Year 6 Supporting English

Supporting English At Home

Year 6

Reading

Ask questions about their reading; who was the main character? What did they do? Why do you think that? Would you do the same thing? What do you think happens next?
Encourage relatives and friends to give books as gifts.
Join your local library!
Keep an eye out for the themes that catch your child's imagination at school - and help follow it up with more reading.
Read all kinds of materials – stories, poems, newspaper articles, magazines and comics.
Talk about a character in the book – ask questions such as ‘What does he/she look like?’, ‘What do you think they would like for breakfast?’….
Read a newspaper or magazine article about someone famous. Highlight all the adjectives, and then substitute them with your own.
Draw a picture of a character and do a spider web brainstorm around the picture of good describing words or phrases.
Read some poems together and look for similes/ metaphors that help you imagine the person or place.
When reading, encourage children to take note of any punctuation they come across - this will help them to be aware of correct punctuation when they are writing.
After reading a book, write a description of the main character using a simile / and or metaphor
Let them be the teacher: you read their books and they correct you!
Encourage and praise!!

Writing

Play ‘Guess Who’ describing games. Children could describe different members of the family using specific words and phrases for appearance. On the way to school who can be the first to spot an ‘emerald’ car, a ‘gigantic’ building etc. ‘I spy’ works very well for this too! Eg ‘I spy some thing that looks like…’
How many words can you think of that mean the same as big? Small? Hot? Ugly? Write the words on cards or post-its and try and arrange them in order of size or strength.
Play a game of 10 questions to guess which famous person you are describing
Make up an alliteration alphabet with a theme e.g. animals. Angry anteaters,
Make a book for another member of the family or a younger child they know in the school. What makes an exciting story for that particular person? Why?
During homework activities ask your child to plan what they are going to write before they have written it. Afterwards check it together. Have they written everything they intended? If not why? How could it be more effective? Have they remembered all the correct punctuation?
Ask them to proof read letters or e-mails at home; has the punctuation been used correctly?
Ask them to read articles of the newspaper or on-line and summarise the main points. Then ask them to give their opinion with reasons.
Have a sentence competition – start with a very short sentence e.g The boy ran. Who can expand this into the longest sentence, including adjectives, adverbs and clauses e.g The frightened boy, who was barely as tall as the fierce dog, ran quickly along the tarmac road.
Children could be encouraged to keep story ideas in their writing journals and record any interesting describing words they have come across in their reading, eg: ‘The castle glittered in the sunlight’.
Ask the children to choose some interesting words from their reading books. Can they use those in their writing?