Providing rich, engaging activities and experiences from which to inspire and motivate students’ writing is always an important goal for educators.

For Term 2, one of our goals in Year 4, is to extend the already strong writing skills demonstrated by many of the students moving up from Year 3. Being able to effectively choose and apply appropriate sentence structures as well as use a range of language features including similes and adjectives are some of the core writing skills to develop at the Year 4 level.

To enrich and extend these skills, the students have been given the opportunity to write a descriptive recount (in the form of a newspaper article) from the perspective of a fireman rescuing a kitten. Students used a real-life headcam video clip for content and the format of a newspaper article to write up their recount. The students’ interest and motivation was primed for writing for a clear purpose, to entertain and inform.

The process

After watching the video and brainstorming key vocabulary, the students viewed short sections of the video clip and described what happened. Using their notes, they carefully choose words to convey the feelings, emotions and visual detail of each scene. Students were encouraged to use complex sentences and similes.

After editing their drafts with peers and their teacher, the students developed and produced a digital newspaper page using their laptops. This page included a title, headline, pictures and their descriptive recount.

Below are excerpts of some of the students’ finished newspaper articles.

“As we approached the dwelling, boiling, red flames burst out of windows. I leapt out of the truck, secured an oxygen mask around my swelling face and sprinted into the very smoky shelter. I slipped my dusty gloves off my blistered hands.” Clara Barry

“As I entered the house, I saw so much ash and smoke, the walls were slowly disintegrating and crumbling. I looked around, searching for life and found a poor suffering breathless kitten lying on the floor.” Berry Roberts

“As I cautiously walked around the dwelling, I found a poor unconscious kitten lying on the floor. I went to signal my colleague that I was leaving the dwelling to save the poor little kitten from all the smoke. As I moved fast but carefully, I finally reached the door, walking to the fire engine and got out the medical kit.” Tara Pattison

Work sample – Annika Gill