Composition Writing & Types of Energy

Dear all,

As we reflect on today's topics being taught, here are some of the important points:

English

We have begun on the first unit of composition writing (Picture Composition). This year, I have added one pre-writing component of focus writing. In this exercise, a model part of the composition is being written down for you so that you can memorise the key phrases and use them for future writing. In focus writing, we focus on one aspect of the composition (for example, introduction). Instead of drafting the whole composition, we spent time going through the introduction and have an ideal introduction being written down for you. In future, I will just be providing you with the starting few words and you will be continuing the rest of the paragraph and I will mark through.

In this way, focus writing helps to place greater focus on the different components (introduction, plot, problem/solution and conclusion) bit by bit rather than to focus on everything at one go. In this way, by the end of the year, we would have focus writing for each component at least twice.

Remember the key points for picture composition:

• Look at the picture first and identify the main characters and other important characters
• Identify the main plot of the story (main event happening) Why is he doing this? What/how did this main event happen? How are the people feeling?
• Describe and elaborate what happens next (solution)
• Give a conclusion.

Finish up your conclusion and try to make use of the five phrases given to you. Dateline is Thursday, 17/1/2013.

Science

We have started on the second chapter of different types of energy. There are 6 main types of energy in the syllabus:

1. Kinetic
2. Potential (Gravitational, elastic & chemical)
3. Light
4. Sound
5. Heat
6. Electrical

In order to focus and really go through the topic, we have touched on kinetic and potential energy for today. Kinetic energy is movement energy. Any item that moves has kinetic energy. Kinetic energy depends on the speed and mass of an item. The faster the speed, the more kinetic energy the object has. For mass, if two items are similar (e.g toy car) and we give the same force to them except that toy car A is heavier than B, toy car B will have more kinetic energy when it moves because it does not need to overcome as much resistance as A.

Gravitational potential energy is the stored energy from a high place away from the ground. The higher an object, the more gravitational potential energy it has.

Chemical potential energy is found in food / fuels or battery cells. The energy stored is used later for conversion to other energies.

Elastic potential energy is stored energy in elastic items. It is at its maximum when you stretch an object to its furthest point without breaking.

Tomorrow, we will be doing an experiment on kinetic and gravitational potential energy!

Remember to pay for your PSLE books and study for your spelling unit 1 for Thursday.

Sincerely,
Mr Nelson Ong