English

Reading

One of our reading tasks involved viewing 'Seeking Refuge' a story about 12 Year old Juliane who retells her story of living in a Zimbabwean Orphanage and being reunited with her mother before moving to the UK.

The Learning Intention was to use clues to make smart guesses about what is coming up in the text. This requires readers to apply the strategy of PREDICTING in order to understand the author's message more deeply. 

Good readers use predicting as a way to connect their existing knowledge to new information from a text to gain meaning from what they read.

Seeking Refuge is an emotive story which stimulated philosophical conversations about what it means to be an orphan.

Link below:

 Seeking refuge - THE LITERACY SHED

Students responded to the prompts:

I think the text will be about…

I predict… will happen next…

From what I have read so far…

The pictures makes me think that…

Students then revised their predictions:

I thought... but then…

I changed my first prediction because it said…

My prediction was confirmed in the story because…

My prediction was partly right but...

You can support your child with predicting through asking similar questions when reading together at home.

To commemorate ANZAC Day, we read John McCrae's famous poem 'In Flanders Fields'  

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

    That mark our place; and in the sky

    The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

    The torch; be yours to hold it high.

    If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

        In Flanders fields.

The Learning Intention was to use our prior knowledge and clues from the text in order to deepen our understanding of the author’s message. This is INFERRING.

Students were asked to respond:

Reading between the lines, I think...   

I already know that … so… I think…

I think the author is really saying…

The author’s clues were…

I wonder why…

I wonder if...

Writing

The students then experimented with writing their own poems. 

The Learning intention was to use words in my writing that help me connect with the reader

This required the students to use VOICE - one of the  6+1 Traits of Writing.

The poems are displayed in the main building.