Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling

Grammar, punctuation and spelling

Marsden Infant and Nursery School

Learning together; Learning for life!

A guide for parents on how to support their child at home.

A new curriculum for English and Maths was introduced by the government in 2014 for Y1 and Y2 pupils. This new curriculum puts a greater emphasis on children’s understanding and use of grammar, punctuation and spelling patterns. At the end of Y2 children will take tests set by the government on these 3 areas.

Here are some of the key terms that the children will be expected to know:

Key words / Definition / examples
grammar / The set of rules that explain how words are used in a language. / Verb, adjective, sentence etc
Noun (Proper nouns have capitals) / Name of a person, place, thing or idea. / bucket, kitchen, kindness, Marsden, Wednesday, Robert.
adjective / Describes a noun. / hard, yellow, stinky, loud, round.
verb / A doing and being word. / Jumping, singing, thinking.
adverb / A word that describes where, when and how an action is done. / Slowly, softly, joyfully, carefully, here, yesterday, tomorrow.
pronoun / A word that can replace a noun. / She, he, it, her, his.
Conjunction / A word that joins two sentences. / When, if, that, because
or, and, but
ascender / Used in handwriting when the letters have tall ‘sticks.’ / t fhklbd
Descender / Used in handwriting when the letters have long ‘tails’ that sit under the line. / q y p g j
superlative / The highest quality of an adverb or adjective. / Biggest, smallest, smelliest, bravest.
Time connective / A time word to describe when something happened. / Later on, eventually, suddenly, meanwhile, soon
opener / A way to start a story usually indicating where and/or when. / In a faraway land, early one morning, once upon a time.
suffix / A letter or group of letters added to the end of a word to change its meaning. / Use –ly, -ed, -ing. E.g quick becomes quickly.
prefix / A letter or group of letters added to the beginning of a word to change its meaning. / Use un- to change fulfilled into unfulfilled.

By the end of Year 1 most children should know…

How words can combine to make sentences;
How to join words and sentencesusing and ;
How to sequence sentences to form different types of texts such as; stories, poems, recounts, non-chronological report and instructions.
How to separate words with spaces;
How to use capital letters, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks to demarcate sentences.
How to use capital letters for names and for the personal pronoun I
What nouns, verbs and adjectives are.

Words that pupils should understand and be using regularly:

letter, capital letter, word, singular, plural, sentence, punctuation, full stop, question mark, exclamation mark.

Try some of these online activities to support your child’s learning…

Capital letters-

A range of relevant skills – capital letter, sentences, question marks etc. -

Capital letters and full stops ap_letters_stops/eng/Introduction/default.htm

Adjectives, nouns and verbs:

By the end of Year 2 most children should understand…

What nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are.
Conjunctions – using…when, if, that, because,or, and , but;
How to expand noun phrases for description and specification; (e.g. the blue butterfly with black spots, plain flour, the man in The Moon. )
How the grammatical patterns in a sentence indicate its function as a statement, question, exclamation or command.
How to make the correct choice of present tense and past tense.
The use of the progressive form of verbs in the present and past tense to mark actions in progress; (e.g. she is drumming; he was shouting. )
The use of capital letters, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks to demarcate sentences. Commas to separate items in a list;
The use of apostrophes to mark where letters are missing in spelling and to mark singular possession in nouns. (e.g. the girl’s name. )
How to make nouns into plurals using s or es (if word ends with s, ch, sh, x use es e.g fox becomes foxes.)
Know the difference between a command, statement, question and exclamation.

Words that pupils should understand and be using regularly:

noun, noun phrase, statement, question, exclamation, command, compound, adjective, verb, suffix, adverb, tense (past, present), apostrophe, comma.

Try some of these online activities to support your child’s learning…

Punctuating sentences:

Joining words

Making sentences:

Here are some activities the children can do to develop their grammar:

Write a sentence on paper in big letters (including punctuation). Cut it up so you have separate words and get your child to rearrange it so it makes sense.
Sentence substitution: As above but have extra words. Can the child swap the extra words with the original words and still make the sentence make sense? E.g The moon is round. Can the child replace any of the words in this sentence with these words: bright, sun, cake, tasty, black. The following link has sentence substitution games:

From boring to brilliant (can be done orally): give your child a boring sentence e.g The dog is big.

Can they change the adjective to sound better e.g huge or ferocious? *if they can’t think of any model some options!*
Can they improve the noun? E.g Alsatian, Labrador, Poodle.
What is the dog doing? *verbs like barking*
How is he doing it? *adverbs like quietly*
When is he doing it? *time words like ‘Early one morning’*
Who is he doing it to? *the postman?*
Why is he doing it? *because he is angry, hungry etc?*

Try to get the child to say the new ideas in a full sentence and you can make them as silly as possible e.g Late one evening a stinky, yellow sock slowly crawled into the old laundry basket because it hadn’t been washed in a week.

Out and about: Who can come up with the best adjective to describe the dog? Minion? How shall we climb the stairs today…slowly/quickly/sleepily?
Odd one out: Say 3 adjectives and an adverb. Which is the odd one out? Why? *repeat with different combinations*
Highlight best words used in a newspaper and keep a mind map or list of the best words!
Roll the imaginary ball to each other; my ball feels sticky how does yours feel? Roll it to them. Use your imagination!
Roll the real adverb ball: roll a real ball in different ways e.g lazily, quickly, angrily etc.
Write a short narrative or sentence. Can your child play teacher and correct your work? Do they need to add or change punctuation, add or change adjectives or correct spellings? *especially if those spellings are the ones given for homework this week!*

Spelling

Please remember to practice your weekly spellings! You can refer to the letters and sounds document online to see a full list of 200 common words or have a look at the phonics document on the school website to see the progression of spellings from reception to Y2.

Importantly; children are now expected to use suffixes and prefixes correctly for plurals, past and present tense and adverbs by the end of Y2.

Remember if you require any further information or support please contact your child’s class teacher.

Thank you very much for your support!