Grammar First Aid for Primary Teachers

Jo Heffer, Author

• Publisher: Corwin UK
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781529730432, 9781529730449
• eBook ISBN: 9781529737035
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

Fronted adverbials?

Relative clauses?

Perfect tenses?

Subjunctive form?

How can teachers teach all the grammar and punctuation requirements in the primary National Curriculum in a way that pupils want to learn about them?

This book provides clear explanations, structured introductory teaching sequences and practical consolidation activities that cover all KS2 statutory requirements and makes learning memorable.

Part 1 The Basics: Building On KS1 And EYFS

Although this book mainly focuses on the Key Stage 2 statutory requirements, it is important not to ignore the ‘basics’, much of which should have been covered in Key Stage 1 and some of which was introduced in the Early Years. Particularly, it is useful to note how much of the KS1 curriculum contributes to children working towards or meeting the standard in writing in the Teacher Assessment Framework for the end of KS2. It is also interesting to note that roughly one-third of the questions in the yearly KS2 English Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling test are based on KS1 National Curriculum content.

The challenge is to keep revisiting earlier learning while introducing the new statutory requirements in KS2. It is worth thinking about this under the headings that appear in Appendix 2 of the National Curriculum: Word, Sentence, Text and Punctuation. This part of the book will explore these in turn. The first chapter explores words, the second sentences, texts and punctuation.

Chapter 1.1 Words

Words

All the words that are used in sentences belong to any of the eight different word classes, many of which are introduced in KS1. These word classes are:

• nouns
• verbs
• adjectives
• adverbs
• conjunctions
• prepositions
• pronouns
• determiners.

Let’s spend a little time thinking about each of these in turn – about what should have been covered in KS1 and how this relates to the KS2 statutory requirements.

Nouns

This is the largest word class, as so many different words can be used as nouns. The most important thing to understand about any word class is its function: the function of a noun is to name things. There are different types of nouns, although that name applies to different types of things.

Common nouns are words that name general items rather than specific ones. They are everywhere and we use these words all the time without even thinking about them. If you look around, you will see countless examples of common nouns: chairs, tables, books, pens, mugs, walls, carpets, windows, doors, and so on. Unsurprisingly, it is this word class that children generally start to use first when learning to speak.

These common nouns can either be classified as countable or non-countable.

Countable nouns are like the ones listed above and, fairly obviously, they can be counted. You may have one book or two, or 20 or even hundreds or thousands of them. These countable nouns can be either singular or plural, which has implications for learning a variety of spelling rules. By contrast, non-countable nouns cannot be counted in the same way. Some examples of non-countable nouns are stuff, money, water, sugar, etc.

Although the National Curriculum (DfE, 2014) does not actually state when common nouns should be introduced, children will be using them constantly in their speech and their writing from a very early age. The term ‘noun’ is introduced in Year 2.

Proper nouns are the words that name specific people and places as well as days of the week and months of the year. Children should be taught that these specific people, places, days and months should be written using capital letters at the beginning of each word. This is introduced in Year 1, although there is no suggestion that the term ‘proper noun’ is introduced at this time.

The name of a person or a place can sometimes be a difficult thing to work out. The names of people are perhaps not so difficult when writing a first and second name. However, it is more complicated when writing about Mum or Dad, or an auntie or uncle.

I have just written Mum and Dad using capital letters because I have used them as names. However, the moment I start talking about your dad or Serena’s mum, they are no longer specific names and therefore are relegated to common nouns, which means that they do not require capital letters. It’s the same with aunts and uncles: Uncle Steve and Auntie Shirley are specific names and need capital letters, whereas my aunt and her uncle do not.

It gets even more complicated when we start thinking about places. The reason for this is that many place names contain multiple words. It’s generally straightforward when we think of a country or a city, such as France or Paris, as these are single words. However, when we start naming schools or parks, for example, it becomes more difficult. The first school I taught at was Chapel End Junior School; its name consists of four words and each word requires its own capital letter. Nearby was Lloyd Park. This only requires two capital letters, but many parks have much longer names with many more words. What is perhaps more confusing, though, is that we often talk about going to school or going to the park. On these occasions, we are not providing the specific names, which means that they become common nouns that do not need capital letters.

In order that children capitalise proper nouns correctly, it is essential to ensure that they can recognise the specific names of people and places.

There are also collective nouns, which are words that refer to groups – for example, team, flock, herd, congregation, troop.

The final type of noun is the abstract noun, which refers to an intangible concept such as an emotion, a theme, an idea or a quality. An abstract noun does not refer to a physical object. Examples of abstract nouns are enjoyment, carelessness, chaos, danger, solitude.

Neither collective nor abstract nouns are referred to explicitly within the National Curriculum (DfE, 2014). However, it is interesting to note that they are implicit within the spelling curriculum for Year 2, with the expectation that many children will be able to spell words with the following suffixes: -ness and -ment. It is difficult to think of many words that end with these suffixes that are not abstract nouns.

Little and Often activity

Ensure that the children understand the difference between all these nouns. A fun activity is to ask the children to think of different actions to express each type of noun. It is best if the ideas come from the children; however, if they cannot think of any, you could suggest crouching down low for a common noun and standing up tall and straight for a proper noun. The children could form pairs or trios to demonstrate collective nouns and they could make large swirling movements to show that a noun is abstract.

Provide a list of nouns for the children to listen to and to decide which action they need to make. It is useful to think of some nouns that could fit more than one category, as this will create discussion. You may need to put the noun in a sentence so that the children can check whether they have made the correct decision and to illustrate the fact that words only ever belong to a class or a category when the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About The Author
• Introduction
• Part 1 The Basics: Building On KS1 And EYFS
• Chapter 1.1 Words
• Chapter 1.2 Sentences, Texts and Punctuation
• Part 2 Teaching Grammar In Years 3 And 4
• Chapter 2.1 A Framework for Teaching the Year 3 And 4 Statutory Requirements
• Chapter 2.2 Extending The Range Of Sentences With More Than One Clause By Using A Wider Range Of Conjunctions, Including When, If, Because, Although
• Chapter 2.3 Using the Present Perfect Form of Verbs in Contrast to the Past Tense
• Chapter 2.4 Choosing Nouns or Pronouns Appropriately for Clarity and Cohesion, and to Avoid Repetition
• Chapter 2.5 Using Conjunctions, Adverbs and Prepositions to Express Time and Cause
• Chapter 2.6 Using Fronted Adverbials and Commas After Fronted Adverbials
• Chapter 2.7 Years 3 and 4 Punctuation
• Part 3 Teaching Grammar in Years 5 and 6
• Chapter 3.1 Years 5 and 6 Statutory Requirements
• Chapter 3.2 Recognising Vocabulary and Structures that are Appropriate for Formal Speech and Writing, Including Subjunctive Forms
• Chapter 3.3 Using Passive Verbs to Affect the Presentation of Information in a Sentence
• Chapter 3.4 Using the Perfect Form of Verbs to Mark Relationships of Time and Cause
• Chapter 3.5 Using Expanded Noun Phrases to Convey Complicated Information Concisely
• Chapter 3.6 Using Modal Verbs or Adverbs to Indicate Degrees of Possibility
• Chapter 3.7 Using Relative Clauses Beginning with who, which, where, when, whose, that or Using an Implied (i.e. Omitted) Pronoun
• Chapter 3.8 Years 5 and 6 Punctuation
• Part 4 You’ve taught it but have they learnt it?
• Chapter 4.1 Assessment
• Glossary
• References
• Index