Writing  

As part of writing we have been engaging in creating narrative and persuasive pieces of writing in preparation for the NAPLAN writing assessments. We have also been looking at how to structure these types of writing pieces and what information needs to go into them as well as working to improve our editing skills. We have been practicing typing these on our laptops working from our written plans and also in NAPLAN testing conditions.

At the sentence level, we are thinking about how to expand our sentences and add more detail using who, what, when, where and why information. We are identifying when and how to use parts of speech to enrich our writing, for example, adjectives when describing narrative settings using the 5 senses and appositives to add more information to characters.

During spelling, we are looking at our knowledge of base words and prefix and suffix rules to develop our understanding of how to spell new words. We are also using our knowledge of short and long vowel sounds to spell common words, as well as rules like ‘silent final e’.

Each week students have time and opportunity to engage in a 20-minute touch typing skill session through Typing Club. All students have access to their own computer and, through this web-based educational platform, are learning about proper finger positioning and improving their typing speed and accuracy.