2014, Week 9, 3rd April

The south of the North Island is south of the north  of the South Island.

Think about it ....

(We discussed when to use capital letters for directions and locations, thanks to a question from Hannah.) 
Use a capital letter when the north, south, east or west are part of the actual place name. 
Use a lower case letter if you are describing the direction taken, or comparing different locations.  
- Manurewa East is south of the North Shore.
- South Auckland in north of Palmerston North.
- We travelled west to reach the West Coast.
- Wanganui is on the west coast of the North Island.
- We visited many countries in South East Asia on our journey north to Europe.


 We looked at some errors that had turned up in  our previous weeks' blog writing and worked out what should have been written instead:
- Kinda meaning 'kind of' should only ever be used in direct speech.
"I'm kinda interested in going to  the movies," said Caitlin.
- Otherwise, 'kind of' should always be used.
- Caitlin said that she was kind of interested in going to the movies.
- similarly, NEVER ever write: should of. It is ALWAYS
 should have, could have, would have, must have

Correct Usage:  whose / who's
- Who's is only ever used as a contraction of who is or who has.
-  If who is or who has makes sense  when you say is aloud - then use who's.
- Whose  is the possessive form of who.
Check out some examples of whose / who's here - and take a short quiz test to check how well you understand the difference between these two words.

Grammar - more work on subjects and predicates
We looked at simple subjects and predicates  and identified them in this worksheet. 
We looked at how, in some sentences, the predicate could come before the subject - just to make the sentence sound more interesting and to add some variety in sentence beginnings.  It is also a way of making our writing sound more poetic. 

Language Features: onomatopoeia
We looked at some of the previous weeks' videos about onomatopoeia, and talked about ways onomatopoeia could be used to make sentences sound more interesting:
- The shells scrunched under her feet as she walked along the beach instead of The shells made a scrunching sound  as  she ....
- The shells crackled under her feet as she walked along the beach.

Tongue Twister: Fresh flatfish flesh - Try saying that quickly three times without stumbling!