May
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Explanations
An explanation is a piece of writing that explains how something works. In small groups we planned and wrote explanations to explain 3 of the simple machines we had learnt about. Every person was in charge of writing a paragraph to add to the explanation. Then one member of each group read our explanations to the rest of our class. |
Prefixes and Suffixes
We learnt about what about how a prefix and a suffix change the meaning of a word. Some prefixes are re-, un- and dis-. Un means not, for example unhappy means not happy. Some suffixes are -less and -ful. Helpful means full of help. We made chatterbox games to practice our newly found skills. |
Alphabetical Order
We have been reviewing how to put words in alphabetical order. After consolidating this skill we noticed that dictionaries are also in alphabetical order. We learnt how to find words in dictionaries quickly and how to use them to find definitions for unknown words. We love playing dictionary race to see how is the fastest. |
April
Procedures
A procedure is a piece of writing that tells you how to do something. We started by reading procedures about craft. We read instructions for how to make a spinning top and how to make a paper butterfly. We noticed that procedures have three main parts: 1. A title and a goal 2. A materials list (or things you need) 3. The steps to follow. |
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What else have we been up to?
February and March
Comic books
We were becoming experts on narratives. Next we looked at another way to tell stories, through comics. We wrote simple comics using our narrative structure. Then we used speech bubbles to show what people were saying. Finally we learnt how to use speech marks in our writing. We turned our comics into books to share with our friends. Come and read them! |
We went the website "worldstories.org" during our ICT time. Here we found stories from different countries and cultures. We could read them or listen to them in English, or in their traditional language. Some of us chose to listen in Polish, English, German or more! We are great communicators. Have a look using the link above.
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Then we wrote our own stories using a celebration we had learnt about as a setting. We used Chinese New Year, Valentines Day, Halloween, Tet and Easter. Then after describing our main character using WOW words, we were ready to write our stories. If you would like to read them they are on our individual pages.
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What else have we been doing?
January
What else have we been up to?
December
Persuasive Writing
Nonfiction Texts
We are learning to about nonfiction texts. But what is a nonfiction text? A nonfiction text is a piece of writing that is real and has information. You can learn things from nonfiction texts. We looked at some nonfiction texts on the internet. We read about different Australian animals and found 2 pieces of information in them that we found interesting. Then we drew a picture and gave a caption to show what we had learnt.
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Once we learnt what a nonfiction text is, we had to see what types of things they have. We became detectives and looked for clues in the books in our classroom.
Can you find....? The glossary The author The contents page The title Captions Illustrations Labels Headings The index |
What else have we been up to?
November
Heading and Captions
We are learning how writers use headings and captions to organise information in non-fiction texts. We sorted some information about community helpers into the headings tools, appearance and roles. We used books to look for more information that we could add under each heading. |
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We then used the program 'Paint' to make our own digital paintings. We then typed some captions to go with our pictures |
WOW words
We have been learning how to make our writing more interesting. To do this we have become WOW word thieves. When reading a book we might 'steal' a word that makes us go WOW to use in our own writing. We have even been learning to check the meaning of words using dictionaries Silently the Halloween candy disappeared from the caravan. The fox was crafty and stole thousands of nuts. |
Narratives
We learnt what are the important parts of a narrative. We learnt that every story has to have a beginning which introduces the story and ideas, a middle which is where the exciting things happen, and an end where the problem is solved and everyone is usually happy. We retold famous fairy tales and thought about what would happen if each part was not there. |
Finally we wrote and published our own narratives. We took a long time planning our stories and making sure that they had lots of detail. Once we were done we turned it into a book for us to read. You can read our stories on our individual pages.
October
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Poetry We also looked at some simple poetry. First we recited poems about different Earth heroes to our buddy class. Then we wrote out own poems using the book "The Lorax" by Dr. Suess as inspirtation. We wrote a diamante poem, which uses adjectives and verbs to describe characters. We wrote about the Lorax and the Once ler and used some amazing PYP learner profiles to help us describe them. |
What else have we been up to in October?
September
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Descriptions
To start learning about descriptions we learnt about nouns and adjectives. After learning about what a noun is, we went around the classroom putting post it's to name the nouns. Then we did a similar activity with adjectives and noticed how some adjectives are connected to nouns. We had fun labeling our classroom. |
Then we used the verbs that we knew to write a description about a sport. First we brainstormed what verbs and nouns we would need before publishing our writing using computers. You can read our descriptions on our individual pages.
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What else have we been doing?
August
Recounts
We have started focusing on writing recounts. At first we wrote recounts about personal events, such as the weekend, our morning routine and the weekend. We also wrote recounts about short video clips we had watched. We were learning to use connectives, or puzzle pieces to give our recount structure and interest. |
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Literacy Groups We have started learning some of our common literacy routines. We learnt how to play some literacy games such as sight word bingo, and have already been enjoying our silent reading time. We also began our literacy groups. We experienced some of the centres we will be doing and learnt how we have to manage our time and our behaviour to get the work done. We started our spelling, games, handwriting and shared reading centres. |