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Planning ongoing and N is planning ongoing on a Dubbo run independantly tomorrow.
I’ve finally got a more cohesive plan of what and how I will teach English to my mixed grade classroom. I went into this term with less planning than I have ever started a year before. Mostly as a function of a lack of handover from the previous year’s staff member but coupled with a change of system and a whole host of familiar things relabeled with new acronyms. Anyway We are going to do narratives, persuasive texts in two forms and letter writing as our overarching English and reading themes.
With this in mind, I spent the morning giggling and crying my way through famous letters from history some familiar, most not, searching for excellent examples to use in reading and writing. My intent is for the class to compose real letters to their grandparents/elders and actually post them (republished post marking). I settled on a few examples, most notably the best cover letter ever and one of the great mic drops of history. but Ill need more than one a week through the term so the hunt continues. For narratives I’ll be using what is available of the Pixar/Khan Academy story writing course, supplemented by reading a class set of YA Fic fantasy novels in class.
I’m struggling to find really impressively good examples of the most hated format in writing, the five paragraph essay. But I’m not giving up yet and we will be making print ads as a second persuasive text type. For ads at least I have a mountain of very good examples.
L and I had a play with Dreamscope this morning. It has been a while and it has definitely improved and increased the number of filters since my last try. While impressed by the tech I haven’t yet managed to produce a really strikingly good piece. Inserting images into the post is being problematic this evening.
Art is a major part of a good maths curriculum.
We began using compasses on Thursday. Beginning Tuesday we will be using them and protractors to produce fraction diagrams and building from here.
What about op-ed columns for persuasive writing?
Bound to be better than the crap in most writing and teacher handbooks.
Or letters to the editor.