Writing with Speech Marks

Rooms 3, 4 & 12 have been working hard on our punctuation this term.  This week we are working in our own class on speech marks.
Here are some main points of a writing lesson we did today about using speech marks correctly in our writing.

Why do we use speech marks? 

1. It breaks up the narrative. 
2. Makes our writing lively.
3. It is useful to show more about characters. 
4. It is excellent for showing reactions to events and relationship between characters.
5. It helps to tell the story from different views.  

We remembered reading Baa Baa Smart Sheep by Mark & Rowan Sommerset. ( Here is a funny YouTube clip that gives a 'taste' of what the story is about, if you haven't seen it before). He uses speech marks inside speech bubbles which helps us remember how speech marks are used. We can use them instead of speech bubbles.
We talked about the 5 things we need to remember to do when using speech marks. These are:

1.	To put speech marks around the words being said.	"Hi."
2.	To open each new set of speech marks we need a capital letter.	"Hello, how are you?"
3.	To punctuate the speech before we close it.	"Watch out!"
4.	To start a new line for each new speaker.	"I think this makes the writing easier to read," said Max.
5.	To say WHO said it.	"I agree," replied Anisa.

Then we watched a short video called Reverso.  (scroll down till you find it).

Our task was to write a conversation the man has with his Mum.  In the conversation we need to explain what happened to him. 

Why is gravity different for him on Earth?

How did he get to Earth?

What is a sentence?

Before we can write a great paragraph, we need to learn what a good sentence looks like.  We've been doing lots of thinking about sentences.  We need to learn how to write interesting sentences to make our readers want to read our writing. 

This post is here so we can come back and revise our learning any time we want to.  

We are learning to (WALT): 
recognise and write different kinds of sentences

Sucess Criteria (SC): We can write different kinds of sentences correctly.

We can write a complex sentence beginning with a verb.

We’ve learnt that there are 3 kinds of sentences:

• Simple sentences
• Compound sentences
• Complex sentences

     And we are pretty good at writing simple and compound sentences already, but we've looked at these again to help us make comparisons with these and complex sentences.  Here's some of what we worked on.  

A simple sentence features:

Punctuation - Capital letter at the beginning and full stop at the end.  If it’s a question it has a question mark and if it is said with excitement, has an exclamation mark.

It contains one idea (clause) and has a subject, verb and object.

Daniel jumped off his bike.

Subject verb object

A compound sentence features:

Punctuation - Capital letter at the beginning and end punctuation.

It contains two ideas (clause) joined by a conjunction.

Daniel jumped off his bike     and pushed it up the path.

Subject verb   object conjunction  verb object                                                    

A complex sentence features:

Punctuation - Capital letter at the beginning and end punctuation.

It contains two or more ideas (clause/s) joined by a conjunction.

Running late for the game, Caitlyn jumped out of the car and ran for the court.

It contains two or more ideas or thought (clause/s) joined by a conjunction.

It contains 1 dependent clause and a complete, compound sentence.

Running late for the game, Caitlyn jumped out of the car and ran for the court.

Dependent Clauses: do not make sense on their own.  They need to be joined to another complete clause.

‘Running late for the game’, on it’s own does not make sense.  We are waiting for more to come to make it a complete sentence.

‘Caitlyn jumped out of the car and ran for the court’ is a complete thought and makes sense on it’s own.  It is a complete sentence so we can add the dependent clause to it.

Here are some examples of independent clauses (blue):

Tara ate a cheese roll after she watched the news.

(Tara ate a cheese roll is an independent clause. It works as a standalone sentence.)

My mother is originally from Wellington although now lives in Palmerston North.

I went for a run before my breakfast.   

Examples of Dependent Clauses (purple)

Tara ate a cheese roll after she watched the news.

(The clause after she watched the news is a dependent clause. It does not work as a standalone sentence.)

Even though his mother was a driving instructor, my cousin failed his driving test six times.

A computer once beat me at chess but was no match for me at kick boxing.

Writing a complex sentence beginning with a VERB

The ‘-ing’ sentence starter … beginning with a verb

Ambling along the path, Dante noticed something shining on the ground.

Your turn:

(this is where we all had a go at writing some sentences)