Figuratively speaking....

This week, Kakapo have been working on Figurative Language.

We have been doing a few different tasks focusing on our learning about metaphors, similes, personification, alliteration, onomatopoeia and idioms. 

Powerful Paragraphs 💥

In our literacy warm up's we have been looking at an image.  We use the photo to write a moment in time OR describe what we see.

We look carefully at the photo using our senses.  We look with our maths eyes.  We look with our imaginations.  We look at the small details.

We have ten minutes to write.  After we have written we have time to check back over our paragraph.  We share and discuss.  We share the figurative language we have heard.  As an audience could we imagine what was happening? Were we hooked? Did we want to know more...

We then have some time to rework our paragraphs.  We are trying to improve our paragraphs by checking for language features and organisation, spelling, punctuation. Do we have different sentence types to add interest?  

We share with a buddy and check again.  

Idioms 📕

In our contracts there has been a different idiom.  Without googling or asking someone we need to explain what we think the idiom means.  Our first idiom was "never judge a book by its cover"  

Poetry Bus Stop 🚌

We had five different poems spread around the room and a information chart of figurative language. We read the poem and discussed as a group what language features we found in the poem.  Then, Mrs Cutler would yell "BUS STOP" which means we moved to a different poem.  We could go to whatever poem we wanted to each time we moved.  This was a fun way of identifying language features.  

Check out our individual blogs to see some of our Powerful Paragraph examples! 

Kakapo Confessions

We read William Carlos Williams poem "This is Just to Say" about him admitting, and apologising for eating plums without asking. We discussed what it means to admit or confess something.

Kakapo kids brainstormed their confessions and ideas.

Using a similar format to Williams poem, children wrote their own poems.  We spent a lot of time re-working our writing to ensure we had interesting words that created a picture for the reader.  For example - rather than using 'yummy' to describe a chocolate, 'gooey' was used.

When it came to publishing our poems the criteria was to use a background image that related to their confession. The font had to be readable - so we had to think about the background picture.  Can the words be seen with a different colour, or was a bolder font or highlighting needed?

Children worked on a shared document to publish their poems.  There was a few challenges around this (such as accidental deletion of slides) but these were ironed out quickly luckily.

We really enjoyed reading each others poems.  We have given each other feedback and have reflected on things we may change if we did this task again.

You can read the poems by checking out the individual blogs.  We'd love to hear what you think so please leave a comment!

Monsters vs Aliens

This morning Tui class had a mystery activity to complete.

1. Children were put into pairs

2. Pairs were split, one person to one side of the room, the second  person to the other.

3. The class were told their activity was a surprise so they had to stay on their side of the room and ensure their backs were to their buddies and their work was hidden.

Have I given you a hint about what the lesson is about?  The children were a little scared as to what was going on but excited too!

4. I took each group outside separately and gave instructions.  They were designing a creature however they liked, using whatever colours, shapes and sizes they wanted.  They had to think about what features they would want included.  One group was told to draw an alien, the other told to draw a monster.

5. The groups went and created their assigned creature.

Then.... 

6. Once the pictures were finished, children were told they had to write a title "How to draw my..." 

7. Children then had to write instructions on how to draw their creature.  They had to think about how they drew it.  Instructions would need to be clear and detailed.  

How would we know we had been successful? 

8. After we had completed our instructions, the pairs were reunited and swapped books.  Each person was given a new piece of paper.  Following their buddies instructions they drew the creature.

9. Once completed, the buddies presented their pictures.  Did they look the same as the original creation? 

Why? Why Not? 

10. Reflection time! Were we successful? Why? Why not? What would we change? What might have worked better if we were to do it again? Are instructions important? Why? 

This was a fun activity with some awesome learning.  Check out some of our examples below!

   

🌟Matariki 🌟

Matariki is a cluster of seven stars within the Taurus constellation (it is really made up of several hundred stars but we can only see seven with the naked eye). In New Zealand it is also known as the Maori New Year.  The word Matariki translates as 'little eyes' (mata riki) or 'eyes of God' (Mata ariki).

We have speeches coming up so we have been learning about persuasive writing.  We decided a great topic would be "Matariki should have its on public holiday". Once we decided our position we started brainstorming.  Everyone had the same opinon that we SHOULD have a public holiday for Matariki.  We feel that Matariki is an important celebration that is unique to NZ.  We thought that people should have the time to get up to view Matariki, share stories and food, dance and celebrate together. We celebrate many holidays that are not as relevant to NZ like Guy Fawkes so why not have another day for Matariki.

We have published our letters and are sending them on to try and persuade the government to our way of thinking! Watch this space 😋