Dear Joy Cowley

After reading A Letter from Fish Bay about Joy Cowley, some of us wrote letters to her. Here's Quinn's letter:

M13

Island Bay School

Thames St

Island Bay

Wellington 6023

Friday 29^th August

Dear Joy Cowley,

I go to Island Bay School at the bottom of the North Island. I like your book, Dunger, because it is really descriptive. My favourite bit is when the kids don’t want to go to the grandma’s house and the story about them forgetting to flush the toilet.

Did an author make you want to become an author? How many times have you started a book in 2014? How old is the train set in your office? Is Dunger an adult book? What type of ice-cream do you like best? What’s your favourite spider? I’ve just been learning about spiders for my Inquiry.

What’s your favourite fish out of the salmon, sole, and mullet and that you catch? I want to know because I can tell how much you like fishing.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Quinn 

School rules - do we need them?

Here's a letter we used as a model to think about writing persuasively to explain our opinion.  We're trying out using rhetorical questions, quotes, suggestions, and giving reasons for our ideas using phrases like: I think... because... because...  We also talked about tying in our conclusion with our opening paragraph, e.g. How do you think children learn best? ... I think children learn best when...

M13

Mahuri Syndicate

Island Bay School

Tuesday 11th February

Dear Perry,

How do you think children learn best?

We have been talking about school rules in our class.  Do they keep us safe?  Do they help us to learn?

Did you know that a school in Auckland tried out scrapping their rules so that the kids could test things out themselves?  They found that bullying was reduced, and that the kids were “motivated, busy and engaged” (School ditches rules and loses bullies, stuff.co.nz 26/01/14).

I think that there are some rules we could get rid of at Island Bay School too because if children don’t get to give things a go, they won’t really learn for themselves.  If an adult tells a kid not to climb a tree because they might fall and hurt themselves, they might not listen.  However if a kid tries it out themselves, and if they fall out and hurt themselves, they might give it a go one more time but then they’ll stop because they’ll have learnt for themselves and they’ll really know that it’s going to hurt them.

I’m not suggesting that we get rid of every single rule.  Obviously some of them are important to keep us safe, like the out of bounds areas, where rocks could fall on us if there was an earthquake.  I think we should spend some time in classes deciding which rules are important and which ones we don’t need.  Perhaps we could present our ideas to the student council and make some decisions about how to make the playground a place where kids can assess risk themselves, and therefore learn for themselves?

I think children learn best when they think, try, think again, try again, and then really learn the consequences of their actions for themselves. We would like to have a chance to learn this way in the Island Bay School playground.

Thank you for your consideration of my ideas.

Nga mihi,

Amy