Year 5 enjoyed the performance of ‘SPAG girl’ this afternoon. This supported spelling, punctuation and grammar work that they had learned and was also highly entertaining!
Tag: Literacy
Home learning
As always, the quality of home learning submitted has been to a very high standard this term. In year 3 there was skilful use of chocolate bars to fill spaces within writing this week.
Determiners
The word ‘determiner’ was introduced to the primary curriculum last year. This class of words relate directly to nouns but are not adjectives – they ‘determine’ the noun.
There are four main types of determiner:
- Quantifiers – any number or amount before a noun, e.g. three chairs, many books, few people
- Articles – the articles are a, an and the
- Demonstratives – this, that, those, which…
- Possessives – ours, my, your, their…
We teach the pupils to identify determiners by finding the noun, investigating which words relate to the noun and then disregarding any adjectives.
Parenthesis
Parenthesis is a specific term used within writing lessons, when additional information is inserted into sentences. This can be done using three different pairs of punctuation marks.
No parenthesis
Bournemouth has a very long beach.
With parenthesis
Bournemouth, situated on the south coast of the United Kingdom, has a very long beach.
Bournemouth (a large town in the United Kingdom) has a very long beach.
Bournemouth – located within the United Kingdom – has a very long beach.
Subordinating conjunctions
All conjunctions join clauses. Some are coordinating and some are subordinating. Subordinating conjunctions are placed before subordinate clauses. These clauses cannot stand on their own.
MC SC sentences
These sentences have a main clause, then a subordinating conjunction and then a subordinate clause.
We went to the beach when we were bored.
‘When we were bored’ is subordinating because it cannot stand on its own.
SC, MC sentences
These sentences place the subordinate clause first in the sentence.
When we were bored, we went to the beach.
A white bus
A good way to remember which conjunctions are subordinating is ‘A white bus’:
Although When However If Though Even though Because Until Since
Clauses and coordinating conjunctions
Many thanks to the parents who asked for some information regarding vocabulary being used to teach Literacy. We are going to put some information onto the blog to explain some of the terms that the children use, beginning with coordinating conjunctions.
Clauses contain at least a subject and a verb: ‘We went shopping’.
A main clause can stand alone and still make sense: ‘We bought a loaf of bread’. We record these clauses as MC.
Conjunctions are words that link clauses together to make longer sentences. Coordinating conjunctions link two main clauses together: We went shopping and we bought a loaf of bread’. We record these with the code MC co-co MC.
The main coordinating conjunctions spell FANBOYS:
Displays
The children always wow us with their display writing. The quality is truly outstanding!
