Literacy Day and music options

Today was a full on literacy day with students coming and going to music options from 12 o'clock onwards. Mr Stafford's extras who came in for the afternoon were very well-behaved.

First up was Spelling Bingo, followed by 40 minutes where students finished off their responses to the newspaper editorials. The focus was on the use of rhetorical questions in the letters to the editor.

We then focused on personification. Personification involves giving human qualities to objects or animals. The work is in their Writer's Notebooks. We will be sharing the purpose and some of the aspects of this literacy book tomorrow in assembly.

Distant waves hushing...

The tower clock coughed, whirred and struck three.

The tail light blinked three times and died.

After recess and daily phys.ed students all read their pages of  the fable,The Lorax, to recreate the story a second time. The students were asked to concentrate on their posture and their delivery, paying attention to expression and clarity. There were some sterling performances and a few average ones as well. After this students completed their what, who, why where, and when notes in their Writer's Notebook. This will help them do their book reports. (synopsis, character study, and messages) Much more depth will be required when we do the Storm Boy film report after Easter.

We then looked at an example of a  synopsis (summary of the story) and discussed characterisation (physical description, personality, motives) and the central messages of the original Dr Seuss version of The Lorax. Student only had to choose only one of the two main characters to concentrate on. Some are doing The Lorax and others are looking the Once-ler.  Those students who fully applied themselves and didn't have a lot of music options should have finished the first drafts. They have literacy homework tonight to neatly write up or publish these into their presentation A3 card folded into booklet form. The second half of the card is for after we have viewed the adaption we are going to see at the cinema tomorrow.  Students will be examining  the similarities and differences between this Hollywood production and the original book by Dr. Seuss after the Easter break. We were going to do our last half an hour of t-ball but many students were out for music options, and I also decided that some of them hadn't really pulled their weight in the afternoon.

We also read the review of the latest adaption of The Lorax  by David and Margaret on the At the Movies website and then watched the trailer.

Assessment rubric each student will be given tomorrow. Assignment due one week following Easter.

By the way, here is a rebuttal of The Lorax called  The Truax sponsored by the logging industry and published by the National Wood Flooring Manufacturers' Association, which is worth looking at:
http://www.stuartflooring.com/downloads/truax.pdf