Class 6 English Chapter 6: The Chair

A boy who counts his friends

Mario loves having friends, and he loves saying so. He talks about how many he has at school and how friendly he is with all of them. The story calls this showing off, which means boasting. He is not unkind about anybody. He simply enjoys the number.

His grandfather disagrees

So the old man makes a bet. A fruit chaat says Mario has far fewer friends than he imagines, and that most of them are companions or partners instead. It is a small wager about something that is not small at all.

Three words, three different things

Those words matter. A companion is somebody you spend time with. A partner is somebody you do things with. Neither of them promises anything at all when you are in trouble.

The bet is accepted, then the problem appears

Mario agrees readily, which means without any hesitation. Agreeing is the easy part of any bet. Then he realises he has no idea how to test such a thing, and asks his grandfather for help.

Something from the attic

The grandfather goes up to the attic and comes back holding something. Mario looks at his hands and sees nothing in them at all. The story lets us notice this before Mario does.

An invisible chair

It is a very special chair, the old man explains, and being invisible it is rather tricky to sit on. Carry it in, get yourself seated on it, and the magic will show him who his real friends are. Two conditions, and the second one cannot be met.

Brave and determined

Mario carries the chair to school. The story gives him two good words here. He is brave, and he is determined, which means firm in his decision. Both of those will be needed within the hour.

The circle at break

At break he gathers everybody into a circle and stands at its centre, chair in hand. Stay still, he tells them, because something amazing is coming.

The first fall

He tries to sit and misses completely, landing on the floor. His classmates find this very funny indeed.

And the next, and the next

He tries again and misses again. There is more laughter. The circle is enjoying itself a great deal by now. He will not give up, and he goes on trying and falling in front of the whole circle.

Then he does not fall

Suddenly, on one of the attempts, nothing happens. He is sitting in mid-air, held up above the ground, and that is when the magic finally arrives.

What he sees

He looks around. Guneet, Asma and Deepa are holding him up so that he will not fall again. Everybody else has spent the whole break enjoying each and every tumble. Nobody moved. Nobody asked whether he was hurt.

There was never a chair

This is the part worth stopping on. Nothing was ever in his grandfather's hands. The chair could not be sat on because it did not exist, so the falling was guaranteed.

The falling was the test

And the falling is what sorted everybody out. Nobody was asked a single question. Each person simply reacted, and their reaction answered for them.

What Mario tells his friends

Walking away with the three of them, he explains how cleverly his grandfather had arranged it. True friends are the ones who care for you, and somebody who enjoys your bad luck is not one.

The bet is paid

The grandfather won, so that evening the four children go to see him, listen to his stories and eat a great deal of fruit chaat. After that they use the chair test again on other people, and whoever passes it becomes a friend for life.

Scenario:

The class argues about the ending. Rhea says the chair must be magic, because Mario really does end up sitting in mid-air with nothing under him. Faiz says there is no chair at all and never was. He asks her what is actually holding Mario up at that moment. Rhea checks the page and finds three pairs of hands. She then says the grandfather cheated, because he promised magic and handed over nothing. Their teacher asks what the grandfather had bet on, and whether the trick would have worked if Mario had simply been told to go and count his real friends.

Analysis:

An invisible chair, three pairs of hands, and a bet that was never about furniture.

Activity:

Write the scene again from Guneet's side, starting from the moment she decides to step in.

Title:

The dropped pencil

What You Notice:

Most people do nothing at all, which is not the same as laughing. The number who move to help is usually small, and it is rarely the people you would have guessed. That is the grandfather's test running by itself, several times a week, without anybody needing to invent a chair.

An attic is the storage space directly under a roof, which makes it the traditional place in stories for something odd to be found.

Buddy, companion, partner and classmate all describe people you know, and not one of them means friend.

Fruit chaat is a mixed fruit snack with spices, and here it is the whole prize for winning an argument about friendship.

How the trick works — FALL - WATCH - KNOW — He falls, everybody reacts, and he knows. Three steps, and the grandfather never has to say a word about anybody.

Three words for people you know — Companion, partner, friend — A companion shares your time. A partner shares your work. A friend holds you up. Only the third one is tested by the chair.

The other end of a word

You have already met prefixes, which attach to the front of a word and usually flip it over. Kind becomes unkind. Now look at the opposite end. The same idea, and a different result.

Root and suffix

The piece added to the end is a suffix, and the word it is added to is the root. Care plus -ful gives careful. Friend plus -ship gives friendship. In both cases the root survives untouched, so you can still see it.

The difference that matters

A prefix usually reverses a meaning. A suffix usually does something else entirely. It changes the job the word does in a sentence. That is a quieter change than a reversal, and a more useful one.

Magic and magical

Here is the clearest example. Magic names a thing, so you can talk about the magic in a story. Magical describes a thing, so you can talk about a magical chair. One of them is what you are talking about, and the other is what you say about it.

Two different places

Those two words cannot swap freely. You would never say a room was full of magical, because magical is not the naming word.

Friend and friendship

Same idea again. Friend names a person. Friendship names the thing that exists between people, which is not a person at all. The same ending builds hardship, leadership and championship.

One suffix, many roots

The pieces are reusable. Care and help both take -ful, giving careful and helpful. Courage takes -ous and becomes courageous.

And one root, many suffixes

It runs the other way too. Care gives careful, careless, caring and carer. Four words, one root, four different jobs. That is a great deal of work for four letters.

The spelling trap

Sometimes adding a suffix disturbs the root. Celebrate becomes celebration and loses its final e on the way. Courage keeps its e in courageous. Two ordinary words, two different behaviours, and no warning either time.

No rule to apply

There is no rule that predicts which happens. These are words you have to have met, and the note in your book asks you to observe the changes rather than work them out.

Words that describe

Many suffixes build words of one particular kind. Careful, helpful, magical and courageous all describe something. A word doing that job has its own name: it is an adjective.

From this story

The chapter is full of them. The chair is invisible. Mario is brave and determined. The thing he promises the circle is amazing.

Finding one

The test is a question. Ask what kind of. What kind of chair, what kind of boy. If a word answers that, it is describing, and it is an adjective.

Adjectives need the right noun

An adjective and its noun have to belong together. A brave soldier makes sense. Heavy rain makes sense. A heavy soldier is grammatically perfect and says something quite different from what you meant. Grammar will not stop you writing it, and a reader will notice at once that something is odd without being able to name the rule you broke. That is the whole difficulty with describing words. They are easy to build and easy to attach to the wrong thing.

Building a pair

So describing is a matter of choosing two words that fit. Clever plan, tasty peanuts, slight cold, true friends. Each pair does a job that neither word could manage alone.

Both ends together

Put the two halves of this topic side by side and you have a small machine. A suffix builds the describing word, and the noun beside it decides whether the description actually means anything.

Scenario:

A teacher writes four pairs on the board and asks which ones work: brave soldier, heavy rain, heavy soldier, brave rain. The class agrees quickly on the first two and on brave rain, which everybody rejects. Heavy soldier splits them. Dev says it is wrong because a soldier cannot be heavy. Priya says a soldier certainly can be heavy, and that she has met heavy people. Dev agrees and still says the pair sounds wrong. Their teacher asks them to say what heavy usually tells you about, and whether that is a thing anybody would want to know about a soldier.

Analysis:

A pair that is not impossible and is still wrong, which is the harder kind.

Activity:

Write four adjective and noun pairs, two that work and two that are merely possible.

Title:

Build a word family

What You Notice:

A four-letter root will usually give you four or five words, and they will not all do the same job. You will also find at least one where you are not sure whether the word exists, which is worth checking rather than guessing. Care gives careful and careless easily, and carer takes most people a moment longer.

The word friendship is friend with -ship on the end, and that same -ship builds hardship, leadership and championship.

One root can take several different suffixes. Care gives careful, careless, caring and carer, and each one does a different job.

Courageous keeps the e of courage, while celebrate loses its e in celebration. There is no rule you can apply, only words you have met.

Prefix against suffix — Front flips, end shifts — A prefix at the front usually flips the meaning over, as in unkind. A suffix at the end usually shifts the job, as in magic becoming magical.

Finding an adjective — What kind of? — Ask what kind of soldier, what kind of rain. If a word answers that, it is describing, and that makes it an adjective.

Writing to somebody

So far this unit has described friends. A message is different, because it is written to one of them. That single change alters almost everything about it. It is the smallest change in this chapter and the largest in its effect.

You instead of she

A description says she held me up. A message says you held me up. The first is filed away somewhere and the second is handed over. One of them has a reader waiting for it.

Three parts

Every message has the same shape. A greeting at the top that names the person. The body in the middle where you say the thing. A sign-off and your name at the bottom.

The greeting

Dear Deepa. One name, because a message is for one person. Writing to three people at once turns it into an announcement, which is a different kind of writing. Mario writes three separate messages instead.

The sign-off

Best wishes, and then your own name. It seems a small thing and it is not optional, because without it the reader has to work out who has written to them.

The body is where it matters

The middle is where a message either works or fails. Everything else is a shape you fill in. What you put inside decides whether it was worth sending. A shape with nothing in it is still empty.

The commonest mistake

General praise. You are a very good friend and I am lucky to know you. Every word of that is kind, and it could be sent to anybody in the school without changing a letter. Including, uncomfortably, the people who spent the break laughing.

Look at what Mario does

His messages name the afternoon. He tells Asma that he would have fallen again if it had not been for her and the other two. That sentence fits nobody else. It belongs to one day and to three people.

Why the detail works

Because it proves he was paying attention. Anybody can call somebody a good friend. Only somebody who noticed can say what they did and when they did it.

A useful test

Read your message and ask whether it could be sent to somebody else without changing anything. If it could, it is not really a message yet.

Speaking about qualities

The other half of this topic is talking rather than writing. You are asked which qualities you want in a friend, and the list is a long one: loving, honest, kind, caring, loyal, polite, respectful, understanding.

A list is not an answer

Choosing four of them is easy and says very little. What makes it an answer is the reason. I want my friend to be honest, because I would rather be told something true than something comfortable.

The frames help

Your book supplies openings for this, and each one has a joining word built into it. The reason cannot be quietly skipped, because the opening has already promised one.

The same rule twice

Notice that this is the message rule again in a different place. Name the thing, then say what lies behind it. A quality without a reason is as empty as praise without a detail.

An acrostic

Finally the book suggests an acrostic. You write a name downwards and begin a describing word with each letter, so the poem is shaped by the person it is about.

Why it is harder than it looks

The letters decide what you may say. You will find a good word for one letter and nothing for the next. The poem becomes an argument between what is true and what begins with K.

Scenario:

A Class 6 group in Thrissur made friendship cards for the younger children to give each other. Ravi wrote: you are a great friend and I like you very much. His teacher asked him to imagine handing it to three different people, and Ravi admitted it would suit all of them. Nadia wrote to her partner about the morning her bag split on the stairs. The oranges went everywhere, and her partner had helped pick them up. Meanwhile Joseph wrote one card addressed to four people at once. The teacher read all three aloud without names, and asked the class which one they would most like to receive.

Analysis:

The class chose the card about the oranges, and could explain exactly why, which is the whole lesson of the topic.

Activity:

Write a short message to somebody in your class, then test it by asking whether it could be given to anybody else unchanged.

Title:

The swap test

What You Notice:

A message your partner cannot place is a message that named nothing. That is the whole test, and it is harsher than it sounds, because general praise feels warm while you are writing it. You are a very good friend could be sent to any of the three and would pass unnoticed by all of them. One sentence about what that person actually did, on a day you both remember, cannot be swapped anywhere.

Mario's two messages in the book are almost the same length, and each one names the other two friends as well as the person he is writing to.

Best wishes is one of the safest sign-offs in English, because it suits a friend, a teacher or somebody you barely know.

Acrostic poems are hundreds of years old, and were once used to hide a name inside a poem that appeared to be about something else.

The shape of a message — GREET - SAY - SIGN — Name the person at the top. Say the thing in the middle. Put your own name at the bottom. Three steps, and none of them can be skipped.

Making a message mean something — Could this be sent to anybody? — If the answer is yes, it is too general. Put in something that happened, and the message becomes that person's alone.