Description
Instruction to students: Write a 1000-Word Essay (Writing exercise).
Read the article as a blog post: https://fivehousepublishing.com/2021/10/08/helium-balloons-and-sky-lanterns-our-new-jellyfish-and-alien-space-killers-of-the-future/
When a helium balloon pops hundreds of meters – high up in the sky – it glides and floats down as soft bait. The Maori Sky Father (New Zealand context) – Ranginui – immediately issues a warning:
Alert! Alert!
(Kia Mataara,
Kia Mataara!)
Floating jellyfish over a city. It carries a message.’
Write a 1000 word essay of Helium balloons and Sky lanterns and discuss the devastating effects on the marine life of our oceans. Focus on hooking in the reader — provide an interesting introductory paragraph. Choose a title for the essay that draws attention and pops. Compare and contrast some of the research data and other known facts. Use the exemplar essay for inspiration. By using your current writing skill — and challenging yourself —improve your paragraph writing, your sentence styles, punctuation, and more in the process.
Plan your essay. Show your planning (take a picture and add it at the end of your essay. Share it with your teacher (Google Doc). For example, show the introductory paragraph, the body (middle), and the concluding paragraph. Take the body paragraph and carefully plan how you would use your research data.
You could use helium balloons and Sky lanterns for your essay. However, if you want to write about something else, that harms the environment, feel free to use it.
Learning intention:
- Hooking the reader in with an exciting and compelling introduction.
- Spend time on your very first sentence, crafting a uniquely designed sentence.
- Planning and structuring of the paragraphs.
- Include comparison and contrasting of two subjects: E.g. helium balloons and sky lanterns.
- Exploring the sustainable practice of these items and the impact on the environment (parts, movement, animal behaviour, and more).
- Conclusion: delivering a power sentence/paragraph at the end (short/ powerful/pro-active).
- Providing additional links and resources to inspire young writers to write on the topics of helium balloons and sky lanterns in the environment. Young writers could explore other sustainable aspects and other unsustainable ideas related to the named subjects — harming the environment. For example, meteorologists’ helium balloons pop high up in the sky and eventually falls to earth. Skyfall. It could reach land, the ocean, a river or a dam. Though we all need weather data, how could these large rubber balloons influence the environment? Are alternative solutions available? Are there other methods to collect weather data?
This lesson was inspired by the Write that Essay (WTE) education company in New Zealand.
See https://www.writethatessay.org/. 12-sentence styles, paragraph styles, and more.
Here is an indication of some of the things teachers are looking for:
STRUCTURE Essay relevant to the topic. Topic covered in depth. Interesting introduction — setting the scene. Strong conclusion (referring to important points in the body). Pro-activity — offer a solution or idea.
ARGUMENT Accurate presentation of evidence. Logically developed argument — original and creative thought.
STYLE Fluent piece of writing. In other words, a natural flow of argumentation. Succinct writing (accuracy).
PRESENTATION Legible and well set out work. Reasonable length (meets the requirements given by the teacher).
SOURCES Adequate acknowledgement of sources. For example, when an image is used.
MECHANICS Grammatical correctness of sentences (e.g. tenses). Correct spelling throughout. Effective use of figures and tables (data/graph/diagram). Correct use of units and quantities.
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION Are there evidence of creative processes used to write the essay. The teacher is looking for originality! Break the rules in some instances. A caveat though, not too much outside the square thinking. Remember it is a 100-word essay. Stick to the essay writing rules.
