The Windmill Farmer

Well done on the story writing last week. This week we are going to look at windmils and the use of them in the UK. 

Monday

Today we are going to look at the differences between fact and opinion.

Fact is something that can't be proven true or false. Opinions are thoughts or feelings that are shared by someone and although they may often look or sound like facts they are based on someone's own ideas and thoughts and not backed up by any evidence or proof.

If you are unsure there is a video here that helps explain it in more detail.

I would like you to complete this worksheet below.

Tuesday

Today we are going to be looking at the pros and cons of windmill farms. This is a highly disputed topic as many people can see the advantages of using windmills as a source of electricity however many will also dispute their impact on the environment

You are going to be writing a discussion piece on this topic 'Should the UK have more windmill farms?' but before you can you need to do some research to support your arguments both for and against. So you will need to split your page into two sides and find some evidence to support both for and against. When including arguments in a discussion it often helps if you have data or statistics to support your point e.g. percentages of people who support something or numbers of animals that are being harmed etc. If you can find any data to support your arguments then it makes the reader believe in it more and understand the argument more.

These are some of websites I have found but there are many more out there if you want to search it.

Just energy

Ducksters

Oddizzi

BBC

Enjoy researching.

Wednesday

Hopefully you were able to find lots of arguments both for and against (pro and con) the idea of windmill or wind turbine farms. It definitely started some interesting discussions in class.  

Today you need to get these ideas down onto a planning grid to help you with your writing at the end of the week. Planning your ideas and getting them down on paper helps you structure your writing when you need to write it up and also helps you see if you have any gaps or to check that all your arguments are well thought out and include details to help inform your reader. Think about which of the points you found yesterday are the best ones to put forward for either for or against wind farms and use these. Where you have found the arguments think of  everything you can write to support that point, one sentence for each argument isn't really going to be enough to help inform people so for example

Wind farms are more energy efficient - they are powered by a natural resource that will not run out or get used up. In comparison to using fossil fuels which will eventually run out and also create a lot of greenhouse gases when they are turned into electricity. Greenhouse gases are having a negative effect on our world and are believed to be the cause of damage to our Ozone layer. 

Can you see how I took one point but wrote down lots of connecting points with it so I can backup my point when I come to write up my discussion at the end of the week. 

When we write a discussion it is really important that both sides of the argument are equally balanced as you aren't trying to persuade the reader that one side is a better point than the other you are simply giving them all the information and allowing them to make their own decision about it. So you need to ensure that both your arguments for each side seem fairly even e.g. you have about the same amount and one doesn't make it sound massively worse than the others for the other side. 

I have attached a planning sheet below but you can create your own or you can type straight into GC as I have put a planning sheet up on there as well. 

Thursday and Friday

I am going to give you two days to write this up as I expect this to be written in quite a lot of detail and not a rushed piece of writing. 

A discussion text clearly shows both sides of the argument (the for and the against) and leaves it up to the reader to decide which point of view they support or believe more. Here are some tips for writing a well thought-out and detailed discussion text. 

• Introduction - as with all introductions you are introducing the topic of the discussion so what is it about and maybe a very short idea of each side or what about a question or two to the reader to help engage them into the text. 
• Arguments - each argument should be a paragraph on its own and needs to be detailed and include enough information to help the reader understand what this point is about. One sentence is unlikely to give the reader a lot of detail and so you will need several sentences in each paragraph. It also helps if you can include data e.g. percentages (for this piece you can make them up if you need to), data helps people believe the point more and supports it with scientific or numerical information. 
• Conclusion - this is a summary of both sides, you may include one or two of the key points from each side in a short summary to just help remind the reader. You may also ask a question to the reader to get them thinking about which side of the argument they support and why. 
• Generalisers - we looked at generalisers when we wrote a non-chronological report. Generalisers are used to say most, some, many of a group of people support this idea or that they often, usually, occasionally do something. 
• Exciting sentence starters - these, as always, help engage the reader and keep them reading. 

Below I have written my own discussion text for which is better being an adult or a child (please note this is very child focused as trust me I wrote it thinking I wish I could spend my money on holidays, cars and expensive things).  I want you to think about how I have set out my three arguments for each side and the generalisers and sentence starters I have used. 

On the GC document there is a success criteria at the top of it to help you think about all the different writer's techniques you will need to try and include. Remember this is a two day piece of work so I need you to write it in detail and not rush through this piece.