Crafting Writing for an Audience

WALT: craft our writing to suit an audience.

Do you know the difference between writing for formal occasions and causally chucking down a few lines of text for the fun of it? Which has more rules?
More on this in a minute...

Today in the Tui class, we have been looking at ways to share a little bit of who we are using our blogs. Mr Gunn asked us if we knew the difference between formal and informal. We weren't sure so we compared some photos and tried to see if we could work it out for ourselves. Here are two of the pics:

Which one do you think is formal and which one is casual?

We decided that the one on the left is the formal one and the other casual. Do you agree?

Mr Gunn told us that a blog post about our life is more like the cool dude on the right and our explanation or instructional writing is more formal like the sharply dressed man on the left.

Both are cool and each have a particular time and place.

Audiences are bit like the people at the places where these guys are.

The people at the fancy party where that tuxedo man is would expect him to behave very sensibly and follow the etiquette of that place.

At the beach where the other dude is headed, there are way less rules about what you can do or wear.

Our blog posts this week reflect the more casual relaxed type of writing that enables us to share our opinions about things we like in our lives.

You can have a look at our posts by clicking through to our individual blogs using links on the left.

Rata's Waka (or how we need to look after the environment)

On Friday of last week,  we heard the story of Rata and the Waka. In the story Rata takes a Totara nui to make a Waka. But he didn't pay his respects to the environment so things didn't go his way until he did.

We did some thinking about how we are like Rata today in our society, and then we created a poster in response our ideas. Here are some of the children's slides.
Each child has more on their personal blog.

Describe what is happening in a picture

The Wanderer.

WALT: use a prompt for writing.

WARNING!!

Hey team, you might find one of the following pieces of fictional describe writing a little bit scary!! 

The clever authors in the Kea class were asked to describe what they thought was going on in the pictures below. 

As a description of a moment in time, they had to write as if the events shown in the pictures were occurring in the present. 

They were able to remember that sentences about things that are happening now used the words 'is' and 'are' as well as the -ing ending on doing words. 

Someone suggested that we use the seven servants to help us think of ideas when we look at the pictures while planning what details we will put in our finished writing piece. 

Finally, we talked about using words to create a mood that matched the pictures. Talk about deep level thinking! 

Scroll below the writing to see the picture and comment below about what you thought was the best bits.

WARNING. the following description contains references to supernatural horror and violence. 

While these are usually not appropriate topics for our school, I felt the description was too good not to share. Sorry if it is scary. 

The Mountain-Top Demon

By Ebes

There is a mysterious hooded demon, wearing a purplish-blue robe with a crescent moon shaped power staff, resting on the blinding, foggy and grassy Himalayan mountains. He is sitting on a huge rock which is covered in moss. The hooded demon is resting from the huge climb up the mountain. He is looking for a little cottage to enslave the people living in it and feed on their happiness. 

Picture credit www.pobble365.com/wanderer/

The Bikers.

By Kata.

There are dirt-bikers having a race. They are having a race. They are racing against each other and the green bike is winning. They are ramping over a big hill with dust on their tyres. The red and green bikes are in front and all the others are behind. The ones in front are blazing through the dust.



Picture credit www.pobble365.com/the-race/