Grade Five Mathematics
Cardinal Ordinal
Ordinal
Ordinal
Cardinal
Cardinal
Ordinal
WRITING SHORT STORIES
One of the items in your English A exam is to write a short story in about 450500 words. Let’s think about the process.
First you need to think of something interesting/exciting that happened. That will form the CLIMAX or your story. We’ll use as our example how two boys played a joke on their mother and had a good laugh at her expense.
To tell the story, we need to decide who is going to tell the story (The mother? An onlooker? One of the boys?).
We will need to explain what led up to the joke, then describe the joke itself, and then say how things ended.
Write an essay plan like this:
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The morning we decided to go fishing (How it all started)
The place we found to fish and our total lack of success (How things progressed)
Our decision to tell Mum we’d caught a big one that got away (How things progressed further)
We go home and tell Mum. Her reaction (The CLIMAX)
Our laughter as we tell her the truth and everyone comes to the table for fried fish and cook-up. (How it all ended)
The story
We were well into the school summer holidays, and since we’d been under Mum’s feet all week, we knew we’d better get out of her way or she’d find some studying for us to do.
“Fishing”, muttered Martin. “That would get us out of the house.” I had to agree that it was a great idea, so we got our tackle together and set off to the two big trenches not far from home.
Maybe fishing had been a great idea at first, but as the sun got hotter and our bucket remained empty, we began to feel a bit depressed. The few worms we’d brought along as bait were almost finished, and things were looking bleak.
“Ready to call it a day?” I asked, as once again we hauled in the line to find nothing of interest on the hook.
“Yep! And in any case, I’m starving,” came the reply.
But just then I had an idea. “Let’s see if we can fool Mum with the story of The Big One That Got Away! That would be a good laugh.”
Marts agreed, so we packed up and headed for home.
Mum listened wide-eyed as I told her our yarn: “It was the biggest fish you can imagine—at least five feet long! We both had to hold the rod and bring it in gently so the twine wouldn’t break! And then it suddenly gave a lurch, sprang out of the water, and before we knew it, the monster had landed in the other trench. We just saw his tail fin as he sped away.”
It was a grand success. We pulled Mum in just as gently as we would have pulled in the fish—if only there had been one! But then suddenly she twigged. I had to duck so she couldn’t tweak my ear for punishment!
We had a lot to laugh about as we enjoyed our supper of cook-up and fried fish—fish not from the trench, but from Bourda Market, as Mum was careful to point out!
ANSWERS