Celebrating Diwali

Recently most of the children at our school celebrated Diwali.  Some of these children brought sweets from home and are sharing it with their friends. They loved it!!!!

Poster making - using pic collage

These Year 5 and 6 children are busy making posters on their favourite celebrations

Jaya's poster on Halloween

 

Shreya's poster on Diwali

Welcome to Term 4!

Don't forget to revisit our blog for more updates!!!

Have a look at us!!! We are getting better at our writing!

Writing Time

These children are busy writing a sense poem on Camp stalls. The Year 6's hosted it so the children are sharing their experiences using the five senses.

Developing Oral Language

During ELL lesson, we are using some Kiwiana pictures to develop our oral language as well as improve our descriptive language when describing a Kiwiana icon. 

We have used these two pictures so far. How will you describe these icons?

Welcome to Term 3

In Term 3, we will continue to learn some new strategies to help us with our Reading, Writing, Speaking and listening Skills. Watch the space for more updates.....

Fairy Bread

We did a cloze activity on Fairy bread. Many of us didn't know what fairy bread was or how to make one. So we decided to first write our instructions and then make fairy bread. We had fun eating it and now we are going to try to make it at home and share with our family!!!

The cloze activity that inspired us!!!!

Here are some of the photos during the making of fairy bread

 Our instructions on making fairy bread

Using Verb Story

 What is a verb story?

Verb stories are a skills flow activity so students use all four modalities of language: listening, speaking, writing, and reading. Verb stories help students to focus when listening, and to notice and use correct verb forms. They also help students to retell stories with appropriate scaffolding orally and to write a retelling of the story using correct verb forms.

 This is what we do?

The teacher tells a story and as the teacher talks we write the verbs on the whiteboard, each verb on a new line. Then we retell the story, using the verbs as prompts.  We also write the story and then compare our version with the original. In this way a skills flow is used – we listen, and then speak, and then write, and lastly we compare and notice the language differences.

ELL Writing Time

During ELL, we have learnt what verbs, nouns, adverbs and adjectives are. Now we are using this knowledge to write interesting sentences on winter!!!!

Dictogloss Activity

For the next few weeks in ELL, we are going to do a dictogloss activity.

This is how a dictogloss activity works:

Dictogloss is a co-operative task where groups of two-four students try to recreate a text that the teacher has read to them. At the first reading the students just listen and then they take notes as the text is read twice more. By combining their knowledge the students then try to recreate the written text (not word-for-word) by using full sentences while trying to retain the meaning and form of the original text. Afterwards the students, with their teacher’s help, identify similarities and differences between their text reconstruction and the original text.

A dictogloss requires the students to use all four language modes and it helps the students to notice their own language gaps. It is a useful tool providing a focus on grammar.

Example:

Actual text

Child 1's text

Child 2's text

 

Barrier Games

In ELL, we are learning about Barrier Games. 

In a barrier activity, students work in pairs to complete an information gap activity. Each student has information which the other must obtain in order to complete a task. This may be a map, drawing, table, graph, crossword, text or an actual task using real objects, etc. The students sit back-to-back or hide their work behind a screen so that it cannot be viewed by their partner. They then cooperate by asking and answering questions in order to find the missing information which they then write onto their worksheet. For example, the student with the complete map tells the other student where to place things on his or her map. The student with the incomplete map can ask questions to help place things as precisely as possible. Once completed they can then compare their sheets to check their work. 
This task allows students to practise new vocabulary, new sentence structures, and asking questions. By setting up communication activities like barrier games, students have the opportunity to speak and listen in pairs, rather than risk making mistakes in front of the whole class.

Pheng and Xiaolin

Samson and Rithika

Writing: Learning to stretch our sentences

In writing, we are learning to stretch our sentences. Have a look at the stretch a sentence chart. This chart helps us to add more details to our writing.

Stretch a sentence chart

Example of stretch a sentence by Ronish

Example continued

Writing

A group of students are going to write a story on Diwali. Before they wrote the Diwali story, they brought some artifacts from home which was important to them.They shared it with other students in the group. Once they had shared, they saw a common theme which this artifacts represented. Therefore, they decided to write a story on Diwali. Before the actual retell, the children have done a matching and a sequencing activity on Diwali. Have a look at the photos of our artifacts and the activities.

Artifacts

 Sequencing Activity

 Matching Activity

ELL programme: Developing our vocabulary knowledge