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English

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5
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Victoria Burrill
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AN HACHETTE UK COMPANY

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 Contents
Introduction v

1 Back to nature 1

2 Far from home 13

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3 Wrecked 27

4 Time travel 39
5 Sporting success 52

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6 Creepy crawlies 63

7 Flying high 76

8 In the dark 90

9 On the stage 103

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10 Amazon adventure 117

Glossary 127

Index 129
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 Introduction
Reading unlocks the world. Reading newspaper and magazine
articles provides you with valuable information about what is going
on around you, reading letters and diary extracts allows you to
share the thoughts and experiences of other people, and reading
stories and poems unlocks your imagination and lets you fly freely

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to places, spaces and times you may never be able to visit in real
life. And being able to retrieve and summarise what you have read,
to understand the structure and purpose of a text and why an
author has used the language they have used, and to infer meaning
and make deductions from what you have read are the keys to
reading. In turn, reading helps you learn how to speak, how to listen

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and how to write; how to communicate your own thoughts, feelings
and ideas with those around you.
This series adopts a skills-based approach to teaching English.
This means that you will be introduced to a skill, such as the
comprehension skill of inference or how to write a descriptive
passage, and you will return to it throughout Years 3 to 6, getting
better and better at it over time. This series also fulfils the
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requirements of both the ISEB English Syllabus and the National
Curriculum at Key Stage 2.

➜ Notes on features
Throughout this series you will come across the following features
that are designed to help you:
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Skill focus
This box will tell you which comprehension skill
each chapter focuses on and explains which
aspect of the skill you will be learning about.

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 Boxes like this contain questions, which give you opportunities to
practise your skills. In this book you will come across questions to
help you:
● practise your comprehension skills
● practise using grammar correctly
● practise using punctuation correctly
practise your spelling

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●
● develop your vocabulary
● practise your creative writing skills.

Speaking and listening

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Speaking and listening activities, that help you develop your speaking and
listening skills, have a special box all of their own.

At the end of each chapter you will find a list of fiction and non-fiction books linked
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to the theme of the chapter that you might like to read.
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 Back to nature
1

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➜ Comprehension
Skill focus: Retrieval and summary
In this chapter you will learn how to identify

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and answer questions that require you to find
information within a text. You will also learn how
to combine information that you have collected
from different parts of the text and explain it in
a shorter, more concise, way.
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Retrieval questions
Usually, the first questions in a comprehension will require you to
find information from a text. This is known as retrieval and, often,
you are only awarded one mark for each piece of information you
find. These questions are asked so that you can show your basic
understanding of what you have read.
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Look for the following phrases to spot retrieval questions:
● Who is …?
● Where did …?
● How many …?
● List …
● What is …?
Sometimes the retrieval questions ask you to list or find a certain
number of things. Make sure you find enough examples.

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 In order to answer retrieval questions effectively you need to do the
following:
● Identify what the question is asking about to help you find the
information. For example, the answers to ‘Who …?’ questions will
need a name or a person and ‘Where …?’ questions will require a
place as an answer.
● Identify how many pieces of information you are being asked for.

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● Ifthe question doesn’t direct you to a specific section of the text,
scan the text to find the relevant part.
● Look for words and phrases related to the question to find
the precise answer. For example, if the question asks who did
something, you will be looking for that action and some names.

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If it asks what time it was, you will be looking for numbers or
words relating to time such as ‘evening’, ‘morning’ or ‘o’clock’.

Summary questions
You may also be asked to summarise several pieces of information
and so you may need to look at different parts of the text. When
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you summarise something, you need to find information, as you
do for a retrieval question, and then you need to shorten what you
have found by writing down only the key points. Often you are
asked to summarise information in your own words.
Look for the following phrases to spot summary questions:
● Summarise …
● Describe in your own words …
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In order to answer summary questions effectively you need to:
1 Identify what you are being asked to summarise.
2 Work out whether the question asks you to use your own words.
3 Scan the text to find the paragraphs or sections that will help you.
4 Re-read the relevant parts of the text and work out what you
1 Back to nature

think is most important. Only include the most important

information or ideas in your summary.
5 If you are giving the answer in your own words, use synonyms
(different words with the same meaning). For example, ‘cold’
might become ‘chilly’ and ‘tall’ might become ‘towering’.

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 21 Copy and complete these sentences, adding in the missing
relative pronoun.
(a) Trees in the rainforest, _______ grow to over 80 metres
high, provide shade and shelter.
(b) The Rainforest, _______ future is under threat, must be
preserved at all costs.

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(c) Conservationists, ______ are working to prevent the
rainforest from being destroyed, travel all over the world.
(d) By buying fairtrade products, _______ are priced to
support local growers, we can all help the inhabitants of
the rainforest to live prosperously.

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(e) The trees in the emergent layer, ________ is the highest
level of vegetation, can grow up to 70 metres high.
(f) The Yanomami Tribe, ________ home is in the rainforest,
are increasingly worried about their future.
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➜➜Punctuation
Persuasive writing often requires you to explain or clarify terms and
ideas for the reader or listener. You can use parentheses to do this.

Parentheses
Parentheses are used to separate information from the main
sentence. The information within the parentheses is usually an
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aside, something additional rather than necessary. For example:
Brazil (the largest country in South America) is home to the
Amazon Rainforest.
You can use brackets, commas or dashes to show parentheses.
Brackets are more common in factual writing but there is no hard
or fast rule. For example:
1 Back to nature

Cocoa and coffee – some of the most common foodstuffs in the

world – are grown in the rainforest.
Fairtrade goods, which are produced ethically to give farmers a fair
price, are increasingly popular in supermarkets.

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 Spelling
22 Copy the following sentences, adding some extra
information to them using parentheses. Try to use all three
types of parentheses: brackets, commas and dashes.
(a) Thousands of animals live in the rainforest.
(b) Extinction is an increasing danger for some species of
animal and plant.

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(c) Recycling is an effective way to reduce waste.
(d) Many products in your local supermarket have come
from a rainforest.

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➜➜Spelling
Many words end in the following groups of letters:
-ent         -ence         -ency
They can be easily confused with words ending in the following
similar sounding endings:
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-ant         -ance         -ancy
Usually the -ent ending is found after:
● soft c: innocent, innocence
● soft g: detergent
● qu: frequent, frequency

However, there are some exceptions, such as independent, which

doesn’t have a soft c, a soft g or qu.
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23 For each word, find its meaning in a dictionary and then

write a sentence containing it:
(a) decent (e) delinquent
(b) emergent (f) luminescent
(c) contingent (g) quiescent
(d) eloquent

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 ➜➜Vocabulary
24 Rainforests are great places to describe because of the
colours, sounds and sights they contain. In order to make
your writing interesting, it is important to know a range
of synonyms (different words with the same meaning) for
some key adjectives. Use a thesaurus to find as many new

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synonyms as you can for the following words:
tall big green
dark bright lush
beautiful peaceful noisy

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calm colourful exotic
quiet dangerous natural

➜➜Creative writing
In this section, you are going to learn to write persuasively, convincing
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somebody to do or believe something. In the passage ‘Zeca’s world’,
you read about rainforests being threatened and this will be the theme
for your writing. The Argument Tennis activity above will also help you.
In order to write persuasively you will need to include some or all of
the following features:
● A clear statement of your point of view at the start
● Reasons why people should agree with you, backed up with examples
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● Facts, figures, statistics and anecdotes to support your ideas
● A strong conclusion, summarising what you have said so far and
emphasising why you are correct
● A range of persuasive and assertive phrases and language,
including rhetorical questions (questions that make you think
but don't require an answer)
● Emotive language (phrases that tug at the heartstrings)
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● Other techniques, including flattery (buttering somebody up

to get them on your side), exaggeration (slightly overstating
something), playing on someone’s emotions or ethics
(appealing to their better nature)
● In a speech, you should address the listener directly, using ‘you’ or
‘your’, to involve them more closely in what they are listening to.

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 They are not all appropriate for all types of persuasive writing because,

Creative writing
for example, facts and figures may not be available for some topics.
Here is an extract from a persuasive speech. All of the ideas above
are highlighted for you to see.

Our world is changing. Cities are springing up and pumping out toxic smoke.
Aeroplanes are polluting the skies and litter is poisoning our oceans. The rainforest is

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the last pure and natural place on our planet. We must preserve it for future generations.
The rainforest sustains a huge variety of life, including human life. Almost three million
people rely on the Amazon Rainforest alone as their home. It provides them with food,
medicine and shelter, and their culture is rooted in this beautiful landscape. However,
intruders are destroying their forest, forcing them out of their homes and tearing down

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the trees that provide life. Surely we all have a responsibility to prevent this desecration?
But what can we do?
Each and every one of us has a part to play. Let your conscience be your guide and take
steps, even small ones, to preserve these beautiful natural playgrounds. Buy fairtrade
goods, recycle and reuse what you can. If we all pull together, our seemingly insignificant
individual actions will have a significant collaborative effect. Our rainforests will
disappear without our help. Any caring person can see that this must be stopped!
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Now use some of these techniques when you try the following activities:

25 Research and write an article for your school magazine,

encouraging people to recycle more.
26 Imagine you are taking part in a debate on the topic,
‘This house believes that the Amazon Rainforest is the
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most important natural feature on planet Earth’. Do some
research in the library or on the internet and write a debate
speech either for or against this statement.
27 Do some research about ecotourism (holidays in natural
environments that do not impact negatively on the environment
and aim to bring positive social and economic benefits to local
people). Write an email to your headteacher, persuading him or
her to organise a school trip to an ecotourism destination for a
group of pupils as part of their geography studies.
28 Write a letter to your headteacher, persuading him or her to
choose a conservation charity as the school charity this year.
Do some research about a particular charity before you start.

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