For the past few weeks in Homegroup TP and Homegroup L, we have been focussing on the genre of persuasive writing. This involves writing to convince the reader to agree with your opinion on a topic or act in a different way. To practise this, the students have been writing letters to Mr. Greenwood persuading him that they should be allowed to bring their pets to school and that school break times should be longer! They have included an introduction, reasons for their opinion with evidence to back it up, and a conclusion. The students have been exploring emotive language to encapsulate their audience as well as strong arguments backed up with evidence to persuade the reader to agree with them. They have been thinking about asking rhetorical questions which hook the reader and imply from the beginning that their opinion is the correct one. This is a really tricky skill!

In reading, we are beginning to focus on making inferences and how we need to sometimes ‘read between the lines’ of a text. Using clues within the text and their prior knowledge, students have been practising forming opinions and making inferences about what the author is trying to suggest.They are learning that pictures and photographs can be used to assume and guess what might be happening in a story or information text. Being able to make inferences is an important skill for students to develop to support them with their comprehension of the text. 

This week the students are planning and presenting an author profile using a Google Slide presentation which they will create later in the week. During our shared reading time, this term both Homegroups TP and L  have been investigating a variety of authors to find out where they get their ideas and inspiration from, what some of the common elements found in their books are and why they make the choices they do in their texts. 

The authors we have explored so far include:

• Alison Lester - Author of the Magic Beach, from the Fish Creek area
• Mem Fox - Author of Possum Magic
• Aaron Blabey - Author of the Pig the Pug series
• Julia Donaldson - Author of the Gruffalo series and,
• Aunty Fay Muir - Aboriginal Author from Boon Wurrung Country

Students will now choose one author to explore more closely and will write and present a report on their chosen author. 

Next week we will start our focus on procedure writing, which will link to our current Science topics on making mixtures and heating and cooling materials. We apologise in advance for the messy jumpers!