Term 2 / week 6 - Dictation and some Practice with Prepositions

Write a Discussion on the topic of Graffiti

You can choose one of the following topics:

1. Graffiti should be legalised.
2. Graffitists should be put in jail.
3. Local councils are losing the battle to prevent graffiti.

Your introduction must include your opinion and some supporting sentences, based on experience or facts. This should be interesting enough to invite the reader to read more!

Use the Discussion Plan to start writing more arguments to support your view. Don't forget to discuss the Arguments AGAINST your view and what you think of them.

State law regarding Graffiti

The Victorian Graffiti Prevention Act 2007 recognises graffiti as a crime and acknowledges its potential severity through tough penalties. The offence of marking graffiti attracts maximum fines of more than $29,000 and up to two years imprisonment.

Under this Act, it is illegal in Victoria to:

• mark publicly visible graffiti on property without the owner’s consent
• sell spray paint to someone under the age of 18 unless they have proven it is needed for employment purposes
• possess a graffiti implement with the intention of marking unlawful graffiti
• possess, without lawful excuse, a spray paint can while on or adjacent to public transport property, or when trespassing
• advertise spray paint cans for sale, if the advertisement is likely and intended to incite or promote unlawful graffiti.

The Act outlines what councils can do to remove graffiti from private property and what police can do to investigate alleged graffiti offences.

 

Strategies to prevent graffiti

Which graffiti prevention strategy has been used in the construction of this tram stop shelter on the corner of Johnston Street and Nicholson Street?

Dictation: Graffiti or Street Art?

Here's a dictation to review our vocabulary and prepare to write a Discussion about Graffiti.


Listen to the text three times and check your writing. When you can't improve your writing any more, you can check your work by looking at the Transcript here.

Practice with Prepositions

Here's a review of work we did last term: maybe you have removed these Grammar worksheets from your folder to make space for new work. So, here is a slideshow for you to revise which preposition to use with particular verbs or adjectives.

You will need to click the Next button to check your answer and then go to the Next Slide.

Practice with prepositions from Jill Koppel

Make a Powerpoint presentation: is graffiti art or vandalism?

While we are looking at different examples of Graffiti, it is a good opportunity to search for some photos of graffiti on the internet, save them to your Photos sub-folder and make a presentation to share with the class.

If you have taken some photos on the streets in your neighbourhood, you can also use them. You'll have to save them to your Photos sub-folder in your Folder on the Students' Drive first.

Slideshow: Examples of Graffiti in Melbourne 

I put all your slides into one presentation for people to browse. Now that you can change the size of text boxes and text, you can change the layout of each slide. Have you taken any photos yet? These photos will be a higher resolution than the ones you found on the internet. And they will look richer when you put them into your slide show. - JK: 17 May, 2013

Computer group 3 graffiti presies final compressed from Jill Koppel

Skills

• Pin the Powerpoint program (app) to your Taskbar: this is a good idea because it's a lot quicker than finding it in the Start Menu each time you want to open it.
• Open a New Presentation and type the Name of your Presentation: Is Graffiti street art or vandalism? OR Some examples of Graffiti
• Insert New Slide - and choose the Layout: Content and Captions - see the examples below.

• You can type your title and text, and insert your photo.
• You might need to change the size of the Title and Text boxes, and even the photo too.
• Have I forgotten any skills???

Term 2 / weeks 4 - 5: Graffiti - is it art or vandalism?

Have a look at the following slide show. For each photo, think about the following questions:

• What can you see? Describe the image.
• What is the context (location)?
• Does the art/ graffiti have any useful role or public benefit?

Write a Discussion text to persuade the readers to agree with your point of view.

 

Preparing to write a Discussion

Collect some photos of graffiti that you love (or hate) and share them with others in the class. 

Ask your friends and family for their views on graffiti.

Find out the local Council's policy on graffiti - the Department of Housing's policy on graffiti.
Do these organisations (or other organisations) have any effective strategies to prevent graffiti or remove graffiti?

 

Useful links

• Victorian government: Action on Graffiti policy
• Street art utopia- a blog with examples of interesting street art
• Do a Google Search: 'street art in Melbourne' images: do you recognise any of the images?
• 'Graffiti tags shadow the art above' - article from the Australian, 4 October 2012 
• Tips from City of Yarra on preventing graffiti and graffiti removal
• Locations of Public art projects in City of Yarra where graffiti artists have produced legal street art.
• City of Melbourne program for young people: Do Art not Tags

More images of Street art in Melbourne

Get photos from the internet and create a table in Word

Find three things: healthy food or fast food?

While we're on the topic of healthy foods, here's an activity to practise the following skills:

• search for images (using Google search engine) and save them to your folder (using Save Image as);
• insert images into a doc and resize; 
• insert Symbols, like a tick and a cross;
• create a Table and navigate and edit it.

Click this link to read and follow the instructions in the document.

Can you create a document with a Table that looks similar to this?

Make a Table with different foods

Term 2 / week 3: Fat, fatter, obese

This week we are spending more time reading and writing persuasive texts. Let's review some language that we read in the text Australia needs a Michelle Obama.

Dictation: The two Michelles

Listen and pause the dictation where you need to. Don't forget your punctuation. When you're finished, you can check your work by clicking the link to the transcript of the text here.

Some Links to Michelle Bridges web pages

• Listen to Michelle's Tips here.

• Go to Michelle's BMI Calculator here to work out if you are overweight or obese. You'll need to know your height and your weight. 

• Lastly, grab some healthy recipes here.  

News Headlines at VILC: listen, order and type the list

Here is a great activity to access VILC for online learning and type a Word list using bullet points.

A. Do the VILC Task

Open VILC using our Username (500vilcst) and our latest Password (this changes every year and it is secure - see the whiteboard in the Computer room and write in your notebook).

Listen to the latest News Headlines for Elementary level and drag the items into the correct order (without checking your answers). When you have finished, show your answers to the teacher and then check your answers.

Then click the Book icon to view the transcript of the Headlines.

B. Type the News Headlines text 

Open Word and start a new document called VILC Easy News Headlines for .....[date]....

Type the text for the Easynews Headlines. To see the text, switch between your Internet browser and your Word document using the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen.

C. Format your Word document

1. Format the heading using Heading 1 Style.
2. Make all the body text Verdana font, size 12.
3. Change the body text to purple.
4. Change all the text spacing to 1.15 Spacing.
5. Select the dot points and format them using bullet points.
6. Type your name and the date at the bottom of the text.
7. Save your doc to your folder, with your name in the Title and Save As into the Teacher's Folder too.
8. Find a photo for one of the stories using 'Google Search' and then 'Images', and insert the photo in the document under the text.
9. Type 4 new words and find their meanings using the Cambridge online Learners' dictionary.

Term 2 / week 1: Junk food - should it be banned at school?

Yum! Jelly doughnut

What do you think about this idea?

Here at Munch for Kids blog is one mother's view of an ideal world.

Which sentences are opinions, experience or facts?

Reading strategies

Here is our List of Reading Strategies from last year. How many of them did you use when reading the text?

What are the pros and cons of banning junk food at the school canteen?

Think about:

• if you agree or disagree or if you can see both sides of the topic
• how you will start writing about this topic?
• a conclusion - a summary of your main points and a final sentence to persuade your reader that you are right

Remember to:

• use the plan to write supporting arguments for each idea
• write in sentences and stay on the topic
• use words from the Persuasive writing Checklist to build your argument
• start a new paragraph for each new idea

Writing process

Think => Plan => Draft => Correct => Rewrite

OR sometimes

Think => Discuss => Plan => Draft => Correct => Rewrite

Revision: Did you watch the video about Australia's First Afghani Lifesaver?

Here's a dictation on the topic of water safety. Press Pause after each sentence.



Here is the text for the dictation - but don't look until you're absolutely sure you can't do any more!