New garden design

As part of our inquiry this term Ruma Kokako and Ruma Ruru have designed a new school garden. The students have gone through the process of assessing the need, developing a design to meet the need, creating a budget, and submitting a proposal. The students have had to work together, negotiate ideas, work to a deadline, and consider a variety of factors that will influence a successful proposal. Lots of learning! The proposals have been evaluated by our environmental leaders and a final design has been created. We have also written letters requesting sponsorship which have gone out to different businesses in the community. We hope to build the garden early in term 2. Here are a few of our designs including the final design.

The Final Design

Narrative writing

We have been learning to develop distinctive and interesting characters and making them come 'alive' in our minds as writers. We have discussed all sorts of  strategies to do this, such as, developing a backstory and giving them strong opinions. We looked at how to vividly describe your character to the reader. Here is an example of a great description:

I looked up and saw a big, beefy man shuffling towards me. His face was almost fully hidden by long twisting hair and a wild tangled beard. His shirt looked like it had been half eaten by dogs. I could see his toes poking through the end of one of his busted boots. 

We then went on to develop a character and write a story about them. The below picture was given as a prompt for their character, which some students used.

We talked about keeping our stories simple and focused on the complication and resolution. We discussed using an 'axe' to cut unimportant paragraphs and chunks out of our story. We also talked about using 'scissors' to trim sentences to make them more concise. We also looked at some story writing tips from a screen writer for Pixar movies. 

Their final stories should arrive on their individual blogs soon so keep your eye out.