Year 5 Prose: The 'Bracketing' Comma #1

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 a six-line paragraph about party. Include a 'Messi wiggle' (an embedded clause) in every sentence, e.g.

Aunt Sally, 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!

P.S. Download another copy of our first 'Messi Wiggle' task from my box at box.net.

P.P.S. Don't forget it is the poetry competition on Monday morning!

Year Six Prose: Introducing Reported Speech

Watch the video above for an introduction to reported speech.

Reported speech is a little tool that can spice up a dialogue - and the Grumpy Examiner loves it! Remember, the more little tricks you throw into your story, the more you will impress your readers!

Task: Please write a dialogue - a conversation - between a chef and an angry customer about a bad meal. Write 1/2 page of A4.

Your challenge? Include some reported speech. (Don't make it all reported speech - include two or three examples over the half page.)

Feeling clever? Try setting out the dialogue in different ways, e.g.

Bob frowned: "You call that soup?"

Due: Tuesday

Year Six Prose Style: The Dreaded Apostrophe

Can you spot the mistakes in the image above?

Visit the Apostrophe Protection Society.

Task: Please complete the apostrophe worksheets.
Due: Wednesday

Spellings
Please learn the 'en' and 'ify' words for a test next Tuesday. Revise at Spelling City.

(Image by libsk; used under Creative Commons agreement)

Year 6 Prose Style: Writing Elegant Prose

Your prose should be like Audrey Hepburn: elegant.

Task: Write an eight line of a description of a hansom cab - Sherlock Holmes' method for getting around Victorian London. Use this video, recorded in 1903, to help you:

Tick off the following as you include it in your description:
* Fragment sentence
* Impact sentence
* Compound sentence ( a sentence using the joining comma, and the word 'and', 'but' or 'or')
* Complex sentence (a sentence using the bracketing comma)

Please annotate your 'finished' work, showing me where you've used the different sentence structures.

Feeling clever? Try to include the following:
* Brackets
* A dash

Don't forget to complete the self-assessment when you've finished your work.

Feeling clever? Try to end your paragraph with an impact sentence.

Due: Wednesday

Spellings
Please learn the 'para' spellings at Spelling City. Dictation test next Tuesday.

Year 5 Spelling and Prose: Words ending in '-a'

Spelling: Your test next week is on words ending in 'a'. Learn the words at Spelling City

Prose: You're going to revise the layout of direct speech by writing a dialogue - write a conversation between an angry, tired parent and their little boy, who is refusing to go to bed. Write 1/2 side - and focus on your use of the comma in direct speech.

(Image by Uqbar is back; used under Creative Commons agreement)

Tuesday 8th September: Year Five & Six Homework

Year Five
1. Please complete the 'sion' and 'tion' suffix ending worksheets and learn your spellings for our test next week, using Spelling City.

2. Don't forget that your 'Daydreamer' comprehension is due in tomorrow.

3. Your composition unit for the first couple of weeks is about planning a story. Learn more at this special page on the pupil wiki.

Year Six
1. Please complete the 'Willie and the Bone' comprehension; bring this in tomorrow

2. Please learn the 'Nine Parts of Speech' poem. You can learn this in different ways, depending on your preferred learning style:
* Copy out the poem;
* Turn the poem into a clapping rhyme;
* Record the poem and play it back through your earphones.

Listen to this pupil Eduboo to get some more ideas:


Do you know your preferred learning style?

3. Year Six will be revising brainstorming techniques. Learn more here.

(Image by TheGiantVermin; used under Creative Commons agreement)

Year 5 Prose: Using Simple and Compound Sentences

L.O. To revise the definition of simple and compound sentences

We have been revising simple and compound (and, or, but) sentence structures.

Task: Write a description of a palace. Describe both the inside and the outside. Write 12 lines - your challenge is to use only simple and compound sentences. Please annotate your finished work, showing me the simple and compound sentences.

Feeling clever? Include metaphor and simile

Revise our descriptive techniques - including similes and metaphor - at Bald Worm here.

(Photo by Kivanc; used under Creative Commons agreement)

Due: Wednesday

Year 5 Spelling/Prose - Using the Bracketing Comma

1. Learn the spellings for next week - words that use a 'hard c'; don't forget you can make this learning fun by using the games at Spelling City. We love Spelling City: it makes something that can be a bit of a chore into an enjoyble learning experience!

2. Write a short dialogue - 1/2 side of A4 - between two Snow Men (or Snow Girls), focusing on your use of the bracketing comma, like this:

"Brrr, I'm cold, Jack," shivered Bob, wishing he was wearing a hat.

Due: Thursday

Note: photo by Antony Pranata under Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

Year 5: Bracketing Off Names (Monday 19th January 2009)

//L.O. To understand the use of the 'bracketing' comma to 'bracket off' names//

Over the next few weeks we'll be learning about the bracketing comma - the key to writing brilliant prose!

Task: Write a dialogue (a conversation) between four member of a family who argue about where to go on holiday. Your task is to 'bracket off' names using a comma as you write, e.g.

"I think we should go to Australia, Bob!" said Sally.

Feeling clever? 'Bracket off' words 'No' and 'Yes', e.g.

"Yes, that's a brilliant idea, Bob!" exclaimed Sally.


Write 1/2 side of A4.

Due: Tuesday

Year 6 Location Description: Crypt! (Thursday 27th November 2008)

L.O. To vary sentence lengths when writing a longer description.
Homework: Please complete your description of the spooky crypt, including all of Bald Worm's descriptive techniques, but with a focus on varying sentence lengths, i.e. your prose style

Prose Style

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: education prose)

P.S. I'll upload the other powerpoints as the week goes by!

Year 5: Spelling and Prose Style: Using the Adverb-Starter Comma (Tuesday, 25th November 2008)

1. Please learn the Irregular Plurals for our test next Tuesday.

2. Write a poem that uses the adverb starter comma. See instructions on the worksheet.

Feeling clever? Try to include both simile and metaphor in your poem.

Due: Wednesday

Year 6 Prose Style - Bracketing Commas (Tuesday, 25th November 2008)

L.O. To include a long, complex sentences with three of more clauses when setting the scene.

We are going to focus on writing longer descriptions this week - to prepare, and revise our descriptive techniques, please write a description of a frightening, gothic location. Focus on including a long, complex sentence with three or more clauses. Write 10-15 lines.

Feeling clever? Include the colon!

Due: Tuesday

Year 6 - Latymer-Style Comprehension

This week we are going to focus on Latymer-style comprehensions. Latymer's comprehension paper is divided into two parts:
Understanding, with questions about the events and characters in the passage, and
Comment and Analysis, where you have to study the author's prose style.

Take this opportunity to revise the questions about prose style and an author's technique at Bald Worm's comprehension blog, http://bit.ly/comprehension.

Task: Please complete the Agatha Christie Latymer-style comprehension. Not sure about one of the questions? Go onto http://bit.ly/comprehension

Download another copy of this comprehension from my 'box' at box.net

Due: Tuesday.

Learn more about Agatha Christie here.

Year 6 Prose - Complex Sentences

We've been looking at how important it is to include complex sentences in a story.

Homework: Plan a story for 'The Forest'. Write the first ten lines of your story, setting the scene (e.g. describe the forest), making sure that you include at least three complex sentences, and compound, simple, impact and fragment sentences

Feeling clever? Include a colon.

P.S. Why not try this 'parts of speech' revision game?



P.P.S. The Spelling City word list is here.

Year 6 - Prose Style and Mathematics Homework

English
L.O. To revise the use of the listing comma


How To Use Commas

Write a description of Watson's office (remember that he's a doctor). This is a twofold challenge:

(a) Can you include all of our descriptive techniques
(b) Make sure that you include the listing comma.
(C) Include a colons.

Write 10 lines.

Feeling clever? Include both the bracketing and joining commas.

Mathematics: Work for 1/2 hour in your Mental Arithmetic book.

Due: Wednesday

Christmas Card
Complete your Christmas card design for Monday on A5 paper. The theme is 'Christmas Angel'

P.S. Feel free to add to the TimeZoneExperience wiki!

Year 5 - The Comma Song

There is a secret to getting commas in the right place: the connective. We use a connective to joing together two sentences that might otherwise stand on their own. For instance, 'Mr Hitchen thinks he is cool' is a sentence. As is, 'He looked stupid trying to dance.' It is when you join these two sentences together that you need a connective. Join the two sentences together and you get this: 'Mr Hitchen is a criminal mastermind, but he looked stupid trying to dance.' Do you notice where I put the comma? That's right - before the connective.

Homework: Learn the words to the comma song and write a tune to go with it.

Due: Next Tuesday

Year 5 Prose - Combining Different Types of Sentence

L.O. To combine different types of sentence in a short paragraph

This term we have spent some time focussing on the use of the comma; next term, our focus will be on bringing all our prose work together.

Homework: Write a description of the office in this picture, using all of our descriptive techniques - your challenge is to use all the sentence:
* Fragment
* Impact
* Simple
* Compound (using the 'joining comma')
* Complex

Feeling clever? Include all four of the commas we have studied - listing, adverb-starter, joining and bracketing.

Don't forget to annotate your finished paragraph, showing the different paragraphs you've used.

Year Five - Identifying Impact Sentences

Impact sentences bring interest and variety to your writing. Read through the next few chapters of Montmorency, highlighting impact sentences with a gel pen or highlighter.

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 5 Prose Style - 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.