Early one morning when there was a screech on the shiny wooden floor, a young girl woke up in her bedroom. Betty was three years old, had blonde shiny hair and, because she was easily scared by little noises made during the night, she kept a beautiful white bird in a nice white cage in her bedroom. She started to walk over to the cage when she felt the carpet moving and fell down. She started to fly. Suddenly Betty and her bird flew out her window and far below them they could see her very own castle.
Abbie (aged 10)
Category Archives: Posts
Betty’s Magic Moving Carpet – by Abbie (Aged 10)
Filed under creative writing, Posts, Short Story
The Octopus – by Jacko (Aged 10)
Late one creepy night at the very bottom of the Pacific Ocean lived an old, slimy octopus. He was weird, feared by all, looked hurt and ugly, and his eyes shone bright red. His tentacles were short and yellow. He smelt like a rotten fish and the carcass of a frog. The octopus was sick and tired of being feared and he wanted it to stop. He wanted to have friends and be liked and so he called an ocean meeting to discuss his loneliness. Later that creepy night stood an unhappy and lonely octopus as he realized that no animal out of the entire Pacific Ocean had come to the meeting.
Jacko (Aged 10)
This is a very sad, rather funny story, about a lonely octopus. Note that Jack has used a simile as he describes the way that the poor old fellow smelt.
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The Magic Flying Carpet – by Dardo (Aged 7)
The small boy is on a magic carpet flying in the clouds with a bird. He is happy and his bird is flying beside him. They are on their way to the moon because they are looking for aliens. They got lost. They searched for the moon and at last they found it and they went home.
Dardo (Aged 7)
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Bella And The Carpet – by Gordon (aged 9)
Late at night in the wacky storm there was a child and a beautiful bird. The child’s name was bella and she was the queen’s daughter. One night the girl and the bird were playing in the room and the carpet started moving. The window was open and the carpet flew out and up with Bella and the bird. They flew straight through to Disneyland. The queen went to the room and just as she opened the door Bella and the bird flew back in.
Gordon (aged 9)
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The Apple – Oscar (aged 7)
At 5.30 on a Monday morning, in a village, three college boys were climbing a tall tree because they were trying to reach a red Queen apple. Oscar, Finlay and Patrick had just paid three hundred dollars to go to school at Marist Brothers private collage at Ashgrove and they were feeling excited and proud of themselves which is why they decided to stretch Oscar’s arm to reach the high apple on the tree. They tried all day until they achieved their goal at 5 pm and then they took the lovely apple to Oscar’s mother and she cut it into sixes, which is two sweet pieces for each of them. The apple filled them up so they didn’t have to eat their corn and cabbage quiche for dinner that night, which all three agreed they didn’t like. At 5.30 on Tuesday morning they were starving again.
Oscar, aged 7 years.
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The Pig – by Jacko (aged 10)
Early one day on an old dairy farm lived a shaggy worn out pig. This old worn out pig had lived a horrible life on a small dose of food and water. The pig was tired of living on the farm so he thought to himself, “I have to escape”. Every day he chewed and chewed at the barbed wire fence until it snapped apart. The pig was so happy! Later that day the pig escaped. In the morning the dairy farmer realised the shaggy worn out pig had escaped.
Jacko (aged 10)
At times the writing tutor will challenge the student to write on a topic, in this case a pig. The student and the tutor have fifteen minutes to come up with a story. Creative writing can sometimes be creative anxiety, and an anxiety which may leave a child immobilised (and not just children). You cannot remove anxiety by avoiding the stimulant (the test situation) so we encourage the children to have fun with the pressure of competition. Once fun is realised pressure dissipates and creativity flows. This time I have included the tutor’s work, just for fun…
The Singing Pig – by The Tutor (age, not game to say)
When the rain came at the old tractor factory the pig knew it was going to be a good day. Slender by pig standards she was a pale skinned pig with a gentle nature. It was her normal job to sweep the floors and feed the dogs, but not on wet days. When it rained her task changed to singing for the assembly workers to keep their spirits up. At morning tea when she had sung her way through Justin Beiber’s songs and was gargling in the bathroom for her next bracket, the sun came out.
The Tutor
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Are Your Expectations Aligned With The Curriculum?
Year 3
“These are the best years of your life.”, self assuring words spruiked by many a parent and teacher to seven-year old students who do not need reassurance after remembering their potty training years. They have just cruised through the first two years of primary school, they know all the numbers, the alphabet and can write their name; what else is there to learn?
Year 3 is where many young students realise their world will never be the same again. It is during this year they discover numbers do not stop at 1,000 but continue all the way to 10,000 and they have to know their order, place value, and be able to recognise if they are odd or even! Not only that but there are numbers smaller than one that no-one told them about as they are introduced to the fractions 1/2, 1/4, 1/3, and 1/5.
When learning the multiplication table by heart for 2, 3, 5 and 10 no-one warned them about having to manage multiplying a two digit number by a single digit number, without a smart phone. In fact, they are expected to develop strategies to perform addition and subtraction in their head (mental maths). Counting on, regrouping and partitioning are all strategies employed to perform mental maths.
It is during this year our students are introduced to metric measurement. I hear very few complaints from students in our tuition centre about learning measurements. I simply remind them that learning 1,000 metres equals one kilometre is much easier than remembering there are 1,760 yards to a mile, 22 yards to a chain, or 16 ounces to a pound.
Yes, there is a lot to learn in Year 3 (and this is only maths) and yes, these may be the best years of their life because Year 5 is ahead of them, but we won’t tell them about that yet.
Golden Lady Beetle – by Bethany (aged 12)
The golden lady beetle woke up in her nest early in the morning. The lady beetle was so colourful that you won’t even see her because she blends in with beautiful flowers. She sleeps peacefully in her nest. She sucks all the nectar out of the flowers. The golden beetle enjoys her days from morning to night.
by Bethany (aged 12)
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The Sleep-over – by Oscar (aged 7)
On Tuesday afternoon Finlay’s best friend Oscar, who he met at pre-school, is coming over to have a sleep-over. In the sleep-over they are going to sleep with torches in a tent in the backyard. When Oscar and Finlay are asleep thousands of wild bats fly over them. Once Oscar asked Finlay if he has wild pigs or cats and he said, “I’ve got wild cats.” On Wednesday morning Oscar’s sleep-over will be over.
Oscar (aged 7)
Oscar has begun to work with more complex sentences. He is working on ways of combining three concepts or phrases into one sentence without using the conjunctive ‘and’. For example, in the the sentence about bats he started with these sentences:
- When Oscar and Finlay are asleep the bats will fly over them.
- The bats are wild.
- There are thousands of bats.
and combined them together into a sentence which used adjectives.
In the first sentence, however, he combined these sentences:
- On Tuesday afternoon a boy named Oscar was having a sleep-over with his best friend Finlay.
- They have been friends since pre-school.
This time he created a complex sentence with a main clause and a subordinate clause in the middle. The subordinate clause, which could be left out of the sentence, is marked by commas on both sides.
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The Battleship – by Gordon (aged 9)
Early in the morning when it was still dark, an American battleship came whooshing through the stormy waves. It was really dark. It was coming for World War Two. Many people died in the battleships but many survived. Three years later, when it was early in the morning, the war stopped.
Gordon (aged 9)
This is Gordon’s first writing exercise with us and I think he has done very well. Like all boys his age he was anxious about putting words to paper but discovered he enjoyed telling a story others would read.
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