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Pete's letter

Pete is sitting on a lovely beach writing a letter to his granny.

He is writing about his adventures. But when he reads his letter to the other kids, it sounds a bit boring.

Pete wrote that Lara had caught a starfish. But Robin reminds him to add in words which describe the starfish, so that Pete’s granny can imagine what it looks like.

Interesting words

When you are writing a story, a poem or even a letter to someone, you can make it sound much better by adding in interesting words.

These words are called adjectives or describing words.

Adjectives can describe the colour of something, the shape of something and even the size of something.

You can learn about adjectives when you read books.

Authors use adjectives in their stories.

When you hear an adjective you like, you should write it down so that you don’t forget it.

Weird words

There are some adjectives which sound a bit weird.

For example, how about the word ginormous?

You could use this word to describe a truck or a hippopotamus. The ginormous truck or the ginormous hippopotamus.

What about the word scrumdiddlyumptious, have you heard it before?

It means very tasty and you could write, ‘I loved the scrumdiddlyumptious ice-cream.’

Now that’s a describing word to remember!

Rhyming words

You can also include rhyming words in your writing. Sometimes you can use them when writing a poem. Pete and the other kids have fun adding some rhyming words into Pete’s letter to his granny.

Can you think of rhyming words that rhyme with Pete? What about seat, feet, meet?

You will notice that even though these words all rhyme, seat is spelt differently from feet and meet.

Now it’s your turn. Can you think of some words that rhyme with fish?

Silly words

It’s also fun to make up silly words or nonsense words.

These are words that are not found in the dictionary.

For example, you might put two words together to make a nonsense word. What about cow and tart to make cowtart, or broom and cook to make broomcook, or even shuttle and dish to make shuttledish?

When you make up your nonsense words, you could even make up a fun meaning for your new word.

You could play this game with a friend and try to make each other laugh at your new words.

Then you should try to write them down so that you don’t forget.

Long words

Some words that you write down are very long, and some are very short.

In the story Lara comes up with the word dis-com-bob-u-lated. Have you ever heard this word before? Watch the story to find out what it means.

Sound out the syllables

When you are trying to write down a new word or a long word, you should sound it out in syllables.

This will help you to spell the word.

An example is hip-po-pot-a-mus.

Another example is an arm-a-dill-o, a type of mammal.

Sounding out new words takes a lot of practice, so don’t worry if you don’t get the spelling correct the first time!

Editing

Making changes to your writing is called editing. Authors do this to improve their writing and make it even better.

You can have a go by yourself, or you can have a go with a friend.

When you edit your writing you can take out some words and add in some new ones.

Pete’s final letter to his granny was much more interesting than the letter that he started out with.

Do you think his granny was very proud of him when she received the letter?

What do you think she said?