Brian Falkner Visit - What if?

Today the Year 5 and 6 students were lucky enough to have a visit from world famous Kiwi author Brian Falkner. He told many inspiring stories about his work and shared with us some of the amazing books he has written. Check out his website for more information about his work and books here.

One of the ideas he gave us was that sometimes it's a struggle to come up with ideas for writing a story. He said we should try using the saying 'What if?'

For this post you can try the what if challenge. You should try to include A.5 different what ifs or B. link them together. Here is my example A. :

1. What if - I was given one million dollars and had to think of all the ways I would use it.
2. What if - I built a flying space suit and soared into space to discover new life forms.
3. What if - my dogs started talking to me in posh voices and were actually undercover scientists.
4. What if - we could control robotic machines with only our brains.
5. What if - everything were a dream.

Example B.:

1. What if - I walked into the classroom early one morning to find the desks were piled up to the ceiling.
2. What if - an army of ants had moved the desks and it had become their new kingdom.
3. What if - I decided to fight back with an android fly spray army and Room 18 became a war zone.
4. What if - the ant King asked for a truce and I agreed and I decided to become part of the ant kingdom and we began expanding all across Balmoral School.
5. What if - we succeeded and the ant King and I became the new rulers of New Zealand.

Now it's your turn! Please read other peoples work and make a comment about it.

Bunyip Publishing

Amazing Writing

In Room 18 this term we have learnt about character descriptions. We know that it is very important that our audience is able to see the story in their mind. We used an exemplar for Level 4 called 'A Kid Called John' - you can view the sample used as a model here. Not all children are publishing their work, but all stories are a great example of using explicit description of a characters physical appearance and personality traits.

Creative Writing

Creative writing is an art. Like any good artist you take words, treat them like clay or paint and mould them into interesting pieces. Your audience should see your story like they would a picture or film.

You will show what you know about adjectives, simile, metaphor and personification.

This challenge consists of more than one part, but you can chose to do all of them or just one. You chose.

Part One:

Using the activity you have done in class about explaining what it is like to be in a a running race, recreate that story here on our blog or take another one and explain using sight, sound, and feelings. An example could be a swimming race, bike jump, skateboard trick, or any other physical challenge.

Part Two:

Adjectives. Like the task in class, you are to chose a noun or pronoun to begin with and then add in adjectives and descriptive features to make it really interesting. Check out the ones on display in our room for insipration. Some starting nouns may be - house, door, field, window, winter, trees, flower or bicycle.

Part Three:

Study the picture below and use these three things. Make one true statement, one descriptive statement and one thought statement. We have done this in class also, see the activity on our wall for inspiration. I will do a quick example for you.

True: The woman's head dress is multicoloured.
Descriptive: One thousand dark memories show in her eyes and haunt her, like lost dreams that she cannot quite remember.
Thought: I am, I can, I will.

Use this picture:





















Write on Microsoft Word or Google Apps first. Have a parent check it, make sure there are NO spelling errors and your punctuation is correct. Then copy and paste it into our blog posting area.

Have fun and looking forward to seeing what you have in store for us.