A few things that I have learned in Language Arts

This year, I have learnt a lot of things in Language Arts lessons by Mr Lundberg. In this blog post, I am going to share a few things that I have learnt.

Currently, we are learning how to understand and appreciate poems. Previously in Primary School, we were not taught about poems and this is a completely new topic for most of us. Unravelling the meanings of the poems is interesting and sometimes difficult. To find out the meanings of the poems, we have to understand the whole poem before looking into each line carefully. Most of the time, we have to link the lines together to check if our understanding is correct. We have to read in between the lines as information is not directly given in a poem. We have to work things out for ourselves from the clues given in the text such as its figurative language. There may also be puns in the poem. A pun is a " play on word " in which a writer either uses a word which has two( or more ) often contradictory meanings, or uses two differently spelt words which sound the same. There are also rhythms, which are controlled by the use of punctuation, rhyme, repetition and different line lengths.

Another valuable thing I have learnt is summary writing. Summary writing is important as it does not beat around the bush and just goes straight to the point. Although the summarised part may not be too informative, it is shorter than the passage and easier to digest. Summarising a passage is quite simple. The main thing is to highlight and take note of the important points in a passage. There is a limit to the number of words you can write in a summary. Write down all your points and count them to see if they exceed the limit. After that, you can start writing the summary. You should not miss out any main points in the passage as this is a summary and is supposed to contain all the important information in the passage.

Last but not least, I believe that my grammar and vocabulary have also improved. These are some of the things that are valuable to me that I have learnt in Language Arts lesson this year.

National Day

Today, which is the 9th of August, is National Day! This year is Singapore's 45th birthday. As National Day falls on a Monday, we are on holiday today as well as tomorrow. We had our National Day celebration in school on Friday and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The celebration included performances by Wushu, NCC and also Gymnastics. The Wushu team performed their routines and also " fought " with each other. The NCC squad performed a precision drill. I enjoyed this performance the most as it was really very impressive. After they threw their guns up, all of them caught their guns at the same time and their hand positions were also the same. Suck accuracy would definitely needed constant practice and also teamwork. The gymnastics team performed somersaults and cartwheels. At the end of their performance, they out a trampoline in front of two people, after that, another guy would jump over them by using the trampoline. He will stand behind them after the jump. The number of people obstacles just keep increasing until eight people are standing in a row and someone jumps over them.

Other than the performances, we also had contests such as the SMS contest and the Singapore History contest. The Singapore History contest was for a four pairs of teachers and students. They were given questions about Singapore's History. In the end, everyone who participated got a prize. Next was the SMS contest. The SMS contest was open to everyone in the school. About six questions were asked and we were supposed to key in the six answers and send it to a number. After that, there was a lucky draw for students who got all the answers correct. Not only were these the only contests, there was also a " Don't Forget The Lyrics" for three teachers and students. The songs that were given to the participants were the previous years' national day songs. All except one of the participants walked away with a bag of lollipops and sweets.

In conclusion, I enjoyed the national day celebration very much and hope to celebrate it again next year.