of informative texts this term.  Children created an Information Report in poster form as well as looked at blogs, newspapers and video reports.

Reading

We have continued to develop our reading and comprehension skills through a focus on a variety of reading strategies, including "monitor and fix", "determine the main idea" and "compare and contrast".  Developing skills in these kinds of strategies enable children to build up a bank of tools that they can utilise to help decode and comprehend texts.  We have also spent a lot of time looking at the features of texts, such as where to locate an index and how to use it to find information in a non fiction book.  We have often joked that this is an old form of 'Googling'!