the Celts

Read the sentences, decide which comes first, second, third, and fourth, and number them in order.



_____ A crane would take away your courage and your skill—three cranes would leave you with as much fight as a lettuce leaf.



_____ There were signs that told a warrior to fight, or to pack up and go home.



_____ They believed that there were good days for fighting and bad days.



_____ The Celts were fearless fighters yet they could easily be put off a fight.



_____ If he saw a crane bird, for example, he knew that would bring him bad luck.



Horrible Histories: The Cut-Throat Celts
By Terry Deary; Illustrated by Martin Brown
p. 5


Check your numbers with your Dad. Where you disagree, explain to each other why you arranged the sentences as you did.

Next, copy the sentences in the order you numbered them on a separate sheet of paper. Do not copy word-by-word. For each sentence, follow these steps:

1. Read as many words as you believe you can write correctly from memory (five to ten).

2. Write those words from memory, including all capitals and punctuation marks.

3. Check back to the original sentence and correct any errors you made.

4. Read the next group of words and repeat the steps.

Sometimes you may be able to remember an entire simple sentence correctly. But with a large difficult-to-spell word, you may try to write only that one word correctly from memory.

Ben Franklin used this technique to teach himself to write.




The Celts were fearless fighters yet they could easily be put off a fight. They believed that there were good days for fighting and bad days. There were signs that told a warrior to fight, or to pack up and go home. If he saw a crane bird, for example, he knew that would bring him bad luck. A crane would take away your courage and your skill—three cranes would leave you with as much fight as a lettuce leaf.

Horrible Histories: The Cut-Throat Celts
By Terry Deary; Illustrated by Martin Brown
p. 5