How to use adjectives in your writing.

Teachers often ask students to use more adjectives in their writing.

But what are they?

Before we look at adjectives, it is important that you understand what a noun is, because adjectives and nouns go together.

       

   Nouns: person – baby     place - London             thing - cake

A noun can be:

·        A person – Mum, John, girl, teacher, President, friend.

·        A place – France, shop, beach, home, London, Eiffel Tower.

·        A thing – dog, tree, house, bed, hat, toy, cloud, road, lolly.

If the noun starts with a capital letter it’s called a proper noun.

Adjectives are words that describe the noun.

The adjective can describe a noun in lots of different ways.

Look at this poster to see how you can describe a noun:

When we write a sentence, there is always a noun in the sentence. The noun is the subject that we are writing about. 

·        The dog barked.

·        Tom read his book.

·        The ship sailed away.

In these sentences the words in blue are the nouns (nouns: dog,book,ship / proper noun: Tom).

By using adjectives in our writing, we can make our sentences more interesting to read.

·        The lonely dog barked.

·        Old Tom read his tattered book.

·        The huge ship sailed away.

Sometimes a sentence has more than one noun:

        I found a sock in my toy-box.

We can use adjectives to describe both nouns:

        I found a smelly sock in my old toy-box.

We can even use more than one adjective, but we must remember to separate them with a comma:

        I found a smelly, bobbly sock in my old, blue toy box.

The Adjective Game.

You can play this game with your friends or family when you are sitting around the table having tea, or when you are going on a car journey.

Take it in turns to think about a noun. Now see if each person playing the game can think about an adjective to describe the noun.

For example: house

·        haunted house

·        pretty house

·        huge house

·        derelict house

Notice how the different adjectives make you imagine a different kind of house each time.

Hopefully, you now know what an adjective is.

So, the next time your teacher asks you to use more adjectives in your writing, you will know what to do!

Remember, adjectives make your work more interesting to read.

There are lots of links on the internet that will help you to use adjectives in your writing.

Why not play some of these games, and make your teachers very happy when they see adjectives in your work!

Ice Cream Talk – select nouns

http://www.abcya.com/nouns_and_verbs.htm

Word Invasion – untick all options other than nouns and adjectives

http://www.arcademics.com/games/invasion/invasion.html

Noun Explorer - Identify the nouns

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/grammar/nouns.htm

Adjective Explorer - Identify the adjectives

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/grammar/adjectives.htm

Trapped – use your mouse arrow to push the crates

(Note, comparative adjectives tend to end in er. They compare two nouns: bigger, smaller, longer, taller, quicker, slower etc.)

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Flash.aspx?e=spelling-grammar01

This post has been written by Karen Crichton, one of our English tutors at Blackhen Education. For more information about any of our English courses, feel free to contact me at: sue@blackheneducation.com or visit our website: www.blackheneducation.com

Out of Afrika - New Charity for Blackhen Education

For the last few years Blackhen Education has been supporting a charity in India and decided that this year it was time for a change. We still wanted to support a charity dedicated to providing education for less fortunate children, but we thought we would look to another continent.

After a lot of discussion and reading through of websites/links and information we decided upon 'Out of Afrika', based in Kenya. I can't say the name didn't have anything to do with the choice. I love the film 'Out Of Africa' starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford; and as a teenager I watched the drama 'Flame Trees of Thika' about a British family settling in this part of Kenya.

However, the main reason that we decided on this particular charity, amongst so many worthwhile causes, was the impact that sponsorship could make on the lives on individual students here. For a very small amount of money a year, our two sponsored children will be able to attend school and eat regular meals.

The main aim of the charity is to provide an education for the very poorest of children from Primary to Secondary age. Many of these children come from large families, often with only one parent. In addition to poverty they often have to face a range of other social problems. Education can quite frankly change their lives for the better. Needless to say, education is prized and valued greatly by many in the local community.

http://www.outofafrika.org.uk/2/

Meet our two sponsor children:

Blackhen Education will sponsor two children, allowing them to have a basic education. We have two pupils; Francis and Lucy. We will receive school reports to follow their progress and photographs from their school.

This is Francis and he is 14 yrs old.

This is Lucy and she is 14 yrs old.

Blackhen students will be involved in writing handwritten letters to them and designing and making homemade Christmas cards.

The charity has its own website, where you can read all about the work they do and how you can work with them as a volunteer:
http://www.outofafrika.org.uk/2/

They also have a facebook page which you are welcome to follow: https://www.facebook.com/ooafrika/ 

This blog post was written by Sue Aitken, founder and director of Blackhen Education. For more information about our online English courses, please visit our website: www.blackheneducation,com 

Top Tips for Descriptive Writing

Descriptive writing is a really important skill to develop in English. Not only will you need it if you take English IGCSE, but it can also help to improve your overall writing style. We’ve come up with a few guidelines that will help you create a truly original and detailed piece of descriptive writing. Follow these tips and you’ll be sure to succeed!

1.      Use the Five Senses

This is something we’re often taught about in primary school, but we start to forget about them as we get older. Descriptive writing is all about creating a clear image for your reader. If you want your reader to truly feel like they are experiencing a scene with you, then referring to all five senses is a must. For those who have forgotten, they are: hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. If you master using these, you could consider using them metaphorically, for example: I could taste the fear in the air.

2.      Zoom In

When writing to describe, it’s important to focus in closely on certain items or objects. For example, if you’re describing a haunted house, you might start by describing the overall appearance of the house, and then zoom in to talk about specific things. You might talk about the dusty doorknob that creaks when you twist it in your hand, or the cobwebs delicately hanging from the window frames. Imagine yourself in the situation you are describing, and think about small details that could help create a bigger picture.

3.      Don’t tell a story

Remember that there is a difference between narrative and descriptive writing. Narrative writing is where you tell a story. You will often have characters and a clear plot. In descriptive writing, you don’t need these elements. You may just have one character, who you speak as in the first person. I often advise my students to imagine themselves standing still when they are writing to describe. Stand still, and describe what is around you. Once you’ve started writing, you may wish for your character to begin moving round to explore, however you don’t need to have dramatic plot devices like cliff-hangers.

4.      Use ambitious adjectives

Because you won’t have a dramatic plot in your writing, it’s important to keep the reader’s interest in other ways. One way you could do this is by using ambitious adjectives. The best way to do this is to have a thesaurus handy (either in book form or on the computer). You don’t need to do this for every word, but if you’re struggling to find a different adjective, then the thesaurus will be able to recommend an alternative word.

5.      Use a variety of sentence starters

Once again, because it isn’t a story, your writing won’t be broken up with speech and other narrative devices. Instead, make sure you hold the reader’s interest by using a variety of sentences. This involves using short sentences for effect, maybe even using one word paragraphs and varying the way you start sentences. If you read back through your work, and find that all your sentences start with ‘The…’ or ‘A…’ or He…’, then you’ll need to rearrange the word order. For example:

·         The dark tree bent crookedly over the stagnant swamp ->

·         Over the stagnant swamp, the dark tree bent crookedly ->

·         Crookedly, the dark tree bent over the stagnant swamp.

You can see how the same sentence can be restructured to vary the way your sentences start. Play around with your sentences, and try starting them with: an adverb, a pronoun, a noun, a verb and adjective or a preposition. Mix it up and you’ll keep the reader on the edge of their seats!

This blog was written by Lucy Taylor, one of our IGCSE English tutors at Blackhen Education.

For more information about any of our English courses, please contact me at: sue@blackheneducation.com or visit our website: www.blackheneducation.com 

Summer Activities for Children

Treasure Ahoy!

Summer is the perfect time to enjoy some outside learning. Many studies have shown that it has numerous benefits for children: better health, decreased stress levels, enhanced communication skills and increased motivation, being just a few.

Treasure hunts and scavanger hunts are a great way to get children learning and exploring away from I pads and computers, either in your own garden or in a supervised outdoor space, such as woods or a park. They are also a means for children to practise reading, writing and communicating in a fun way. For all of the activities outlined below, there is the option of the adult writing and child reading or vice versa, one child writing for another child to read and with very young children, working together on both writing and reading,

Creating maps:This is perhaps the most obvious aspect of treasure hunts. Using a large piece of paper, create a map of the garden, encourage children to label important parts, e.g vegetable patch, chicken run, swings. Of course, you don't have to stick to reality; the sand pit can become quick sand and the pond a swamp filled with alligators! Your garden could be Narnia, or Arendelle, or anywhere that your child is interested in at the moment. X will mark the spot for the hidden treasure (the possibilities are endless). An alternative to using paper, is to use chalks to mark out a route and leave signs, such as “Danger”, “Go forward 10 steps”,  “Proceed at your peril” or “Welcome to Narnia”. Maps are also an excellent way to introduce the idea of keys.

Clues and codes: Setting up a treasure hunt around the garden or any space you’re familiar and comfortable with, can again be done by you or your children. The hunters are looking to uncover a succession of clues leading them ultimately to the hidden treasure. The clues can be hidden in all sorts of places and is very exciting. Whether the children write the clues or decipher them, both activities entail using creative thinking and will certainly lead to lots of discussion!

Scavanger hunts: Slightly different to treasure hunts, scavenger hunts are a race to find as many items as possible on a list, so are great if you happen to have loads of children in the garden during the summer holidays.

The site below has 10 fantastic ideas for scavenger hunts, many of them outdoors.

http://www.mykidsadventures.com/scavenger-hunt-ideas/

Another fabulous resource is the Woodland Trust, which has free spotter sheets on everything from butterflies, creepy crawlies, tracks and leaves to poo! https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/naturedetectives/activities/search/?activityType=100016071

I have used the Woodland Trust spotter sheets with whole classes and individual children, with great success. The children are so excited to be finding leaves, birds, flowers etc, they hardly know they are reading. If you want to involve a bit of technology, help the children to take photographs of their finds, upload and label, describe and catalogue alphabetically.

Alternativley, children can easily create their own spotter sheets for each other. A great way of doing this is encourage them to  select 10 toys (plastic dinosours, cars, teddies) write the names on a piece of paper and then place them around the garden for another child to find.

Finally, just in case we have some rainy days over the summer, treasure hunts and scavanger hunts are easily played indoors too. If you want to challenge older children, searching for adjectives, proper nouns, adverbs etc in books works well as a timed competition.

However you decide to organise your treasure or scavenger hunts, you and your children are sure to have lots of fun while reading and writing!

We would love to see your designs for your treasure maps. So why not send them to us at: sue@blackheneducation.com 

This blog post was written by Bernadette Whiteley, one of our English tutors at Blackhen Education.

IGCSE ENGLISH REVISION TIPS

With exams around the corner, you’ve probably already started revising, but by now your revision should start picking up. If you struggle with motivation, something that could really help you is creating a revision timetable. Set our certain hours of the day to revise different subjects; remembering to refer to your exam timetable so that you prioritise the exams you will sit first. In preparation for your English exams, we’ve created a list of tasks and exercises you could complete to thoroughly prepare you.

1.       Have a go at past papers- head to the Edexcel website  (http://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-international-gcses-and-edexcel-certificates/international-gcse-english-language-a-2011.coursematerials.html#filterQuery=category:Pearson-UK:Category%2FExam-materials), and you’ll find past papers that you can browse and attempt on your own. Some of these are specifically locked for teachers, but many can be accessed by anyone.  Attempt whole papers, or just the questions you struggle with. You’ll then be able to look at the mark scheme and so how well you did.

2.       If you’ve exhausted the past papers, try creating your own writing questions. Remember that you could be tested on writing to: inform, explain or describe in Paper One, and explore, imagine, entertain, argue, persuade or advise in Paper 2. Ask your friends or family for a topic you could argue an opinion about, or a situation you could advise on.

3.       Make a list of different literary techniques you could use- not only will it improve your exam if you are able to identify techniques such as metaphors and personification, but you’ll also need to apply them in your written exam. Write a list of effective examples of different literary techniques. Remember that examiners are looking for students who stand out from the crowd for those top grades, so try to think of examples a little bit outside the box.

4.       Look on YouTube- you’d be surprised how many students and teachers add revision material to YouTube. Whether you’re looking to revise an individual poem or looking for tips on how to write a strong argument, this is a great place to start.

5.       Re-read the texts- if you start to become tired practising exam questions and making notes, and would like something a bit more relaxing to do, try simply re-reading chapters of your key texts. Have a pen and notebook handy so that you can jot down any quotations or ideas that spring to mind. Reading things like newspapers and magazines can also help prepare you for the creative writing part of your exam.

6.       Head to BBC Bitesize- from specific revision tips to general advice about writing styles and genres, BBC Bitesize has lots of interactive resources including videos, quizzes and self-mark questions.

7.       Redecorate your room- So I’m not suggesting that you should repaint the walls with quotations from Shakespeare, but you’ll find it easier to take information in if you see it everyday. Write key quotations, effective vocabulary or even definitions of key terms around your bedroom, or even around the house. Simply walking past these sheets of paper everyday will help you absorb the information.

8.       Ask people to test you- create thematic flashcards, and then ask a sibling, parent or friend to test you to see what you’ve learned. You’ll also find lots of quizzes on the internet if you’d rather just test yourself.

Remember, it’s important to balance out revision and your free time. Spending hours and hours shut in your room revising non-stop isn’t healthy. Timetable yourself free time so that you can have dinner with your parents, see you friends or simply watch television. Do your best and I’m sure all your hard work will pay off!

This blog post was written by Lucy Taylor (IGCSE English tutor at Blackhen Education). For more information about our IGCSE English course, please contact us at: sue@blackheneducation.com or via our website: www.blackheneducation.com