Tying in with our project on health and fitness for life, we have been learning a lot about healthy eating recently. As a treat, we got to make fruit salad on Friday. We used a variety of fruit to prepare the salad, and then added orange juice before digging in! Delicious! Afterwards, we took the chance to revise procedural writing by writing out the recipe.
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Recently, we learned about a new type of poetry: kennings. Kennings are like riddles. They describe something without ever saying what it is. Each line of the poem is made of a two-word phrase. The words are joined by a hyphen.The phrase is made up of noun + verb (–ing or –er). The two-word format for a kenning relates to the Old Norse tradition of naming things like weapons, e.g. Skull-Splitter or Blood-Taker. Kennings came into our language via the Anglo-Saxon and Norse cultures. These people came from what is now Scandinavia and northern Germany. The word ‘kenning’ derives from the Old Norse word ‘kenna eitt við’, which means ‘to express a thing in terms of another’.
We even use kennings in everyday language! Examples include sky-scraper and tear-jerker. Poetic devices like alliteration can be used in kennings. They’re best when you read them out loud so you can imagine the thing being described. We wrote kennings about ourselves and then tried to guess who had written them! Can you guess from reading below? Well done to Isabella and Phoenix for winning the Write-a-Book competition from fourth class with their books 'The Hulaballoos Roam Free' and 'The Gummy Bear Mystery'. They enjoyed the awards ceremony at the Inn at Dromoland last week, where they were presented with prizes. Well done also to the other winners from Knockanean and everyone who took part. Congratulations on a great achievement!
Having learned about one genre of persuasive writing, advertising, in the last few weeks we've moved on to discuss speeches and debates. We worked to prepare convincing arguments with strong introductions and conclusions to persuade our friends of our perspectives. We used techniques like rhetorical questions, statistics and emotive language to strengthen our arguments. We worked both individually and in groups to argue the following motions:
- Homework should be banned. - Children should be paid for going to school. - Children should only be allowed to play computer games for two hours per week. We learned that sometimes you have to put your personal feelings on a topic aside to present the best argument. Well done everyone! What would you do if you had wings? Recently, fourth class read the poem 'If I Had Wings' by Pie Corbett, which you can see below, and enjoyed examining the imaginative language and the metaphors used. We then composed and finally typed our own poems with the same title - If I Had Wings. Have a read below and see what you think!
If I Had Wings By Pie Corbett If I had wings I would touch the fingertips of clouds And glide on the winds breath. If I had wings I would taste a chunk of the sun As hot as peppered curry. If I had wings I would listen to the clouds of sheep bleat that graze on the blue. If I had wings I would breathe deep and sniff The scent of raindrops. If I had wings I would gaze at the people Who cling to the earth. If I had wings I would dream of swimming the deserts and walking the seas. Our latest writing genre was persuasive writing, and we started with a focus on a type of persuasive writing that's familiar to us all: advertising!
Advertisements are a special type of persuasive writing. Their purpose is to sell a product or a service. They do this by aiming at a particular type of customer. They use carefully chosen, positive language. They appeal to some aspect of the reader’s personality. How do they attract your attention and stick in your memory?
Having watched LOTS of TV advertisements, examined paper adverts and discussed our favourites, we brainstormed what we felt made a good ad. Finally, we designed our own adverts for a range of products (holidays, dog hotels, new cereal, food, games consoles etc.). Have a look! They'll be on display in our classroom. Every year, the Clare Education Centre holds the Write-a-Book competition. It encourages children of all ages from primary schools all around the county to write their own book, illustrate it and present it. A panel of judges will judge the books and a special awards ceremony will be held in May to reward the winners.
This year, we all participated in Write-a-Book. It was a big project, and our masterpieces went through lots of planning, drafting and redrafting before being typed and put together into our very own books. Ms. Kirby was amazed at the wonderfully descriptive, suspense-filled, varied and creative stories that everyone produced. While the books are now submitted for judging, they will be returned to the school later in the year, when you are welcome to come in and have a browse! As we continue to learn about writing genres, our most recent focus was explanation writing. The purpose of explanation writing is to explain the processes involved in something, or to explain how something works. Explanations answer questions that usually start with “how” or “why”. The structure of an explanation is very important. It has a logical sequence, uses a cause/effect relationship and is written in order. Explanations are written in the present tense and verbs are usually in the third person. An explanation is structured with an introduction, series of explanatory statements and conclusion to sum up. Having read lots of explanations and written some explanations together, everyone then chose their own “how” or “why” questions to answer. We had a great selection of questions… This is just a selection:
March is the perfect month to base our learning around the beautiful yellow daffodil. The flowers are blooming in gardens and parks everywhere heralding the arrival of Spring, and Daffodil Day in aid of the Irish Cancer Society is on this coming Friday March 27th. In English, we read the classic poem 'Daffodils', by William Wordsworth. It was inspired Wordsworth seeing 'a host of golden daffodils' in a park in 1802. How old does that make this poem? 213 years!! We analysed the language, personification, description and some of the old English words that we don't use today, such as jocund. Have a read of the poem below and see what you think: Daffodils BY William Wordsworth I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. Inspired by the poem, we also created some daffodil artwork. We made pinwheels with coloured paper, then cut and folded and attached the petals using a split pin. We painted and outlined a colourful background - they turned out lovely and really brighten up our classroom. What do you think? Stop by our classroom and have a look!
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Ms. Kirby's 4th ClassWelcome to our blog! Have a look and see some of the things we get up to, using the categories below to help you navigate different subjects. Categories
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June 2015
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