SLJ 2020-2021: Your Comments Count

 Hi everyone! Welcome to another post, today I will be doing an activity for the Summer Learning Journey. For this activity, we had to do a quality comment on a student's blog and then post it on our blog. I decided to comment on a blog from Waikowhai Primary School in the Ako Hiko Cluster. After commenting we had to describe why our comment is a quality comment.

"Hi, Brittany! My name is Lyan and I from Hornby High School from the Uru Mānuka Cluster. I loved reading your blog post, it was very inspiring to read your chorus. The chorus was written very well and I especially liked it when you mentioned the subject of standing tall, I found it very motivating. When reading your chorus it reminded me of a poem I have read recently, which was called Stand Tall was written by Chrissie Pinney. 

Next time if you ever do this again, I would suggest decorating the picture up a bit so that it could attract more viewers to look at your blog. Other than that your blog post was a pleasure to read. I hope to see more quality blog posts in that future! Have a great day!"

Positive: For the comment, I started with a  greeting and then I talked about the blog post and talked about what It thought about the blog post. I also complimented her on how she had written her chorus. 

Thoughtful: I made a connection from the chorus to a poem I have heard about before.

Helpful: I gave her feedback on how I thought about her blogpost and gave her something she could improve on in future blogposts. 

Summer Learning Journey 2019-2020 • Week 3 • Day 1 - Activity 1

Hi everyone! Welcome to another post, I am now doing activities from week 3 of the Summer Learning Journey. Please enjoy!

WEEK 3: EXPERIMENTS AND GADGETS

DAY 1: DRIVING DIGITAL INNOVATION

Activity 1: THE WORLDWIDE WEB

You may not have heard of Tim Berners-Lee but this man completely changed the world for us when he invented the World Wide Web (otherwise known as the 'www'). All of the information on the internet is stored and accessed on the web.

TimBL, as he is known, also created the first-ever website. We all spend a lot of time looking at websites, don't we? One of my favourite websites is the Te Are site. It uses it when I am creating lessons for student or working on assignments for school. Are there websites that are particularly helpful for your learning?

For this activity, we had to take screenshots of four different websites that we find helpful for our learning. These websites can be what we use in class or ones that we use at home.

Summer Learning Journey 2019-2020 • Week 2 • Day 2 - Activity 3

Hi everyone! Welcome back to another post, as you can see from the title, I am doing another activity for the Summer Learning Journey. Enjoy!

Activity 3: "I HAVE A DREAM"

Martin Luther King Jr was a Christian minister in the United States of America (USA) in the 1950s and 1960s. He spent much of his life fighting for equality (equal rights) for people of colour. At the time, there were laws that kept black and white people separated - they went to different parts of a bus and ate in different areas of a restaurant. This was called 'segregation.'

Dr King did not agree with these laws and he led many protests against them. He was joined in his protests by many people, including an African American woman named Rosa Parks. In 1955m Rosa boarded a bus in Alabama (USA) and when the bus filled up with people, he refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. You can read about this famous incident here and watch a video about Rosa Parks here.

The brave actions of people like Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks were instrumental in changing the way that African American (people of colour) were treated in the United States.

For this activity, we had to consider the problem that black men and women faced in America at this time. With that, we had to describe the problem, what Rosa Parks do about the problem an how the other people reacted to what she did.

Why?

Hi everyone! Welcome to another post today we are gonna learn why we need to ask questions after reading a text or a story. For example, if you have read the story about the little red riding hood and if you want to know more about the story. What would you do?

Answer: Ask questions
Why? - Asking a question about the story lets you learn more about the story, its characters, moral of story and the setting. It can also help you build up better understanding.

Example:
Why did the wolf disguise as little red riding hood's grandma?

Ans - Because the wolf was hungry.

But of course, you can add to that answer by saying 'Because the wolf didn't want little red riding hood to know he was a wolf'.

Now that we have learned about that, let's learn about four different types of questions/answers.

Here is the story I will be using:

Sally was born in Sydney and had lived there all her life. Tomorrow, Sally and her family were leaving to live in Oman where Sally's Dad had a new job. Sally didn't want to go. She would be leaving behind her best friend Bella, the water polo team she had played on for the last three years, and the beautiful house she had grown in. To top it all off, it was Sally's birthday next week. She was turning eleven. She had wanted to spend her birthday with her friends, not in a new place where she didn't know anyone. 

1. The Right There Question - Highlight

The right their question is a question where you can find the answer to in the text. This means you can just literally find the answer there, you don't have to think! Here is a question.

Q - Where were Sally and her family moving to?

A - Oman, You could clearly see it in the story.

2.  The 'Think and Search' question - Highlight 

The think and search question means the answer is in the text but you have to look for the answer, in different parts of the story,

Q - Had Sally always lived in the same house?

A - Yes, you need to look around the first sentences to find it.

3. The 'Author and Me' question (Author - Highlight)

The answer is not in the story. You have to sue your own background knowledge and what the author had told you in order to come up with the answer.

Q - How did sally feel about spending her birthday in Oman?.

A -  She felt sad and mad at the same time, it says that she wanted to spend her birthday with her friends.

4. On My own

The answer is not in the text. You could even come up with an answer without reading the story. You only need to use your own background knowledge. This one is the easiest because you just answer it on your own.

How can we successfully ask questions?

•  Read a sentence and ask a question about what we have read.
• Read a sentence and answer a question about what we have read. 
• Read a paragraph and ask a question about the main idea in the paragraph.
• Read a paragraph and ask a question about the main character in the paragraph.
• Give evidence from the text to justify asking the question. 
• Give evidence from the text to justify answers to a question.