Month: June 2023

LI: To explain in fewer words what the text is about.

Our challenge in this activity was to summarise the text in our own words. We were challenged to use powerful vocabulary instead of simpler words. My summary tells the journey of how Abbas escapes Afghanistan with his family. Abbas faces ardous obsticles while getting through the border.

I found this Abbas’ journey ardous because of all the obsticle he faced.

LI: To gauge the tension in a text.

   From Afghanistan To Aotearoa                                    My Name is Rez                                           Escape From Afghanistan

Our challenge in this activity was to gauge the tension across the events in the text. We needed to change the line height to show the change in tension as the story progressed.  The level of tension each event was rated (1-10) to show how we were feeling as each event unfolded. The Tension graph showed how the main charecter felt during the different acts. This was a collaborative challenge so we needed to have a learning conversation to discuss our ideas and decide the tension level as a group. We did this challenge for the texts ‘Escape From Afghanistan ‘, “From Afghanistan to Aotearoa’ and ‘My name is Rez’. I think the tension graph with the most tension is from Escape from Afghanistan because the tension ranged from 1 – 10. This tension graph was the only one to get to the 10. 

I found this activity interesting because of how we can infer about what the main charecter felt like.

LI: To compare and contrast the way authors hook us in and build tension in a set of texts.

Our group has made a definite choice that Abbas’ Story, ‘From Afghanistan to Aotearoa’ had a preferable exposition as they used short and meaningful quotes such as. Imagine having to make an impossible choice and face misery after misery or start a new life.’ They also used the techniques called ‘rhetorical questions’ to make the readers think about the questions. Another technique is using dramatic and effective words to build the tension. In the story in the last few parts of act 1, the question in the first line has been answered when they had a catastrophic conundrum between staying in their motherland and being miserable or risking their lives to escape their misery and hope of a new era. Would you risk everything  for freedom?

Our challenge in this activity was to compare and contrast the ways each author built tension and hooked us in using evidence from the texts to support our thinking. When we had read all three texts in the set we wrote a collaborative statement to convince other students why one of the story beginnings was better than the other(s). Our team’s statement was…  I found this activity exciting because we used resonings on why from Afghanistan to  Aotearoa.