Term 1 / Week 6 - 9 Turn your ideas into a readable story

We have only a few weeks of term left, and much of our class time will be spent on doing assessment tasks. That's because the teachers need to see how your work has improved during the term.

It feels like the term has gone incredibly quickly. In particular, the unit called Write Narrative is quite demanding. You will complete two narratives over these weeks.

Is this diagram of the narrative structure better than the table in our first post?

Think about these tips for successfully completing your narrative story:

• is your story interesting to the readers? - try to relive it and paint a picture of every detail that gives the reader a sense of place and time - the setting. Who was there? What are the relationships between the people and how were they feeling before and during the Complication (key event or incident)? 
• your plan might be just a list of words in the order of the events in the story - this will help you decide if your idea is BIG enough (even if the event is little, eg. losing a ring and then finding it two months later - important, lost before, nearly got stuck in an accident, missing it every day, about to buy another one, then finding it just before vacuuming it away accidentally)
• can you tell your story to someone before writing it? What is that person's feedback? Did they suggest any changes?
• use dictionary and any other resources to help broaden your vocabulary - classmates, teacher, bilingual dictionary, etc
• look at the correction codes that your teacher provides on your draft and if you don't know how to improve some of your sentences, ask others for ideas.

Idiom of the Day

put flesh on (the bones of) something

to add more detail to something in order to make it more interesting or easier to understand 

Which of the above dot points is asking you to put flesh on the bones (of your writing)?

Ingredients of a good story: some meat left on the bones to engage the reader!

Here is an example from Kingsley's story about Gordo:

It was a cold day on 28th August, 2003. There were big white waves at the sea and the wind was strong. We were walking along the beach at Warrnambool when I saw something lying on the beach. Then I ran quickly to have a look at it.

Some of your writing lacks meat:

Did he give you any details? - No, he just gave me the bare bones of the story....

The other unit: Read narratives

By now, I hope you practice some strategies for reading texts - other than just trying to understand every word. Sometimes this just doesn't work! This simple method won't help you with idioms and sometimes you just don't have the time to understand and learn the meaning of every word.

It's much quicker and more efficient to try to understand the word from its context in the whole sentence and the other sentences before and after it.

Here are some reading strategies from the ESL3 Class Record Slide 21 that should help you with the reading tasks.

1. Scan heading/ title, photo, photo caption, 1st paragraph, last paragraph for main ideas;
2. Underline new words as you read through the first time (try to get main idea of each sentence without stopping to look in dictionary);
3. Work out meaning of a new word from its context in the sentence (what is the subject? what is the verb? who is doing what?); and
4. Look up only those new words that you really need to understand for the whole story.

Learning and Independent learning unit

Hopefully you can show that you are filing your work in an organised way in your folder (or equivalent system) so you'll need to bring this to class so I can see it.

Independent learning tasks are recorded in our Independent Learning Record so make sure to hand your Journal to me for checking. Have your independent tasks been noted in the Learning Record? Please check that too and let me know if I've missed any of your efforts there.

All this extra learning work outside class should pay off! The more you practice, the more you learn!

Term 1 / Week 3 - 5: Plan and write a narrative - what are the narrative stages?

Over the next few weeks, we will read and listen to a range of narrative stories. We will plan and write our own stories following the narrative stages. Here they are.

Abstract	lets the reader know that a story is about to be told and tells why it will be told
Orientation	describes where and when the events took place, and if other people were there too
Complication	describes what happened
Evaluation	describes how the main character coped with the problem/ situation
Resolution	describes how the situation was resolved (sorted out)
Coda	tells why the story was worth sharing with us

As you listen to the Emperor's New Clothes, think about which parts of the story fit in each stage.



The Emperor's New Clothes was first published in 1837 by Hans Christian Andersen for children. It was based on an earlier Spanish story from medieval times.

Consider the following questions about the story

• Why don't the Emperor's advisers tell him the truth about his new suit of clothes?
• Why do the people in the village pretend that they can see the Emperor's clothes?
• Why does it take a child to point out what all the adults can see?
• What lessons can children learn from this story?

Welcome to ESL 3 Class blog in 2014

Welcome to our Class blog where we will post work and links to the internet each week.

This will help you revise what you did in class OR catch up work you missed if you were away OR do extra work for independent learning away from class.

Our places on the Internet

We will use a Class Record to keep a record of new language learnt in class. You can visit this Google Presentation any time and anywhere!



We had a similar Google Presentation in 2012 but this one will be more accessible - you can view it as long as you remember how to find the Class Blog.

Your Independent Learning Record in 2014

We kept track of your Independent Learning in 2013 with a Google document. This was successful because it is a list of all independent learning topics that students choose to write about in the Learning Journal or in Kidblog. Here is a link to the new document in 2014 and the link will always be available for you to access in the right Sidebar of this Class blog.

Our Kidblog

We will continue the wonderfully successful ESL3 at CNLC Kidblog in 2014. It is open to the public to view but you will need to join up to write posts.

You can post your Independent Learning here INSTEAD of in your Learning Journal. Can you see how many visitors have viewed our Kidblog?

Screenshot taken 2 February 2014

CNLCTalks Students' wiki

Last but not least, is our learning place for the whole of CNLC, here: CNLCTalks wiki.

The HOME page is open to view but you'll have to sign in to view Our Photos and Slideshows Page (do you remember the username and password to sign IN?) and ESL3 Pages.

Grammar corner - extend yourself

Reported Questions:

We practised reporting questions that were asked earlier. Look at our Class Record, Slide 3 for examples.

Here is a great lesson on Reported Questions at BBC Learning English: it includes a conversation and some worksheets.

Term 4 / Week 5 - 6: Write a report

Some important Language features

Using Past continuous to describe what was happening

Have a look at the video below. Can you describe what was happening as the young woman walked past?


 

Noun groups


Here is a presentation (slideshow) reviewing the parts of a noun group.

 

Noun Groups from James Buchanan

Reporting verbs

Try to use the following verbs instead of 'say' (but choose the correct one for each occasion):

• advise
• state
• claim
• suggest
• maintain
• insist

Term 4 / Week 2 - 4: Blogging your Learning Projects

Some students have typed up their Learning Projects on Active Citizens in Kidblog and they are looking great. In the screenshot below you can see who has finished (or almost finished) blogging their reports.

Screenshot taken on 31 October of our Blog posts in Kidblog

 To view the blog posts, click the Page link on the right sidebar to go to Kidblog and then log in.

Can you see how many Comments there are on each post? if there's only one Comment, then it is likely to be Jill's!

Reading other people's posts

When you read a blog post, it's polite to reply - try to write something acknowledging that person's work. You can thank them or, even better, ask a question or make a comment.

Looking for replies to your posts

Check for any replies - if someone asked a question, try to answer it. For example, I asked Jason a question about his post on the Moon Cake Festival, so I'm still hoping that you can answer that, Jason....

ABC News in 90 seconds - Extend yourself

The other day I had trouble searching for this program. I think I searched for 30 October instead of 29 October - I got a bit ahead of myself.

So here is the link to the video and here is the worksheet with the questions.

Locating the ABC News in 90 Seconds for a particular day: I searched for 'abcnews in 90 seconds 29 october' and found it without any problems!!!!!!!

 

Did you miss ..... in Weeks 1 to 4?

• Here is a very important worksheet practising Passive Voice (complete the sentences before checking the answers!) - put the Active sentence into passive by removing the Subject and making the Object the New Subject- in simple present, simple past and present perfect tenses.
• In Week 2, we also practised writing passive sentences with an Agent, using 'with' or 'by' in this worksheet and here are the answers.
• And in Week 3, we practised using the Past Perfect tense (the past before the past) with past tense in this worksheet (complete the sentences before checking the answers!).

Term 4 / Week 1: Breaking news. Making news. Locating news.

Note: this week Jill is still working with ONE arm - so we will keep this post brief.

Here is the News

 

Police and protestors clash at East West Link drill site in Carlton

Listen to this radio report by reporter Gus Goswell, from outside CNLC. We will reconstruct sentences from a shorter report which we read in the Wednesday class.

Wednesday people will share their learnings and take a leadership role in building sentences. See the Worksheet: Writing workshop - Report: 'Protestors clash with police at East West Link drilling site'.

• Do you want to read the news report?? Just Google the title (headline):  Protestors clash with police at East West Link drilling site and you will locate the full written report.

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.