February 2nd, 2016

“Writing with a Purpose at Williamsburg” 

GRADE 4 Room 19 Mrs. Voisin – Written by Ms. Griffiths, Principal

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Lydia, Sandesh, Gracelyn, Marko and Angie from Room 19.

The grade four students in Mrs. Voisin’s class have been working on improving their writing skills with a focus on developing “visualization”.

Angie, described to me that together the class used various picture books and brainstormed creative ways to describe what was happening in the book.  Sandesh said, “The pictures give us ideas to write about.”

While writing, students were asked to focus on conjunctions, strong verbs and adjectives in their writing.  The class was given a learning goal and specific success criteria to help them be successful.  Marko noted that, “success criteria helps us to know how to get a level 4”.   Students were also able to have opportunities for peer editing and teacher conferencing on their writing.

I had the pleasure to read several very good draft selections of writing.  Please have a look at some final copies.

 

Zoom
By Erika H.

I was walking on a street until the ground started to rumble. After I heard some voices … “5, 4, 3, 2, 1,” blast off!” but nothing appeared. It was a starry cold night and the stars were flashing, the leaves were cold. I kept on marching and finally, I came into my gigantic warm house. There was my family waiting for me and then my dad announced “are you ready?” Everyone started to count down. “5, 4, 3, 2, 1 blast off!” The house started to zoom through the sky! I fell on the ground and tasted some muddy hard floor. ‘yuck!” I smelled some smelly gas and some dusty rocket engine. I saw burning fire. The tall oak tree was falling “crash!” people were screaming! I was very excited. “I’m going to the space!” as we zoomed through the dark starry night.

 

Ocean Dreams
By:  Ana.K

A young little boy and furry pet cat were drifting in the middle of the sea.  His cat was meowing with fear.  He was on his squishy bed.Zzzz.  On a dark gloomy night his bed was drifting when suddenly he heard screams. Ahh!  The boy was a bit frightened and he clutched his soft blanket.  He saw a big ship was in the distance.  He could smell the stinky gas coming from the ship.  His woody bedframe was drifting closer to the huge ship as his fuzzy cat was frightened.  The foggy wind kept pushing the boy’s soft bed to the ship.  Swoosh.  He felt the freezing water and it was moving fast.  He heard some echos now the boy was more frightened.  But the bed had stopped moving.  The boy fed his cat some smelly cat food.  When BOOM! The huge ship was right in front of his big brown eyes.  The captain on the ship exclaimed “come aboard , I’ll take you home”.  The frightened boy did not know what to do.  The horn was hooting from the ship as if he was forced to come aboard.  So he went aboard.  And the captain took the boy and his fuzzy cat to their peaceful home.  He was overjoyed and the captain said it was “no problem”.  Maybe the captain will help them in his next dream.

 

The Strange Boy In The Creaky Bed
By: Ryder

One strange day a lonely child was sadly drifting out to sea on a creaky wooden bed . He was very scared because he saw 3 ginormous sharks slicing through the cold empty sea. eventually the sharks left   because they smelt blood. There was a partly abandoned ship out far. “huh”. He could hear people screaming an S.O.S. and then he heard a loud purring sound ? He quickly turned around and saw his soft, fluffy, soaking cat sitting at the end of the bed. “Stow away” he muttered to himself. Later that evening the dark smoke started surrounding him he decided to go to sleep. When he woke up the cold polluted smoky air was filling up his lungs! He gasped and wheezed for air then a loud was yelled “THOMAS WAKE UP!” Thomas awoke and saw his mom? His mom eventually explained that it was all a dream. His blood turned cold and  he had a frightened look seared on his face. He later realized that he watched a horror movie that he wasn’t supposed to watch “oops” he said and let it pass and went to bed. Later that night his mom wondered if it really was a dream and if it wasn’t he was in trouble.