Aimed at the Caribbean market, this book aims to prepare students for secondary school, with the intention of reinforcing and consolidating study skills which should enable them to cope with post-primary education. The book also introduces research and library skills and provides opportunities for creative communication. Vocabulary building encourages students to play with language as they build their stock of words through puzzles, games and other activities, while the invitations to talk and share ideas provide opportunities for co-operative learning. Finally, the texts were chosen to represent things Caribbean and with the hope of fostering a love of reading. The related activities are designed to stimulate and encourage students to think creatively and critically.

 

There are 144 pages in this book. This book was published 1991 by Oxford University Press .

Esther O'Neale is a former co-ordinator of creative writing workshops for the Ministry of Education's Young Author Programme in Grenada. She wrote Why the Owl Flies at Night together with Agatha Charles, Marcia Francois, Jacqueline Lewis-Phillip and Carmen Roberts.

This book has the following chapters: Part 1 First day at school: wordshop - prefixes; grammar - types sentence, subjects and predicates, subject word and predicate verb; study skills - alphabetical order in the dictionary; writing desk - recalling an experience, writing checklist. Part 2 Aliens from Mars: reading skills - following instructions; spellwell - negative prefixes; grammar - fragments, run-on sentences; writing desk - giving instructions, transition words; wordshop - prefixes and roots. Part 3 Thunder: reading skills - the correct sequence; study skills - guide words in the dictionary; grammar - nouns - common, proper, abstract; spellwell - forming the plural of nouns, spelling pointers; writing desk - brainstorming, recalling an incident, noting feelings, words to show sequence. Part 4 A visit: reading skills - main idea, topic sentence; grammar - verbs - agreement, compound subjects, present tense; punctuation - use of apostrophe in possessive nouns; writing desk - keeping a diary or journal; wordshop - compound words. Part 5 Celebrations: wordshop - matching words and meanings, wordbuilding, suffixes; spellwell - adding -ed, -ing, -er, -est to root words; grammar - direct and indirect objects; punctuation - commas to set off words in apposition, more commas and capitals; writing desk - diary entry. Part 6 Vibert reach home: reading skills - looking for clues; grammar - adjectives, adverbs; punctuation - commas to separate items in a list, correcting run-on sentences; writing desk - descriptions, observation, use of five senses, describing an object. Part 7 The dictionary: study skills - using the dictionary, entry words, pronunciation, meanings, parts of speech, run-on entries; grammar - the principal parts of verbs, verbs that do not change, simple past tense; writing desk - description of place, overall impression, supporting details, use of colour, organizing your paragraph, description checklist; wordshop - forming words from "celebration". Part 8 The games: reading skills - getting to the point, matching words and meanings; grammar - auxiliaries or helping verbs, using the negative, making questions; spellwell - adding suffixes -ly, -ness; writing desk - description of a person, general impressions, words to describe appearance; wordshop - synonyms, antonyms. Part 9 The match: reading skills - looking for clues (inferences); grammar - verbs, the present continuous tense; wordshop - homonyms; writing desk - description of a person, making a character sketch; study skills - choosing the correct meaning. Part 10 Six nil: grammar - the future tense, questions and the negative, wordshop - more homonyms; punctuation - quotation marks; writing desk - description of a person, simile; wordshop - sports word search. Part 11 Flattery: wordshop - homographs; grammar - verbs active and passive; punctuation - the apostrophe in contractions; writing desk - postcard; wordshop - homonym crosswords.