Letter to the Grade 4's of 2020

Dear Grade 4's of 2020, welcome to the Senior Primary campus. 

Here you will have lots of fun and create many incredible memories. There are many fun activities that you will be able to participate in, such as Sports day, Swimming Galas, Books by Night, Marimbas, Choir, Show Productions and many more.

 One of my favourite things to do is Books by Night. This happens once a year, and it is very fun. you arrive at school at six in the evening, and recieve a hot chocolate, then, you go to one of the four classrooms you have signed up to go to, and listen to the teacher telling a story. You the move on to your next teacher, until you have been to all four teachers. You then leave at 8 o'clock. (You can come to Books by Night in pajamas).

Another of my favourite activities is Enrichment Day. You choose two activities, one for each of the two days. For example : making dog shampoo and cupcake making. Then, on the day, you do your activity for the whole day, and then the same for the next day. We usually do this in the second and fourth terms.

Although there are many activities I can tell you that I have enjoyed, there are a few tips I can give you too.

1. Arrive at school on time, it’s always good to be punctual

2. Always wear your cap at break, unless you want a demerit 

3. Hand in your work on time, or you will receive a demerit, or get zero for your work. 

I hope that you have a great time at the Senior Primary Campus and that you do lots of activities and sport. 

From Taya

Email Etiquette

In this lesson, we learnt the rules of email etiquette and how to use them. We learnt how to email a teacher correctly, using five simple steps :
*Don't use slang
*Give a specific subject
*Sign and proofread
*Use a salutation
*Be professional.

We watched a video on email etiquette and we had to answer questions about it. We also had to email our teacher, using the things we had just learned. There was a document that showed the wrong way to email, and we had to write what was wrong with it. There was also a document that showed the right way to email, and we had to point out what the writer had done right.

Email etiquette was a very interesting subject to learn about.

Superhero Task

The superhero project was really fun. We were put into partners and we had to build our own superhero out of Plasticine. My partner, Michaela, and I built a horse. His name was Starflight. he was grey, with a black mane and tail. We put wire in his legs to make him able to move them, and wire in his head and neck, so that he can move his head up and down and stretch his neck out. 

Once we had built him, we filmed him and other characters we had made (out of different substances) using an app called ' Can Animate'. Since he is not a live creature, we had to take a picture, move the characters slightly, take another picture, and so on. They had to be moved very slightly, otherwise it looked like they had teleported.  

Once we had completed the filming, we moved on to 'Green screen'. I think that green screen was the easiest part. All we had to do was find a picture that we wanted to use as our background, put our video into green screen, and insert the picture. 

Once that was finished, we added our voice-over. A voice-over is when you record yourself saying something, then add it to a video. We had to make sure that it looked like the the characters were speaking, not us.   

Poetry

Poetry is when a thought comes to mind, that thought forms words and those words form a poem. It normally rhymes, can be long or short, silly, funny, emotional, about nature,  animals, friendships, anything. People write poetry because it is a way to show your thinking and imagination. To inspire others, to write your idea of something and to write something beautiful.

Over our five ILT days, we did imagery ( reading someone else`s poem and then drawing a picture to show how it made you feel), analysing poetry ( reading a poem and then answering questions about it), blackout poetry ( taking a page from a book and taking a black marker and colouring over everything except for the words that you are using in the poem ), poetry writing ( choosing a topic and then writing a poem about it ), terminology ( researching words that link to poetry) and poetry slam ( writing a poem, memorising it and then presenting it as a play).

My personal best was imagery because I love to draw and colour just about anything. My worst was terminology because I found it to be very boring. My most challenging activity was analysing poetry because it took a long time to do and some of the questions were more difficult than others. When my group performed our poetry slam, I was really nervous and ended up forgetting my lines. I learnt many new words, including stanza, onomatopoeia, consonance, assonance and many more. I learned that I could write a poem, make a poem out of a book page and present a poetry play.   

Blackout poetry                          My favourite poem

Precepts

In Elkanah, in grade 6, we are reading a book called Wonder. In the story, the English teacher, Mr Brown, writes a precept, If you have the choice between being right and being kind, choose kind. Now our class has to explain what it means.

A precept is like a motto that you live by. It is like a rule that you follow all your life. Precepts are like quotes and they always have a meaning that can sometimes be quite difficult to understand or figure out. Precepts can be long or short but a short precept can be just as deep and meaningful as a long one.

I chose this quote because it explains me. I normally keep things to myself because I am not sure if people will understand.

A day in the life and home of a child in an informal settlement

I woke up this morning cold and wet. It rained last night and there is a leak in the roof of our shack. My dad put a bucket under it but it doesn’t help much. It leaks in other parts of the roof as well. I got up to go and find something to eat. I didn’t eat last night so I’m really hungry. There was some bread and a bit of ham. I’ll have to make do with that. As I was walking to my bed to fetch my school clothes, I felt something cold and wet drip onto my head. Oh dear, it’s started raining again, so I’ll have to walk to school in the rain.

I opened the door, I was fully dressed. Thank goodness, it’s stopped raining so I won’t have to walk to school in the rain. It was a long walk to school, I had to pass the toilets first, yuck they are stinky. After that I had to pass the hospital, there are always strange noises coming from inside. Finally I got to school, there is a heap of litter by the path outside the school. It sometimes has animals walking on it but most of the time there are only flies. It’s disgusting to have to walk past it to get to my classroom. I sat down on my chair and found a pencil lying on the floor. I picked it up and opened my textbook to start writing.

Later that day as I was walking home I wondered what it would be like to have a proper house. Suddenly it started to rain. Oh no. I ran home and just as I ran inside I heard lightning. It’s going to be a long night. That night I was lying in bed with my mom and dad. We share a bed because we can’t afford more than one. I suddenly felt very hungry and I saw a loaf of bread on the table I opened it and took a slice. I ate it and then fell asleep.

My home town could be better if :
The schools were bigger
We had enough food for everyone
There wasn’t so much litter
There were enough school resources like pencils and rubbers
There were better toilets
There weren’t so many shacks

I woke up this morning cold and wet. It rained last night and there is a leak in the roof of our shack. My dad put a bucket under it but it doesn’t help much. It leaks in other parts of the roof as well. I got up to go and find something to eat. I didn’t eat last night so I’m really hungry. There was some bread and a bit of ham. I’ll have to make do with that. As I was walking to my bed to fetch my school clothes, I felt something cold and wet drip onto my head. Oh dear, it’s started raining again, so I’llhave to walk to school in the rain.

I opened the door, I was fully dressed. Thank goodness, it’s stopped raining so I won’t have to walk to school in the rain. It was a long walk to school, I had to pass the toilets first, yuck they are stinky. After that I had to pass the hospital, there are always strange noises coming from inside. Finally I got to school, there is a heap of litter by the path outside the school. It sometimes has animals walking on it but most of the time there are only flies. It’s disgusting to have to walk past it to get to my classroom. I sat down on my chair and found a pencil lying on the floor. I picked it up and opened my textbook to start writing. 

Later that day as I was walking home I wondered what it would be like to have a proper house. Suddenly it started to rain. Oh no. I ran home and just as I ran inside I heard lightning. It’s going to be a long night. That night I was lying in bed with my mom and dad. We share a bed because we can’t afford more than one. I suddenly felt very hungry and I saw a loaf of bread on the table I opened it and took a slice. I ate it and then fell asleep.

My home town could be better if : 

The schools were bigger 

We had enough food for everyone 

There wasn’t so much litter

There were enough school resources like pencils and rubbers 

There were better toilets 

There weren’t so many shacks 

The Music Inspector : Gladys’ Diary

Yesterday was the worst day of my life. The singing inspector, Mr Raymond, came. He is the worst       inspector in the world and he makes everyone frightened. He wears big knickerbockers and long, thick stockings and he looks like a hunter. He has curly golden hair and eyes like huge, blue gooseberries. He’s got a round, red face and it looks like an angry sun.

Every time he comes, he makes us stand in front of the class and sing to everyone. First he called up Benny and Charles and told them that they had to sing. They said that they couldn’t sing anything except for Pretty Polly and Mr R said that they must just sing that.

Then he called up Jesse and she sang a pretty song and then he called up Iris and me. I was shaking so hard that I nearly fell over. I tried to sing but no words came out of my mouth.Mr R shouted at us for not singing and sent us away.