Day: December 11, 2017

For WEJ’s Winter concert, our class and Ms. Parsa’s grade 2/3 class will be singing the song ‘Mele Kalikimaka‘ which is Hawaiian for ‘Merry Christmas’.

I am asking students to bring in their costume this week so that it is at school and ready to go for next week.

Here is what they need:

• Brightly coloured t-shirt, pants, shorts or dress/shirt/skirt
• Santa hat (if you have one)
• 
• Any Hawaiian clothes you have! (Leis, grass skirts)
• 

I will have a large zip lock bag for each student to place their costume in and put their name on the outside and keep in the classroom until next week. I have some extra Leis and Santa hats that students can borrow if that want as well! They also sell Leis and Santa hats at the dollar store.

THANKS for your support with this! Our class is really excited!

Ms. Argue and Mrs. Dobinson 🙂

Once again, we would like to invite you to the W. Erskine Johnston Public School Winter Concert! Our class will be participating in the concert this year and we would be very proud to have you in our audience!

In Language Arts, we have been practicing writing PERSUASIVE LETTERS. Students got a chance to write a letter to Mrs. Dobinson with a partner last week asking her to buy certain prizes for the next auction. They had to support their choices with reasons why it would be a suitable prize to buy for the class.

This was the format that students had to follow for their persuasive letter:

– Date
– Greeting
– Introduce yourself (if required)
– A description of what you are asking for
– Detailed reasons to support what you are asking for
– Flattery – maybe compliment the person you are writing to 🙂
– Closing
– OPTIONAL – Post-Script (P.S.) – in case you want to add something else to your letter after you are done writing it!

I was really impressed with the great reasons that some of the students came up with for buying the prize that they wanted. Also, there was lots of flattery!! This week, students are going to write their own letter to Mrs. Dobinson and I will be reading it over and giving them feedback on their letter.

Our next task is to write a persuasive letter to Ms. Burans, our principal here at W. Erskine Johnston P.S. We will be starting this writing task now and probably completing it in the new year. Students will have to work through the entire writing process which involves:

Brainstorming ideas
– Students will create a word web, point form notes or make a list of ideas related to the topic.

Rough Draft
– Students will write a first draft of their persuasive letter making sure to include all the parts of a letter from the list described above.

Revise and Edit 
– Students  will have to revise (change sentence order, add or take away ideas, add PIZZAZZ words etc.) and edit (check for spelling, punctuation, proper CAPITALIZATION and grammar) their letter.

Good Copy
– Students will have to re-write their letter after they have revised and edited it.

The letter to Ms. Burans will be formally assessed using a rubric that students will get a chance to go over before they start the writing process.

Ms. Argue 🙂