Our Year 6 students have been really impressing everyone with their enthusiasm for writing and this has been very evident in their most recent unit; First Person Stories with a Moral.
The goal of this unit was for students to know how to weave a moral into a narrative whilst portraying characters through action and dialogue. The moral we chose was ‘be careful what you wish for, as it may come true’. In addition to this, the aim was for students to be able to skillfully balance action, dialogue and description while writing in the first person.
Throughout the unit, students got to grips with the features of this type of writing by looking at the importance of cohesion across a text along with the use of adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions. Students also learned how to use various forms of figurative language to describe characters and settings to effectively engage the reader.
As in all our units of learning, the students had numerous opportunities to explore a range of interesting and complex vocabulary. Often students would find antonyms and synonyms for new words and rate them on a ‘strength of meaning’ scale.
Model texts and examples of moral use played a very important role in students’ learning. In particular, they scaffolded students in developing a deep understanding of some key aspects such as creating mood and atmosphere. For example, we practised using ‘Inside, Outside’ sentences in order to convey an atmosphere and enhance imagery.
The students and teachers were very impressed with the final pieces. Belief in themselves as writers is very evident as is the continual increasing quality of their writing. We are looking forward to further learning in writing for our students across Term 3.
Alan McCarthy
Primary Principal