Term 3 / Week 7: Learning Project: Active citizenship

We chose the theme of 'active citizenship' for this term at CNLC largely because there is a Federal election in September and some students will be actively exercising their right (and responsibility) to vote for politicians and political parties to represent us in the two Houses of Parliament: the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Being a citizen is not just about getting Citizenship

Let's review some of the examples of active citizenship that we discussed a few weeks ago. As you can see in the photo below, we came up with a wide range of ways we can be active citizens in our community. And there was one more point which we added after this photo was taken - we called it 'doing an act of honesty' or doing the 'right thing' (like, returning a wallet found on the street to its rightful owner - with all the money still in it!)

Some of the ways we can be active citizens - 7 August, 2013

So if you're going to vote in the Federal election, you should take this responsibility seriously. (Heaven knows, there are many people who don't!)

It's a good idea to make sure that:

1. you know who you want to vote for; and
2. you vote correctly (formally) so that you're vote counts.

Our Learning Project - write a report about an active citizen

This is an opportunity to find out information about a well-known person who has contributed something special to public life in Australia. Hopefully, you will find more than one source of information and locate a photo of the person to include in your report.

An important part of this project is sharing your work with other students in class. You can use a few Powerpoint slides to help you tell their story.

A great place to start is the Gallery of Australian Biographies. Here you can find information about people such as:

• Waleed Aly
• Trish Broadbridge
• Tan Le (a TV program has been made about her)
• Michael Long
• Jimmy Pham
• Mandaway Yunupingu
• Fred Hollows

You may complete your plan on the worksheet provided and write your full report in your Journal or as a blog post in kidblog.

Results of our Two Party Preferred Count

You can view our short report and a few photos from last week at Sue Phan's blog post (you'll need to log in to view it) and watch the video explaining how the votes are counted here.

Did you miss.... in Week 7?

• This week we listened to a news report Garden in the Clouds from BBC Learning English Words in the News
• Here is the worksheet: Reported Speech Explanations and Practice for you to print and complete. When you are finished you can check your answers - on pages 3 and 4. 

Term 3 / Week 5 - 6: Write a short report

It's time to practice writing a short report of an event that occurred recently or something that you viewed on TV. You can view it several times to collect the details that are important to the report.
Use this template for writing a News Report to write notes about:

• the background to the event
• when and where the event took place
• who was involved
• what the result was

Then organise your ideas by writing the information in sentences in the three paragraphs below.

Here is a short video news report which we can write up as a report. And here is a humpback whale.

Humpback whale from wikipedia

You might also need to use the following words: 'yacht' and 'Moreton Bay'.

Here is a possible News report (answer sheet) about the experience with the Humpback whale.

Dictation: New citizens will vote for the first time

This dictation is a little different to others we have done this year. Listen to the sentences and try to write as much as you remember. But this time, you don't have to write exactly what you hear as long as the meaning is similar. The main thing is that your sentences are grammatically correct and they make sense - the reader can understand the meaning.

Did you miss.... in Week 5 and 6? 

• Here is the News item we read last Friday: Small town a new horizon for 19 citizens. The last two pages have some possible answers - you can write different sentences - just check spelling, grammar and punctuation are correct. Thanks to Jane Lucas for adapting the text and developing the reading tasks.
• Practice writing notes for work - the first page of this worksheet has space for you to summarise the notes using dot points - the second page has the ANSWERS. Thanks to Sophie for her answers.
• The second news report is: Man impaled through head on Sydney construction site from Yahoo CH 7 news service. You can use the above Write a News Report template to help you plan, organise and write your report.
• Here is the worksheet: Reported statements with a change of tense for you to print and complete. When you are finished you can check your answers - on pages 3 and 4.

Election '13 - Counting your vote video and quiz

This is what kids do in school! This video introduces the different voting systems, including preferential voting. Listen and test yourself with the quiz afterwards.