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.
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.
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.