Please Resist Me

This Saturday, March 21st, is Harmony Day and to acknowledge this, our class are performing Luka Lesson's poem Please Resist Me in our assembly.

We have been talking about the diversity of the Australian population and the importance of understanding our country's past. We have had many discussions about what this country looked like prior to 1788, and the enormous changes which occurred from this time onward. We have talked about the fact that Australia is now a multicultural country and the importance of accepting other cultures and respecting the input they have into our wider Australian culture. This poem challenges people's beliefs about some of the many groups which have helped to enrich our country, asks us to thin about our past, and poses a number of interesting questions about the ways we can act to ensure a positive future for our country.

The clip below is a wonderful performance of this poem.
Enjoy.

Cloud Talks

"The swing sound like rusty old scooters, but that doesn't bother me at all. When I hop on it and swing, I reach for the clouds. We have short conversations, the clouds and I, but its always good to talk."

by Faith (aged 12)

Freedom

"When I swing I have no care in the world, and a sense of freedom around me while I try to go as high as I can. When I swing it feels like I’m a bird flying high in the sky."

by Dylan (aged 11)

Simile, Metaphor, and Personification

We have been focussing on trying to incorporate simile, metaphor, and personification into our writing snippets lately. In the next couple of weeks, our class will begin working on narrative writing and this will be a great opportunity for the students to utilise their skills and knowledge about figurative language in a larger writing context.

I have set the students a challenge to see if they can locate some examples of simile, metaphor or personification in some of the books they are reading at home.

Today Maddison found a great example of some similes and metaphors in the opening paragraph of Layla Queen of Hearts by Glenda Millard:

"Griffin's daddy said Layla had been sent to comfort them after Tishkin went away; like an arm about their shoulders, a candle in the dark, or like golden syrup dumplings for the soul."

I look forward to more students using their wonderful detective skills and noticing examples of these three things in their reading.