Year 5 Prose Style: Introducing the 'Messi Wiggle'

Isn't Lionel Messi, Barcelona FC's Argentine football genius, brilliant? He is the best dribbler in the world. A wiggle of his hips - and he's away!

The subordinate clause is like the Messi wiggle - it is the little 'wiggle' that sends the sentence in a different direction, if only for a moment. Subordinate clauses make your writing more interesting!

Task: Write about a family party. Include a 'Messi wiggle' (an embedded clause) in every sentence, e.g.

Dad, aged fifty, decided to throw a surprise birthday party for my Uncle William. My Uncle, known to his friends as Bill, looked shocked when he walked into the room! The party, which must have cost thousands of pounds, was a complete success! My Mum, aged fifty-two, said it was the best party she had ever attended!

Feeling clever? Include a bracket, too!

Write ten-twelve lines

Lost your worksheet? Doh! Download another copy of our first 'Messi Wiggle' task from my box at box.net.

P.S. Your spellings for next Tuesday are here at Spelling City; we'll look at this tomorrow!

Year 5 Prose Style - Using the 'Messi Wiggle'

Isn't Lionel Messi, Barcelona FC's Argentine genius, brilliant? He is the best dribbler in the world. A wiggle of his hips - and he's away!

The subordinate clause is like the Messi wiggle - it is the little 'wiggle' that sends the sentence in a different direction, if only for a moment.

Task: Write about a family party. Include a 'Messi wiggle' (an embedded clause) in every sentence, e.g.

Dad, aged fifty, decided to throw a surprise birthday party for my Uncle William. My Uncle, known to his friends as Bill, looked shocked when he walked into the room! The party, which must have cost thousands of pounds, was a complete success! My Mum, aged fifty-two, said it was the best party she had ever attended!

Write ten-twelve lines

Year 6 Revision - The 'Messi Wiggle'

L.O. To revise the importance of a varied prose style

In class, we've often talked about trying to fit in all our sentence types and forms of punctuation in the opening 6-7 lines of our stories:

Fragments
Impact sentences
Simple sentences
Compound sentences
Bracket
Dash
Semi-colon
Colon

Homework: The first six-seven lines of a short story entitled 'Down on the Farm'. Include all of the punctuation above! Then come onto the blog and type your work up in the comments section! Remember, only write six-seven lines!