Weekly Update:

Grade 5:

'The Garage Sale Mystery'; after reading chapter 1 of the short story the class completed a chart in which they identified how the elements of a mystery story appeared in the text. Moving on the group began to consider why we organize longer stories in to chapters and then plan, using a story map, their own chapter 1. This should be completed for next Tuesday as homework. 

On Wednesday we applied this to 'The Dirty Dog' short story.

Later in the week we discussed an element we had discovered while reading 'The Garage Sale Mystery', PERSONIFICATION. 

On Friday we read further in CORALINE and the class worked on how we can look at characters in a novel in greater detail. 


Grade 6:

During our literacy lesson this week we read and discussed an article surrounding babysitting. We began by working on a word web based on our predictions and went on to talk about how we made these predictions using key elements in the text such as images and sub-headings. After this the class looked at how we vary the language and layout of an article dependant on who the target audience is by designing babysitting ads from the point of view a parent or someone looking for babysitting work.

On Wednesday grade 6 focused on SUMMARIZING IMPORTANT INFORMATION. Our objective was to look at how we can identify what we really need in a piece of text, pick out the most important information and cut down the text in to facts we can actually remember. We did this by looking at the EVER so pretty BLOB FISH!

On Thursday we focused on DICTIONARY SKILLS, looking at guide words and how we use them to speed up looking for words. 

On Friday 'The Rats of Nimh' got really exciting! we met the great owl in the forest and started to learn more of Jonathan Frisby.

Grade 7:

The focus at the start of the week for grade 7 was to examine the main purposes for writing and look in greater detail at EXPOSITORY methods. We linked this directly to Social Studies with each student having to produce and expository answer to the question 'Why was Canada so appealing to early explorers?'

Later in the week we examined ANNE FRANK and her relationship with her parents in greater detail.

Grade 8:

After reading and discussing a selection of poems and quotes surrounding the topic of GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP the grade 8 class looked at the development and range of poetry by examining the work of EMINEM and SPIKE MILLIGANS, 'The land of the Bumbly Boo'. Each student then had to attempt to write their own quote.... Simply put, they were OUTSTANDING! 

On Thursday we began to explore NARRATIVE VIEWPOINT, 1st and 3rd person and also multiple viewpoint use. This led to the group looking at film work by Steven Speilburg. 

Fridays lesson saw the class delve deeper in to 'The Lord of the Flies' as we saw JACK and RALPH finally start to come head to head as the signal fire went out!