Yesterday I had the Blues!

AO: LANGUAGE FEATURES-Use a range of language features appropriately, showing an increasing understanding of their effects.
INDICATORS:uses a range of oral, written, and visual features to create meaning and effect and to sustain interest & uses a range of vocabulary to communicate precise meaning

During POWERwriting last year, Saxon wrote a short piece about being the colour black. It then made me look around the class and try to match colours to everyone!

It made me also think that some days are green days, some days are yellow days and some days are blue days.

What are the sorts of feelings that are linked to colours? (Today I'm feeling hollow after the Black Caps loss, I'm wearing black, but feeling grey)

Are we certain colours more often? When are we others?

After reading 

The Frame
Can you choose a different colour and font to extend the story line further?

What's he building?

AO: PURPOSES AND AUDIENCES
Show an increasing understanding of how to shape texts for different purposes and audiences.
INDICATORS:constructs texts that show an awareness of purpose and audience through deliberate choice of content, language, and text form
conveys and sustains personal voice where appropriate.

Whats he building? by American Musician Tom Waits is a very strange song. The listener/reader (& viewer-if you include the video) is made to feel uneasy. Tom Waits does this in many different ways. 

We noticed:

• Repetition 'Whats he building in there, what the hell is he building in there?'
• Unusual rhyme sequences-Sometimes 4 stanzas ABCB, sometimes a couplet AA, sometimes free verse.
• Uneasy content-A neighbour spying on a strange man next door.

 Click here for the lyrics

 

A Terrible, Horrible No Good, Very Bad Day

One of the earliest books I remember being read to me at Paroa School was Judith Voirst's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible No Good, Very Bad Day. 

We have had a go at writing our own. When we looked at the Literacy of the book we decided that these were the things we needed to do to sound like Judith Viorst.

• Very long sentences
• A short sentence that gets repeated
• Repetition
• Not much description (but LOTS of events!)
• Personal past tense

Our Examples

Finns

Skye's

POWERwriting!

Today's POWERwriting topics are:

Invitation to notice

Writer's WORDshop #1

If this were a movie, I'd probably have to kill off my father in the first scene.

                                    From 'Defining Dulcie' (2006) by Paul Acampora, 

The Rules of Summer

Speaking, Reading & Presenting Purposes and audiences-Shows an increasing understanding of how to shape texts for different purposes and audiences.
Indicators-constructs texts that show an awareness of purpose and audience through deliberate choice of content, language, and text form

This beautiful book by Shaun Tan is a simple story of two boys and the kind of 'rules' that exist. These rules are the sorts of strange rules that exist between friends.Like: Step on a Crack, Marry a Rat. Rules that may make absolutely no sense to someone looking in from the outside

Before Reading

What strange rules can you remember growing up?

After Reading

What were the sorts of things you noticed?

What was the literacy of story? A list? A poem? Can they be both?
What are the sorts things that clash between illustration and text?

We cant illustrate to extend our story-line so how can we get that strange dreamlike quality into our 'Rules'

Examples

Bethany and Novas ROS

Finns example

Marz, Baily & Zane's

Read more about the Rules of Summer