Co-operative Writing

Learning to Hook our Readers

The children have all learnt to write a recount with three parts: an orientation, a sequence of events and a personal response.  The children were typically beginning their stories with:

Yesterday I went to the park.

Last week we had fish and chips for tea.

In the weekend I played at my friend’s house.

Boring! We decided our next step was to add language features to make our writing more interesting. 

Over the last few weeks, we have looked at using words that paint a picture for our readers. In our orientation we have been learning to add similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, questions, ellipsis, and direct speech to hook our readers.  We have played with blocks of ice and brainstormed adjectives and similes to describe what ice looked like, felt like and sounded like last winter when school was closed because of snow.

Here are a section of the children’s first attempts to incorporate the language features we have been learning about (only the spelling has been corrected).

James, Trinity, Samuel and Amelia

It was a snowy day and there was paper covering the land.  It was covering cars and homes and trees.  Icicles were floating down like helicopters.  Ice dripped on my head.

Ella, Pou and Brayden

One icy cold morning I was snug in my bed.  When I looked out the window I saw magical ice.  It looked amazing.  It looked like a white piece of paper and a magic snowman.  I saw some ice on the fence dripping like melting snow.

Jack, Noah, Daniel and Riley

Have you ever woken up on a very snowy morning with your door blocked with snow and you couldn’t open the door?

Ethan, Jordan, Logan and Cory

In the frosty morning I woke up “ahhhh”. I went outside and I looked and I saw heaps of snow and I made a snowman.

Charlotte, Leah, Jak and Nicholas

Snow on a cold winter’s morning and the kid’s were all snuggled up in their warm bed… but mum and the kids were as hot as toast.

Liam, Jessica, Seren, Amber

One day I woke up and it seemed magical that snow was everywhere.  Have you ever woken up and seen snow everywhere? I have.  It was as deep as a mountain inside out.  It was snowing like forever! It was as cold as a fridge on you.

Challenge

How many examples of similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, questions, ellipsis, and direct speech can you find?