This half term, Year 6 have been using Greta Thunberg’s ‘Our House is on Fire’ speech, which she gave at the World Economic Forum in January 2019, to analyse features of persuasive writing. Using this and other examples from ‘No one is too small to make a difference,’ a collection of Thunberg’s speeches, the children have practised using features such as: metaphors; repetition; precise verbs; relative clauses; personification; complex and short sentences; counter viewpoints; modal verbs and many other devices. Each day, they collected exciting vocabulary, using ‘Word Hippo,’ an online thesaurus. At this stage the writing process was heavily scaffolded, meaning the children crafted some beautiful work, to which they were able to refer when branching out on their own later this term. Examples of the authorial techniques were displayed around the room to reinforce the learning.
