English – Thursday 4th June
Watch the
video of a presenter reading this extract.
Charlie Changes into a Chicken.
The
sound of his parents arguing downstairs rumbled through the house, low like
thunder. Charlie closed his book. He couldn't concentrate.
Darkness had fallen outside and
the street light outside Charlie's window was making uncanny shadows on his
bedroom wall. The silhouettes of the tree branches looked a little too much
like log clutching witches' fingers for Charlie's liking. So, quick as a flash,
he sprang out of bed and pulled his curtains together.
It was there and then that it
first happened.
It began with a twitching in
his eye. Charlie froze to the spot, feeling his eyelid blink manically. His eye
had twitched before, when he’d been tired, but this felt different somehow. It
felt like somebody had just plugged him into a wall socket. The twitching
spread to his other eye, and both eyes were blinking and twitching.
A feeling burst through the
whole of his body, like he’d just been shot through an electrical wire, like he
was the electricity. Every part of his body fizzed and hummed. The fizzing and
humming became stronger, until he felt like he was on fire, but a fire inside
of a never-ending tube, squeezed and vibrating.
His
skin felt extraordinary. Alive. He looked at his arm and, with some
considerable alarm, saw that hair was sprouting out of every part of his skin.
Weirdly the room was growing
larger too.
But no, Charlie realised, the
room wasn’t growing larger – it was him who was shrinking!
Can you
read the extract like the presenter? Can you use expression and make sure you
are audible?
Comprehension
1. Why couldn’t Charlie concentrate?
2. Which word has the closest meaning to uncanny?
weird lovely
happy
miserable
3. What scared Charlie?
4. What was the first sign that Charlie
was changing?
5. Name three different feelings that Charlie
experienced.
6. In the paragraph which begins: It began with a twitching of an eye, which
phrase is used to explain that it was like electricity running through his
body.
7. Why did he look at his arm in
considerable alarm?
8. Do you think Charlie is in pain? Explain
your answer.
9. What do you think Charlie is changing
into?
10.
If
you were Charlie, what would you like to change into?
Challenge
Find out what a silhouette is and
draw what Charlie saw through the
window.
