St. Mary’s Catholic Primary School

Grammar Parents’ Forum

Monday 25th January 2016

What does the word “grammar” mean to you? Discuss with someone next to you any words, phrases or feelings that come to mind……………………

“Grammar is the set of language rules that you use, most of the time

unconsciously, to create phrases and

sentences that convey meaning.” (www.vocabulary.com) The phrase in bold is crucial because as stated in English Appendix 2 of The National Curriculum, “The grammar of our first language is learnt naturally and

implicitly through interactions

with other speakers and from

reading.”

Grammar is about making meaning. “Grammar is……the pole you grab to get your

thoughts up on their feet and walking”

“Explicit knowledge of grammar is, however, very important, as it gives us

more conscious control and choice in our

language. Building this knowledge is

best achieved through a focus on grammar

within the teaching of reading, writing

and speaking.” (English Appendix 2 N.C Gov.uk)

Stephen King

As words are the building blocks to

writing, part of our aim when

teaching grammar is to ensure that

children understand the different

word classes and what their functions

are………………..

In Key Stage One, we focus on: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and conjunctions. Let’s take a tour…………………….

Learning about Words in Year 1 • From singular to plural – making nouns plural by adding the

suffixes s e.g. dog/dogs and es e.g. wish/wishes

• Changing verbs – adding suffixes where no change is needed in the

spelling of the root word e.g.

helping, helped, helper

• From positive to negative – using the prefix un to create a negative effect e.g. unkind, undoing, untie

Word Work in Year 2 • Adding the suffix –ness to adjectives to make nouns

e.g. sad-sadness

• Adding -er to make verbs into nouns e.g.

work-worker

• Adding the suffix –er and –est in adjectives e.g.

tall, taller, tallest

• Adding the suffix –ly to turn adjectives into

adverbs e.g. loudly, clearly

• 1+1=1 or Compounding –

Learning about sentences in Year 1

Children see examples of how words combine to make sentences everyday in school and also, whenever they read. We want them to be able to communicate in a variety of contexts by writing a series of sentences.

Here are some ideas for how you can help to develop their understanding of sentence construction at home………………………

Reconstruct:

Write a sentence together. Print your writing out in big lettering including the full stop. Cut into individual words, including the full stop. Help the children to reproduce the sentence, by holding the cards in front of them.

As you do more of these, collect them together and save for future use.

Expand a sentence

You can build up and develop

sentences by asking questions.

Child: “It’s my birthday today.”

Adult: “How old are you?”

Child: “I am five.”

Adult: “It is your fifth

birthday today.” … and so on…

Sentence Frames can be used to develop

understanding of simple sentence

structures Rabbits like carrots.

Giraffes like leaves.

Cats like

Birds like

I like

Make sure that children have plenty of

regular practise and that they use

capital letters and full stops.

Choose themes which interest your child

and introduce different verbs………

Transforming Sentences Try oral, then written changing of words in well-known sentences…

Jack and Jill went up the hill. … can become… Fred and Kath went down the path! Or…

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…becomes Humpty Dumpty ran on the road; Humpty Dumpty trod on a toad!

Try some of these online activities to support your child’s understanding of sentences and punctuation

https://roythezebra.com/readinggames/newwindow/capital-letter-beginner-1.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/magickey/adventures/index.shtml

Year One punctuation - . ? ! and capital letters

Developing sentence work in Year 2 • Expanded noun phrases: -giving more

information about nouns

e.g. a blue butterfly, the man in the

moon or for precision when writing

information

e.g. plain flour

• Using a variety of conjunctions (also

referred to as “joining words”) to join

phrases within a sentence

Co-ordinating Conjunctions These join independent clauses that

would otherwise stand alone.

• And joins 2 similar ideas e.g

I like coffee and I drink it often.

• But joins opposite ideas e.g.

I like coffee but I hate tea.

• Or comes before a contrast e.g.

I can make you coffee or tea.

• So is also a useful co-ordinating

conjunction often used in Year 2. It

shows a consequence or result.

Subordinating Conjunctions These join subordinate clauses to main

clauses. They can also be used to join

ideas across sentences or paragraphs……

• When is used to signal time: e.g.

I put my coat on when I go outside.

• If is a conditional conjunction e.g.

I won’t need a coat if I wear my jumper.

• That is used for statements e.g.

I wish that I could fly.

• Because is a causal connective e.g.

Birds can fly because they have wings.

Verb tenses

Children are expected to be able to

choose, and consistently use, the

correct tense in their writing e.g.

• Past tense for recounts and diaries

• Present tense for instructions and

information texts

In addition, pupils are introduced to

the

• Past progressive:

They were playing in the garden

yesterday.

• Present progressive:

What’s my sentence? Children are expected to know and use

the 4 different sentence types:

• Statements – the majority of sentences

I am going to a meeting this

afternoon.

• Questions –

Where are you going?

• Exclamations – don’t always have a

verb

What a fantastic piece of work!

How lovely!

• Commands – start with “bossy” verbs

Put the dirty plates in the

Punctuation in Year Two • Consistent and accurate use of capital

letters, full stops, question marks and

exclamation marks

• Commas to separate items in a list e.g.

Please buy some apples, oranges and

grapes.

• Apostrophes to mark contractions (where

letters are missing) e.g. don’t can’t

won’t

• Apostrophes to mark singular possession

in nouns e.g. The girl’s coat is lost.

The boy’s books are

marked.

Assessment in Key Stage One There will be new SATs as a summative

assessment of children’s English skills

in Reading, Grammar, Punctuation and

Spelling from this May.

It is worth noting that from what we

have seen of the draft spelling test,

elements of grammar will be incorporated

into this. For example, where children

are given days of the week and/or months

of the year as spellings, they are only

awarded a mark if the spelling is

correct and they have used a capital

letter.

NOUNS • Nouns are the biggest word class (everyone and

everything needs a name!)

• A noun is the name of a person, place, animal, thing or idea.

• Nouns can be singular or plural

• They can be proper – or common - ,

• collective – team, or abstract - love. Abstract nouns are those that you cannot see or touch and can be emotions.

• Noun phrases-a phrase is a single piece of information made up of more than one word – it will not contain a subject or a verb

So –the bus – is a noun phrase

the red shiny bus is an expanded noun phrase

Verbs

A verb is a ‘doing’ or a ‘being’ word. It tells us what is happening in the sentence. •The most common verb in the English language is the verb - to be •A verb can be a single word or a group of words which together form the ‘verb phrase’ The children will be playing in the garden. The children have been playing in the garden. The children might be playing in the garden. The children would have been playing in the garden……….. In Year 2, pupils are introduced to t

Adjectives

• An adjective describes ( or modifies) the noun.

• It might sit close to the noun-or be elsewhere in the sentence..

• The silver car stood in the driveway.

• The car in the driveway was silver.

Adverbs

Adverbs modify the verb.

The children were playing.

How?

The children were playing happily.

They tell us how (adverb of manner), when (adverb of time), or where (adverb of place).

Yesterday afternoon, the children were playing happily.

Yesterday afternoon, the children were playing happily, in the garden.

Adverbs can move about the sentence, affecting the emphasis, but not the meaning.

Determiners

Determiners … introduce nouns and show whether they are general or specific. The most common determiners are ‘the’ and ‘a’ Some more determiners: •this cat, that cat, •all cats, every cat, some cats, no cats, each cat •one cat, two cats •his cat, her cat, my cat - can you think of any other categories?

Prepositions

Prepositions express a relationship of meaning between 2 parts of a sentence, usually to do with space or time.

Simple prepositions may include:

about, across, after, at, before, behind, by, down,

during, for, from, to, inside, into, of, off, on, onto,

out, over, round, since, through, to, towards, under,

up, with………….

Pronouns

Pronouns stand in for a noun, I, you, he, she, it, we, they, my, your, his, her, our and their are all pronouns • Pronouns are important for ‘cohesion’.

• If children overuse them, the reader is not sure

who is being discussed. • If they underuse them, the writing can sound

very repetitive and boring.

Conjunctions

Conjunctions are connectives which work inside a sentence in order to join words,

phrases or clauses.

Some examples of conjunctions are:

because, so, while, for, and, but, or, yet, even though, provided that….

What has changed the meaning here?

“Let’s eat Mummy.”

“Let’s eat, Mummy”

What is wrong with this sentence?

There going over their to they’re house.