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)
The Magic Flying Carpet – by Dardo (Aged 7)
Filed under creative writing, Learning, Posts
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)
Filed under creative writing, Posts, Short Story
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.
Filed under creative writing, Posts, Short Story
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
Filed under creative writing, Learning, Posts, Short Story
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.
The Dark Dragon – by Gordon (aged 9)
In the windy sky late in the afternoon, a red scary dragon was looking down on the desert. This dragon was calmly flying for food and enjoying the view. Just then he saw a mouse and he swooped down for the mouse with his claws that were sharp. A huge wind broke his control but then the wind stopped. The dragon had lost his confidence. The dragon late at night went away.
Gordon (aged 9)
Filed under creative writing, Learning, Short Story
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)
Filed under creative writing, Posts, Short Story
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.
Filed under creative writing, Posts, Short Story
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.
Filed under creative writing, Posts, Short Story
I Can’t Tie My Laces Because I Can’t Write
It caused me considerable concern when I read that the American Government had dropped teaching cursive writing from the core curriculum in 2010. They have left it up to the states to decide if it should be taught in elementary schools. Some have decided not to teach the writing and reading of cursive script. Their students are not being taught to read or write past the printed letter.
Does not teaching how to write have repercussions other than affecting the way we develop and record our thoughts? Is it even a concern that we become solely dependant upon smart phones, tablets and computers for recording our words?
People may have asked the same question as the motor car replaced the bicycle or television replaced evening family interaction. Change produces change and each alteration to our lifestyle needs to be considered for its own new path. If we haven’t looked far enough down the path before we have taken the first few steps we may arrive at a destination we did not desire. I do not think an obese society and world environmental problem was what Henry Ford envisioned with his Model T; nor did Steve Jobs foresee family members retreating to separate rooms when he wanted to bring the world together.
What damage can possibly be caused by not teaching cursive writing to young students? I have already encountered a young postman who has difficulty delivering hand written letters because they used “running writing”. So we don’t receive our mail, is that a problem these days? The fact the young man could not decipher or decode the letters on the envelope is of greater problem to me.
Cursive writing as with all writing requires the development of fine motor skills; skills that come with practice. The fine dexterity of finger and hand movement learned by a seven or eight year old is the same skill required to tie shoe laces, do up buttons, place a nut on a bolt or to produce a painting. I have already begun to see within my tuition experience young students unable to control letter and number formation between 8 millimetre lines or contain them within 7 millimetre squares of a quad page. Is this a problem?
When I was in primary school the pencil and then the pen was an important tool to my learning. Our teacher came in early to prepare the black board with the day’s lessons. These lessons were copied into our notebooks. Maths problems were copied from the board or the text book before being solved. Our scholastic days were filled with scribing and learning. Our weekends required us to compose an essay just so we could practise our scribbles and improve our imagination. Even now I produced drafts for this post with pencil and paper before committing them to digital creation.
Reading, writing and arithmetic formed the foundation of independence for an individual. With all three mastered a person was armed to contribute to society, create wealth from nothing and control their destiny. I am afraid the removal of just one may have an impact on creating an independent individual.
XtraMile Tuition Strategies (North Brisbane) - 0415 049461 