grammar in its place… · 2019-11-07 · grammar in its place… putting the teaching of grammar...

UKLA Occas iona l Paper

Grammar in its Place…Putting the teaching of grammarback in to the heart of books.

The United Kingdom Literacy Association

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CHANTRY, LITTLE COMMON AND THE AURORA ACADEMIES

Grammar in its Place…Putting the teaching of grammarback in to the heart of books.

Series Editor: Jo Tregenza

This document has been the result of a two year collaboration between the University of Sussex, Universityof Exeter, Chantry Primary School, Aurora Academy and Little Common Primary School. It began whenthe University of Sussex was approached by the Hastings East Sussex Coastal group to develop projectto raise the understanding of the teaching of grammar in the locality. The University decided to engagethe support of Professor Myhill from Exeter University to support the work and provide subject knowledgetraining and development for the teachers in the first year with the view to them developing subjectknowledge and resource in their own schools the following year.

‘UKLA maintains that language study is a vitally important aspect of learning in English, andthat grammar is an important strand of language study, for its own intrinsic interest and for itscontribution to communication and the making of meaning. However, if grammatical knowledge,spelling and punctuation are to make positive contributions to children’s writing, they need tobe taught and assessed in the context of writing meaningful texts, not as sets of ‘facts’ or ‘rules’.Learning to write is about much more than grammar and the conventions of transcription.Grammatical knowledge should be neither taught nor tested outside the context of purposefulwriting.’ UKLA position statement 2019.

At the heart of the project was the determination that grammar should be taught in context and throughhigh quality books. Having worked with schools on grammar training in the locality, it had becomeclear that many teachers lacked the knowledge of what grammar could be explored through real books.

We felt that if we provided strong models and examples these could be used by all schools in the regionas training and guidance. The UKLA (United Kingdom Literacy Association) states “language study is avitally important aspect of learning in English, and that grammar is an important strand of languagestudy, for its own intrinsic interest and for its contribution to communication and the making of mean-ing. However, if grammatical knowledge, spelling and punctuation are to make positive contributionsto children’s writing, they need to be taught and assessed in the context of writing meaningful texts,not as sets of ‘facts’ or ‘rules’.

Myhill also found “significant positive effects from teaching that included explicit attention to relevantgrammatical constructions within the context of pupils’ writing of particular genres”. (Myhill et al. 2012p.151). However, Myhill’s team also found that the effectiveness of the approach was heavily influencedby teachers’ capacity to use high quality texts and to stimulate meaningful discussion about languagechoices. The table below reflects how the key pedagogical principles foster purposeful engagementwith grammar and language choices (for more detail about the pedagogical principles, visit:

http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/education/research/centres/centreforresearchinwriting/grammar-teacher-resources/

2 Grammar in its Place

LINKS showing learners how grammatical choicescreate different effects in different texts

EXAMPLES showing learners real examples ofgrammatical choices making particular effect

AUTHENTIC TEXTS showing learners how grammatical choicesare made in particular contexts

DISCUSSION helping learners verbalise the relationshipbetween grammatical choices and theireffects in particular contexts

The exemplars in this booklet have been created by experienced and trainee teachers: they are notgrammar experts but are passionate about the teaching of English, meaningful learning and putting alove of books at the heart of any learning about grammar. We hope schools will find the materialshelpful as a planning tool or CPD materials. Key to each unit was a clear focus on the enjoyment of thestory. Teachers initially shared the books, reading aloud to immerse children in the book.


MetalinguisticUnderstanding:explicit knowledgeabout language

Learning Objective

Year 1: Using a capital letterfor names of people, places,the days of the week, andthe personal pronoun “I”

Year 1: Suffixes that can beadded to verbs where nochange is needed in thespelling of root words

Year 1: Suffixes that can beadded to verbs where nochange is needed in thespelling of root words

Year 2: Use of the suffixes–er, –est in adjectives

Year 2: Learn to usesentences with differentforms: statement, question,exclamation and command

Commentary

Teaching can draw out whatthe name of a place or personmight suggest about their char-acter, based on word andsound associations, or investi-gate how choices of propernoun can signal historical pe-riod or narrative genre.

It would be useful to begin todisplay these words as a set thatyou don’t change so childrencan begin to see the patterns.

Oral rehearsal of these phraseswould be effective. Let childrenmake up commands, questionsand exclamations as part oflining up routines etc.

Text Example

Any narrative which names charactersand/or places e.g. opening sentenceswhich establish settings. The choiceof names for title characters or mainprotagonists or invented or mythicalcreatures.

Hansel and Gretel were trappedscreaming in the Gingerbread House.

The Big Bad Wolf gobbled up Little RedRiding Hood and enjoyed everymouthful.

Some of the Endings drifted awaylike breath and others flutteredupwards like moths fumbling forlight. Some looked like fireflies …

Faster than fury ….

Statement: Jub jumped.The old woman had

grabbed hold of Jub’s arm.Question: “What’s in the sack?”Exclamation: The Happy Endingswere lost! (doesn’t fit governmentdefinition as it doesn’t start with “How”or “What”)Command: “Let me alone!”

“Shut up!”


The Lost Happy Endingsby Carol Ann Duffy and Jane Ray

Y1 - Y6


Learning Objective

Year 2: How adjectives areused to distinguish charactersin traditional tales

Year 2: Formation ofadjectives using suffixessuch as –ful, –less

Year 2: Use of–ly inStandard English to turnadjectives into adverbs

Year 2: Use of theprogressive form of verbs inthe past and present tense.(eg she is drumming, he wasshouting)

Year 3: Use of the presentperfect form of verbs insteadof the simple past (eg He hasgone out to play contrastedwith He went out to play)

How verbs can establishcharacter by showing whatcharacters do

Year 2: Subordination (usingwhen, if, that, because)

Year 3: Expressing time,place and cause usingconjunctions

How subordinate clauses areused to suggest simultaneousactions in a narrative

Commentary

Traditional tales often useadjectives, singly or in pairs, toform one-dimensional arche-typal characterisations e.g. ahandsome prince, a wickedstepmother, a greedy king, awise old woman. Teaching candraw attention to placing ofadjectives before the noun andafter the verb.

Explore the impact of differentsuffixes. You could make upgames using matching cards tosee if different endings work.

As an extension to this youmight explore word order, lookat the impact of the sentence ifyou start with the adjective.

Teaching might bring out thedescriptive power of well-cho-sen lexical verbs that make theuse of adverbs redundant.

Teaching can draw attention toplacing of subordinate clausesin different positions with thesentence and how this mightaffect which actions are em-phasised or prioritised.

Text Example

Any traditional folk tale or fable, e.g.Little Red Riding Hood; The SleepingBeauty; The Little Mermaid; TheValiant Little Tailor; The Naughty Boy;The Talkative Tortoise etc.

A twisted oldwoman…. was standingon the path in front of Jub.

The wicked witchmade the oven hotterand hotter.

They were worthless to a witch.

Then, very carefully, Jub would openthe sack.

Jub trotted quickly along.

(She) hobbled rapidly away.

Children in their beds were listeningto their bedtime stories.

Soon the night was filled with the awfulsound of frightened or disappointedchildren weeping and wailing intheir beds.

When she had first opened thesack of Happy Endings she hadbeen furious.

Once she had reached the edge ofthe forest, Jub had to climb to the topof a huge old oak tree.

When the last Ending was out of thesack, Jub would scamper and rustleher way down to the ground and setoff homewards through thedarkening woods.


Learning Objective

Year 2: Learn to useexpanded noun phrases todescribe and specify.

Year 4: Noun phrasesexpanded by the addition ofmodifying adjectives, nounsand preposition phrases

How noun phrases inapposition can be used toreinforce or emphasiseaspects of character



How noun phrase choicesprovide descriptive detailof settings and createnarrative cohesion



How noun phrases supportvisual descriptions ofcharacters

How noun phrases cancreate evocative images

Commentary

Definitions of nouns as ‘namesof people, places or things’ arenot always enough for childrento locate nouns quickly; teachingcan show position within asentence eg preceded by adeterminer or at the head of anoun phrase, and the form ofthe noun e.g. abstract/concrete;singular/plural.

Teaching can show howwell-chosen nouns can be moreeffective in providing descriptivedetail than over-use of adjectives.Use of synonyms for nounsfrom the same lexical field isan important way of creatingdetail authentic to historicalperiod or narrative genre, andfor linking ideas convincingly.

Useful constructions for addingpost-modified detail include:

• adjectives placed afterthe noun

• relative clauses starting with a relative pronoun (e.g. who, which, that, whose)

• a prepositional phrasestarting ‘with…’

• a subordinate clause

• similes

Text examples like these offerscope for combining literary andlinguistic analysis, for exampleby drawing attention to wordchoices within the noun phrasethat appeal to the senses or thatsound appealing because of theuse of alliteration and rhyme.

Text Example

She turned and ran back down thepath towards her home, scatteringbitter tears.

She was soon home in her owncosy hole.

…. scattering bitter tears into thecold, black night.

The witch lived in the trunk of adead tree in the darkest, thorniestpart of the forest.

A twisted old woman with a face likethe bark of a tree and horrible clawhands was standing on the path infront of Jub. She had fierce red eyeslike poisonous berries.

To bite the head off any small birdshe could catch and crunch its beakbetween her long yellow teeth.

Her straggly white hair hung infront of her walnut face.

Learning Objective



How noun phrases, especiallywith post-modification,generate descriptive detailof characters or objects


Year 4: Noun phrasesexpanded by the addition ofmodifying adjectives, nounsand preposition phrases.

How noun phrases create de-scriptions which help readersto infer character.

Year 3 and 4, Year 5 and 6:Reading – comprehension:identifying how language,structure, and presentationcontribute to meaning

How minor sentences(all noun phrases) create afrozen moment in time andfocus attention on thedescription

Commentary

Text examples like these offerscope for combining literary andlinguistic analysis, for exampleby drawing attention to wordchoices within the noun phrasethat appeal to the senses or thatsound appealing because of theuse of alliteration and rhyme.

Teaching can bring out hownoun phrase detail is used to‘show not tell’ informationabout characters and to firmlylink reading and writingprocesses, by focusing on the‘clues’ we use to make infer-ences when we read and howas writers we can lay a trail ofsimilar clues for our reader.

Minor sentences do not have afinite verb - compare ‘A terriblewith... a wart on the end of hernose’ with ‘She was a terriblewith...with a wart on the endof her nose or ‘A witch whoshrieked and yelled’ which is asubordinate clause, with ‘sheshrieked and yelled’, which areco-ordinated main clauses.

Without attention paid to therole of the verb in forming aclause, children can be misledby the idea that a main clause‘makes sense on its own’ and asubordinate clause ‘doesn’tmake sense on its own’.

Text Example

Sometimes the eyes of owls flashedfrom the trees like torches and madeher jump, or bats skimmed the top ofher head like living Frisbees.

The Happy Endings had flown backto the forest like homing pigeons.

She noticed scarves of mist draped inthe trees. One of them noosed itselfround Jub’s neck, soft and damp,and made her shiver.

She dreamed of a Golden Pen whichcould write on night itself.

The moon gaped down at the forest,agog with light.

She had fierce red eyes likepoisonous berries.

Faster than fury, the old womanwas on her.

The shadowy trees looked villainous:tall ghouls with long arms andtwiggy fingers.



Learning Objective

Year 3: Expressing time,place and cause usingprepositions

How prepositional phrasescan establish a clear pictureof a setting


How varied sentence rhythmscan draw attention to thenarration of an episode andcreate a hook for the reader

How short sentences cancreate emphasis or anticipa-tion in developing a plotline

Commentary

Prepositional phrases providedetail that can be part of anoun phrase, relating back tothe noun and functioning likean adjective e.g. the darknessbehind the tea chests; the rainfrom the mountains. They alsoprovide adverbial detail, relatingback to the verb e.g. I found himin the garage; I planted besideroads. They are therefore animportant way of making writing‘more detailed’ or ‘moredescriptive’. Teaching can builda store of prepositions andexperiment with positioningprepositional phrases differentlywithin a sentence.

One purpose of manipulatingsentence lengths and types isto create distinctive textualrhythms that might emphasiseideas or alter the pace ofreading, for example:

• an opening pattern of ques-tions and short statements to withhold information and suggest a sense of mystery;

• the subject verb inversion, typical of folk tales, myths and legends, so helping to establish genre

• ‘Short sentences’ can have one clause (Jub hurried on) or more than one clause (I could hear it turning in the lock now.) Short sentences can be presented as an ‘auto-matic’ way of increasingnarrative tension but textexamples like this offer scopefor open-ended discussion of choices and effects about howwell they ‘work’ in creating suspense.

Text Example

Jub would scamper and rustle herway down to the ground.

A twisted old woman …. was stand-ing on the path in front of Jub.

(She) hobbled rapidly away into thedarkness and the fog.

Frightened or disappointed childrenweeping and wailing in their beds.

She had flung the sack into the cor-ner of her lair.

Cinderella’s foot was too big for theglass slipper. Some of the childrenstarted to howl. Snow White died whenshe bit the poisonous apple and shestayed dead for ever. Some of thechildren started to scream. The BigBad Wolf gobbled up Little Red RidingHood and enjoyed every red mouthful.Some of the children had hysterics.

Before long the rapid movement ofher witchy hands had made a spark.Then another. Then another.

The shadowy trees looked villainous:tall ghouls with long arms and twiggyfingers. Bushes crouched in the fog asthough they were ready to pouncelike muggers. Jub hurried on.


Learning Objective

Year 1: Joining words andjoining clauses using and.

Year 2: co-ordination (usingor, and, but)

Year 3: Expressing time,place and cause usingconjunctions

How co-ordinated clausesare used to link events andactions in a story


How a patterns of threeco-ordinated clauses createsa good rhythm in a text; useof ‘and’ and comma tosubstitute ‘and’


How non-finite clauses canadd strong visual images ofa character or setting

Commentary

Deliberate use of co-ordinatedconjunctions (and, but, or) tolink clauses is very different fromuncontrolled chaining togetherof ideas. Teaching might bringout the use of ‘and’ to joinclosely linked events or actionsand the use of ‘but’ to signalan unexpected event;.

The pattern of three clausesagain is suggestive of myth andcreates strong textual rhythms– particularly satisfying whenused in the final sentence, agood signal that the storyhas ended.

The non-finite clauses arestrongly descriptive and aconcise way to write. They areall additional information thatcould be removed, so we cansee that the writer has addedextra detail, appealing especiallyto how we picture the scene.

Text Example

Jub would open the sack and shakeout the Happy Endings into the violetevening air.

Some of the Endings drifted awaylike breath and fluttered upwardslike moths fumbling for light.

Children in their beds were listeningto their bedtime stories. But tonightthere were to be no Happy Endings.

When Jub came near to the spot wherethe witch had snitched her sack shestopped. She wondered what to do.She held the Golden pen before herfingers and drew a question markon the night air

The flames danced with her, cheek tocheek, step by step, arm in arm.

Jub dropped the Golden Pen as sheran, and ran and ran.

One of them noosed itself roundJub’s neck, soft and damp, andmade her shiver.

Special thanks go to Simone Jackson (Chantry Primary), Damon Willer (Aurora Academies) and SueWilliams (Little Common) who have provided the bulk of the exemplary models and worked tirelesslyover the last two years both in the working group and in their own schools to develop the materials.Also thanks to Debra Myhill and her team at Exeter University who provided the in depth subjectknowledge training and frames for developing the materials.

Jo Tregenza,Director of Initial Teacher Training,University of Sussex

grammar in its place… · 2019-11-07 · grammar in its place… putting the teaching of grammar...

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