WordsPlease Monthly Magazine 6

This is the sixth of the PRINTED MAGAZINES you will receive when
you subscribe to WordsPlease.

WordsPlease magazine 6 for intelligent children (16 pages)

I can't believe we give all this away for just £6 per month! I have taught for over thirty years and have come across many intelligent children in that time. I can promise you that any youngster who tackles a good part of all the activities and challenges WordsPlease provides can't help but improve their English and Communication skills. The work is designed for a range of ages and can be tackled at different levels accordingly.

The illustration on the covers of this and the last module's magazines will give you a strong hint that Shakespeare is putting in another appearance - this time with Romeo and Juliet (as if you hadn't guessed). On the website you will again find a prose version of this famous play, giving youngsters an introduction to the story before they tackle the original Shakespeare version.

The story writing articles continue with how to link settings and story openings to set the scene for your short story or novel.

The history of place names gives an account of how some names were related to the geographical nature of the site, the type of dwelling first erected there or the name of the man who originally owned the land. The road in which I live is called Moat Way which, apparently, has nothing to do with castles - the name of the owner of the land was Mr Moat. That must prove something!

Travel writing pops up again and is related to the famous travel writers. This time we are recording personal experiences of places which is quite different to the travel agent style of last time.

We also have a good look at famous quotations - who said what and when.

Letter writing techniques are focussed in this module on the more formal letter and which expressions to use in getting over your point .

Serious poetry turns in this module to Haiku, the famous single verse poetry consisting of a first and third line with 5 syllables each and a second line with seven syllables.

Then comes a section on using your local record office (normally run by the local council) to research old maps, past censuses etc. As a starter, you are given on the website a copy of an old census and asked to read the copper plate handwriting and transfer it to the form given in the magazine.

The cryptic clues become ever more, well, cryptic and challenging and the codes and ciphers section on the website looks at the Enigma machine and how it functioned.

Drama activities continue and the challenge in the magazine is to decode the names of famous playwrights.

The grammar section this time involves sentence connectives such as since, after, whilst and although with suitable practice exercises.

Writing a reasoned argument continues in this module too and encourages proper research to answer a letter to a newspaper.

The fun page (with the rain shop, reign shop and rein shop) and crossword are exactly where you would expect them to be.