Teach Primary Issue 18.6

PUTTING IT TOGETHER • Compound sentences are taught in KS1, but ensure you make the link between this learning and your work on semi-colons in KS2. It helps make semi-colons a more understandable concept. • If compound sentences and sentence combining are taught effectively, it will reduce comma splicing. When this misconception appears, discuss why it doesn’t work, and offer the alternatives: a conjunction, advanced punctuation or simply a full stop. • Don’t make compound sentences sound like the be-all and end-all. Children need a variety of sentence structures in their writing for it to be effective. Promote that. • Provide lots of models of sentence structures and have them on display. This will allow children to magpie structures but change some of the words. Further research seemed to suggest that children don’t understand what makes a sentence. Therefore, any teaching around compound sentences must start with a simple knowledge check: Do my class know the key requirements of a sentence? Word class knowledge is essential here. Some multiple-choice questions or a ‘build a sentence’ activity will help you gauge current understanding. Sentence combining: There is a wealth of research on the effectiveness of using sentence combining activities to improve writing skills ( tinyurl.com/tp-ILKS2 ) . I am a fan of doing this physically by giving children sentences on slips of card and getting them to join them together with conjunctions. I usually incorporate colourful semantics in this exercise, assigning different colours to each word type. Depending on the age of your pupils, you can develop this simple, practical activity in a variety of ways. For Years 2 and 3, write simple sentences about a character pupils are learning about on strips of card. Provide pupils with conjunction cards (and, but, or) and ask them to find ways to combine the sentences and conjunctions so they make sense. Extend the activity by adding adjective cards. You can step this activity up for Years 4 and 5 by providing simple sentences in one colour, adverbials in another, and conjunctions in another – all on separate strips of card. Encourage pupils to change words for pronouns with a pen if needed. As an extension, ask pupils to use scissors to snip the sentence and put the adverbial inside so it still makes sense. For Years 5 and 6, provide simple sentences in one colour, adverbials in another, conjunctions in another, relative clause blank cards (a card with ‘who’, ‘which’, ‘where’ on and a gap to complete the clause) and semi-colons and dashes. To extend the activity, ask pupils to try different combining strategies (e.g. conjunction, dash or semi-colon), decide on the most effective for a particular style of writing and justify their choice. (See tinyurl.com/ tp-Compound for some example words and sentences.) Personalised dice: Give children a simple sentence and use a conjunction die to see how they need to extend the sentence. You might decide to make FANBOYS dice, but some of these conjunctions are quite tricky to use, or are more suitable for formal writing, so you may want to use just a few of them. Warm-up games: Play ‘Finish my sentence’. Give pupils the beginning of a sentence, e.g. ‘Mrs Trunchbull went to the playground but…’ Ask children to write a complete sentence on whiteboards or sugar paper. Share ideas, address any misconceptions and draw attention to clever use of grammar. To join or not to join? Don’t forget that sometimes a short sentence is most effective; three conjunctions in a sentence might not work. Discuss with the class the effective use of grammatical techniques. Does it make sense? Some children – often, but not always, those with EAL – use the wrong conjunction for the purpose. Give pupils sentences where the conjunction has been used incorrectly, see if they can spot it and then ask them to explain why it is wrong. For example: ‘My sister likes carrots, but she likes potatoes.’ TP Laura Dobson worked for many years as a teaching and learning adviser for a large company and local authority. She now provides consultancy and training in all areas of English. @inspireprieng 68 | www.teachwire.net “Use the mnemonic ‘FANBOYS’ to remember the conjunctions”