The Return of Captain Grammaticus
Key Stage 1
Introduction
This show has been developed to support the Literacy curriculum in schools at
Key Stage 1 and the main focus of the play is on identifying and understanding
the basic punctuation of a sentence. The following pages provide a summary of
the work covered and examples of how it is put into practice in the play.
Teachers’ Notes
Capital Letter…Full Stop
All basic sentences begin with a capital letter and end with
a full stop.
We show the audience this sentence: ‘A sentence looks like this.’
The following sentences are shown, one by one, to the audience and they are
asked to punctuate them correctly by capitalizing the first letter and by adding a
full stop to the end. Each sentence is punctuated in turn by a member of the
audience.
i went to the shops – I went to the shops.
my sister likes to dance - My sister likes to dance.
the house is very old - The house is very old.
it is raining - It is raining.
nobody likes cabbage - Nobody likes cabbage.
Captain Grammaticus decides to make the exercise a little trickier and gives the
audience a selection of words which first need to be re-arranged into a sentence
and then need to be punctuated:
spiders
hates
my
My brother hates spiders.
brother
swam
sea
in
the
is
We swan in the sea.
we
cold
it
It is very cold.
little
The little dog barked.
very
barked
the
dog
Better words than ‘and’
To make your writing more
interesting to read it’s a good idea
to think of alternative words to use
instead of ‘and’ to connect
sentences.
Captain Grammaticus has a pupil,
Eva, who is writing a novel but she
uses too many ‘and’s in her
sentences. With the help of the audience Capain Grammaticus finds alternative
words to use instead of ‘and’ that are appropriate for the meaning of the
sentence. The audience is given two alternatives to the ‘and’ and they have to
tell Eva which is the best one to use:
‘Heidi was only five years old (SO/BUT) and Gerda was
much older.’
‘Their father died when they were young (SO/WHEN) and
their mother had to bring them up on her own.’
The house they lived in was very small (THEN/BUT) and
cosy.
As they had no money, their mother went out to work
(THEN/WHILE) and they stayed at home.
Gerda liked looking after Heidi (WHEN/SO) and she never
minded .
One day, Heidi was sitting by the window (BUT/ WHEN)
and there was a knock on the door.
She ran to it (THEN/WHILE) and remembered that her
mother had told her never to open the door to anyone
(SO/BUT) she and decided to hide instead.
We conclude that by changing some of our ‘and’s to other connecting words in
our writing it make for a much more interesting read.
Question Mark or Full Stop?
We’ve learned that a sentence begins with a capital
letter and ends with the full stop. But some sentences
are questions, so instead of a full stop they need a
question mark to show that it is a question.
Captain Grammaticus tells us that a question is a
sentence asking something and usually begins with
words like ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘who’, ‘how’, ‘which’, ‘where’.
The audience is then shown a series of sentences and
has to work out whether each one needs a question mark or a full stop at the
end:
I like football.
Full Stop
Do you like football?
What’s your name?
Question Mark
Question Mark
The weather is hot.
No, not really.
Full Stop
Full stop
I need the toilet.
Full Stop
Who is Dr Who?
Question Mark
How do you know? Question Mark
My favourite programme is Pepper Pig.
Full
Stop
When is your birthday? Question Mark
Captain Grammaticus has an assistant called Miss Reid who is writing an advert
for the Yellow Pages, but her punctuation is terrible! With the help of the
audience they insert the correct punctuation at the end of her sentences:
Are you having problems with your reading and
writing? Look no further. Whatever your
problem, Captain Grammaticus will help you.
Why don’t you ring him today?
Exclamation Marks!
We’ve learned about full stops and question marks at the
end of a sentence, but now we encounter the exclamation
mark which is used to show sudden surprise or
excitement.
With this knowledge the audience is asked to put the right
punctuation marks at the end of a series of sentences:
Do you want to know who stole the book?
(Question Mark)
Listen up! (Exclamation Mark)
I’m not telling!
(Exclamation Mark)
Why should I? (Question Mark)
It’s for me to know and you to find out! (Exclamation mark)
Describing Words
Describing words tell you
what things are like. In the
sentence ‘The little rat sat
on the old lady’s lap.’ The
describing words are ‘little’
and ‘old’.
Captain Grammaticus shows
the audience a section of a
book called ‘The Adorable
Little Rat’ and together they pick out each describing word they come across as
they read the piece:
‘The
rat was
hungry and
sleepy. He saw
a large bun on
the old table.
He quickly
jumped up and
started to eat
the delicious
food. Suddenly
the rickety door
opened and the
old lady came
into the room.
She saw the
naughty rat on
the table but
didn’t mind. He
was the
loveliest, cutest,
friendliest and
kindest rat you
ever saw!
Captain Grammaticus is puzzled that the words ‘loveliest’, ‘cutest’, ‘friendliest’
and ‘kindest’ are used to describe rats. These are not the words we’d usually
use to describe a rat so Captain Grammaticus begins to smell a rat! It looks as
if something strange is going on with this novel…
(For Key Stage 1 we do not differentiate between adjectives and adverbs but
treat them both as ‘describing words’.)
Speech Marks
We introduce the idea of using speech marks as
punctuation to show what someone has actually
said.
Captain Grammaticus’s colleague, Miss Reid, is
writing an advert to attract more business and
decides to use quotes from previous happy
customers. Unfortunately no speech marks have
been used so with the help of the audience she puts the speech marks in the
correct places around the words that have been spoken:
“The best super-hero.” said Sam.
“The greatest.” said Tim.
“Much better than Superman.” wrote Bob.
“Why try anyone else?” asked Mrs Brown.
“Just the man for the job!” added Mr
Brown.
Summary
As a summary of work covered in the play the final scene requires the audience
to recap and correctly use all the punctuation marks covered to save Captain
Grammaticus. If the audience answers all the questions correctly it will allow
him to escape:
1. there are two things missing in this sentence - There should be a
capital letter at the beginning of the sentence and the full stop at
the end.
2. What should this sentence end with - as this sentence is a
3.
4.
5.
6.
question is should end with a question mark.
Make this into two sentences: Rat Woman is the best Grammaticus
is rubbish - the first sentence should end after ‘best’. So it reads
‘Rat Woman is the best. Grammaticus is rubbish’.
Make this into one sentence using the right connective.
Grammaticus thinks he is clever (but/then) Rat Woman is the
cleverest. – ‘But’ is the correct choice in this instance.
Underline the describing words in this sentence: The beautiful rat
and the ugly super-hero. - Beautiful and ugly should be underlined
Put in the missing speech marks: Help! shouted Captain
Grammaticus. – the speech marks should be before and after
‘help’.
These are the topics covered in the play. At the end of the performance the
actors will take questions on any aspect of the presentation, as well as asking
the audience some mathematical questions of their own.
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