Class News
Kindergarten
Kindergarten have been busy learning the story of The Gingerbread Man.
Telling and retelling stories is an important part of every culture. Story telling demands specific language and vocabulary not used in conversational or day to day language for the children.
Words like "once upon a time, eventually and finally" are often new to Kindergarten children. Additionally, learning to retell a story with a beginning, a middle and an end is an important foundational pre writing skill.
Not only have Kindergarten mastered retelling "The Gingerbread Man" but they have also been challenged with changing the end of the story. Teachers call this a text innovation. It is an introduction to independent writing.
As you can see, we have some amazing story writers in Kindergarten - or should we say authors - who have innovated on the Gingerbread Man to create their own crazy (and sometimes hilarious) endings!
We hope you enjoy them as much as we did!
Mrs Dunn, Mrs Adams, and Mrs Gallacher.
Finally the Gingerbread Man went to a river and met a dog. The dog said, “Let me help you. I will bring you to the other side of the river.” So the Gingerbread Man jumped on the dog. Suddenly the Gingerbread Man fell into the water and fell into pieces and the dog licked it and ate it.
Finally the Gingerbread Man came to a river and met a turtle. The turtle said, “Let me help you. I’ll swim down and get a log from the river. Then the turtle got the log and gave it to the Gingerbread Man. Then he got on the log and went across the river.
Finally the Gingerbread came to a river. At the river he met a tiger. The tiger picked up wood and made a bridge. The Gingerbread went across and they lived happily ever after.
Finally the Gingerbread Man was not caught and a turtle got there and said to the Gingerbread Man, “Let me help you. Jump on my bike.” He took him to a makeup salon and did his makeup.
Year 1
Year 1 have been learning the difference between Imaginative and Factual writing. This week our writing samples are based on an imaginary character, Sally Slime. She only plays with slime and is allergic to pets. She is coming to our house for a playdate. Our focus is on character description and varying sentence length to make our writing more interesting.
Year 2
As year 2 continue to develop their creating writing, we are beginning to look at the structure of a narrative. In groups, the children were given a picture and planned the introduction, problem and ending of their narratives. Check out their plans below. Stay tuned for the first drafts!
Stage 2 have continued to work hard on the writing of persuasive texts over the last fortnight. We have had lots of practice in writing the introduction and have moved on to using the features of persuasive texts – rhetorical questions, high modality words, opinions with evidence, etc – to write the paragraphs outlining our reasons.
Stage 3
Our learning intention in English has been to identify the purpose and audience of a range of fiction and non-fiction texts. Students defined the word ‘text’ and realised it covers a broad range of mediums and involves sharing a message or communicating.
We are learning there are three types of written texts. Students evaluated the purpose and audience of persuasive, informative and imaginative texts. As a class we categorised texts according to purpose, intended audience, vocabulary used and subject matter.
We enjoyed pasting texts into categories and explaining the purpose and audience in partners. Students identified categories of people that a text may be intended. For example; an information map would be aimed at travellers.
Understanding audience and purpose is important when improving our own writing. It will help students to make better vocabulary choices and extend the quality of written work.
