Tag: Reading

Building Hope

LI: To use creative expression to explore the hopes and dreams of people in a text.

After reading The Diary of Anne Frank and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, we talked about what people must have felt like having their whole world turned upside down. I can’t imagine what it felt like to be separated from family and friends and have your freedom taken away. We discussed the hopes and dreams that Anne Frank and Bruno may have had, such as being with loved ones, having hope for the future, and living a normal life again.

Yesterday, we discussed how we could put their Cloth of Dreams back together again. There were no strict rules for this activity, which allowed us to express our ideas creatively and share different perspectives. Working collaboratively in groups, we combined our ideas and created drawings that represented dreams of Whanau, friendship, hope, and freedom.

This activity was inspired by the book Teaspoon of Light. I enjoyed having the freedom to be creative and seeing how everyone interpreted the dreams differently. It helped me understand that even during difficult times, people can still hold onto hope and dream about a better future.

Mood, Atmosphere and Characteristaion

LI: To understand how characters, mood, and atmosphere help shape a story.

In reading, my group created a DLO about different types of characters and how mood and atmosphere are used in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. We explained the difference between protagonists and antagonists, as well as round and flat characters. We also explored how mood and atmosphere affect the way readers feel during important parts of the story.

While working on this task, we used examples from the text to explain our ideas more clearly. It was interesting learning how different characters have different roles in a story and how the atmosphere can make scenes feel tense, emotional, or uncomfortable.

This activity helped me understand how authors use characters and setting to shape the mood of a story and create stronger emotions for the reader

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

We listened to the audiobook of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne. After each chapter, we explored the mood and atmosphere. The mood is the emotions and feelings created in the story, while the atmosphere is the feeling or tone that the setting and events create for the reader.

We worked collaboratively to summarise each chapter in 10 sentences. This helped us practise using a range of sentence structures, including simple, compound, and complex sentences, to show characters’ emotions and important events. It also helped us improve our vocabulary and think more deeply about the mood and atmosphere in each chapter. I found it interesting how changing the length and structure of sentences could make a scene feel more tense, emotional, or dramatic

Mood-o-Metre C19

For reading, my partner and I made a “Mood-O-Meter” for Chapters 19 and 20 of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. We tracked how the story’s feeling changed by connecting emotions like hope, nervousness, sadness, and anger to important events. As the story got more intense, we talked about how Bruno and Shmuel’s feelings changed, adding clear explanations and pictures to show the mood.

This activity helped me understand how authors build tension and emotion in a book. It also made me think more deeply about the characters’ feelings and the big changes that happen at the end of the story.

Nano Banana C16


LI: to use AI to create an image that shows the contrast between events or characters

For today’s reading activity, we used Banana Nano to visually explore the contrast between Bruno and Shmuel, the main characters in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. By definition, a contrast highlights the differences between two elements. Our project specifically focuses on how Bruno and Shmuel represent completely opposite worlds.

Stretching Sentences

LI : To vary our sentennces length to create pace and impact .

Our group explored the ethical dilemmas faced during the Holocaust. We collaborated by sharing individual perspectives and building upon each other’s ideas to create cohesive final answers. Drawing evidence from class videos, we challenged ourselves to maintain a deep, continuous dialogue. Below are our responses to two pivotal questions regarding bravery and the “fear of the unknown”.

The boy in the striped pyjamas C1

LI: To synthesise your understanding of a text by using varied sentence structures to communicate character, mood, and abstract ideas

This week LS2 has started to read a new book named ‘The boy in the striped pajamas’  . We listen to Chapter one and then after that we created a 10 sentence paragraph based on what we heard. We generated an image on Gemini using the text we wrote for the chapter.