Just Looking

Here is the link for Batman

Grade 6 students,

You are going to be retelling a famous myth using a comic strip style. We have read some myths and now we are going to do some research on comic strips.

Stage one.

What do we want to know?

1. Advice on drawing cartoons
2. Advice on using captions and speech bubbles
3. How to decide what parts of your story to focus on?
4. Anything else, add your own questions.

Stage 2 Research

You need to find websites and links that you think will help people reading your blog learn more about the questions above. There are different ways to store your links.

Stage 3

Write your blog and make sure you introduce and write about the link so people know what they are going to and what you want them to think about.

For example,

One of the best examples of how to tell stories well and get people to think using comic strips is of course Calvin & Hobbes. The drawings are simple but the characters are easy to recognise and have enough personality for us to care about them. The stories are always, I think, just told through clever use of dialogue and drawings. Here is a link that shows one fan’s appreciation of Calvin & Hobbes, he publishes, explains and analyses some of his favourite examples.

You should create an individual blog entry about comic strips with at least three well introduced links for your class to follow.

Have fun….Mr C

Click here for test

Click here for the YIS website.

7C,

Do you think that the fact we have a new US president will make a difference?

Write a blog post about if you think Barack Obama will make a positive difference to the world or not? Explain your reasons. Click here for some information.

Mr C

Good morning grade 7.

Today and for HW you are going to create a research entry on your edublog. A research entry will provide some information about a topic, links people can use to find out more and maybe a few of your opinions about why this is an important topic.

Stage 1. Group Research.

Your group will be given a topic. First, in your group, you will use a couple of computers to find at least four websites that provide interesting and useful information about your topic. You should e-mail the addresses of these websites to everyone in the group.

Stage 2. Writing an individual research blog post

Then you will write a blog entry that will guide your reader through the links you have chosen. You will provide the links as part of this blog entry so your reader can read for themselves about the topic but you must explain to the reader about the topic yourself. In your own words give an overview of the topic, subject, person or journey.

Here is one I have started but not completed as an example.

Difficult Journeys

A film that powerfully describes a difficult journey is ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’ directed by Philip Noyce, adapted from a novel by Doris Pilkington Garimara. This is a true story about three mixed race girls who have been separated from their aboriginal mother in order to train them to be domistic maids by the Australian authorities.

If I was completing this one I would add, some links about the real girls that the film is about, more information about the original story and about why young girls were so cruely taken from their families. I might add a video link to a clip from the film as well.

Hello grade 6,

Friday’s Menu

1. Finishing off ‘Brian’s Diary’

Your first job today is to make sure that you get your ‘Brian’s Diary’ assessment sheet filled in carefully. Remember to read the sheet carefully to decide what levels you are. You also need to get a peer comment filled in. That is when someone else in the class makes a comment about your work.

2. Updating your Blog

Today I want you to write a blog entry about Middle School so far and try to link it to the ideas of survival we talked about back at the start of the year. Look back in your norebooks. What qualities did we say we needed to do well in school? How well are you demonstrating those qualities? Are there things you need to get better at?

e.g. organised, be responsible, be self-directed

If you have read another book recently you can enter a blog about that.

Remember your blog for English should be.

Interesting

Full of opinions and ideas

A true reflection of your views

Well written with good spelling

Thanks,

Mr C

1. First thing I want you to do is to look at your essays and find all the contractions (underline them or highlight them)

e.g.

don’t –> do not

wont –> will not

shouldn’t –> should not

Then I want you to find a way of remembering to avoid using contractions in any formal writing again.

2. Then I want you to cut and paste the essay onto your blog. You should categorise it (English Portfolio Work).

Then you should add a comment yourself about what you have learnt from writing this essay. You may wish to included some of my advice but you do not have to. Up to you.

3. Then I want you to watch this video.

After that read the comments. Some of the ideas might be hard for you to understand in the video, but the comments will help you.

Then I want you to write a blog on this topic

Schools, creativity and freedom.

You can write anything you like on this topic but if you want some help think of these questions.

Do you agree that schools kill creativity? (This is what Mina in Skellig and the man in the video think)

Do you think YIS does a good job of encouraging your creativity?

Do you think schools should focus on creativity?

Remember you will be choosing some of your blog entries to be assessed later this year. Assessment criteria will be posted soon but just try to write as well and as thoughfully as you can.

Thank you….Mr C

YISers,

Your blogs will have different purposes, they will be:

a way for you to share your ideas about books you have read and films you have watched

a way for you to develop your knowledge and enjoyment of different types of literature, art and films and for your teachers and classmates to help you become more skilled at writing about these things

a place for you to showcase the essays, stories, films and projects that you create at school

Your blog is your learning space, please use it well….Mr C

The more I teach, the less I teach. The longer I want students to remember something the more I really try to let students work things out for themselves. Two of my current classes (hello grades 7 and 8 at Yokohama International School) are working on different writing assignments. One class are writing magazine articles and the other essays about literature. These are different types of tasks for different audiences but there are certain things that you always need to remember.

You need to start well.

You need to think about the audience and purpose of the task.

You need a plan.

You need to use the right ‘register’

But here I go giving a whole lot of instructions. I remember being told by teachers, plan, plan , plan, you need to have a plan. I liked writing (at least in secondary school I did) but I hated being restricted to the teacher’s plan. I used to start planning, then run out of steam, then just start. So now I often get my students to just start, just start writing and then as we are going along we look at planning and topic sentences and thesis statements and all that stuff.

You can of course find loads of advice about writing essays online. Essays are still the thing that most students find themselves doing for most of their education, therefore it is no surprise that it is easy to find a lot of advice on-line.

Click here for a link to lots of links with lots of good advice:

There is a really good one.

It has a really nice clickable way of looking at the different elements that put together create an effective essay. You may need to install a plugin called shockwave to view this but I got it to work eventually.

I will add some writing plans and frames that my students created soon.

cc