The Return of Captain Grammaticus
Key Stage 2
Introduction
This show has been developed to support the Literacy curriculum in schools at
Key Stage 2 and the main focus of the play is on identifying and understanding
the function of the various components 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
Full Stop, Question Mark or Exclamation Mark
Punctuating the end of a sentence correctly requires
choosing the appropriate punctuation mark. A full stop
finishes a statement, a question mark finishes a question
and an exclamation mark is used for an exclamation or a
sudden command.
The audience is given a choice of the three: a full stop, an exclamation mark or
a question mark to correctly finish this series of simple sentences.
Watch out mummy, there’s a crocodile in the bath!
I like margarine on my sandwiches.
Mummy, what are you doing with those scissors?
The teacher put his head in his hands and cried.
Stop hitting me with that big stick!
Quick, your skirt is on fire!
What’s new pussycat?
The appropriate punctuation is then added to each of the sentences.
Verbs
Eva Beaver, one of Captain Grammaticus’s students,
is writing a novel and keeps getting her tenses mixed
up. Captain Grammaticus asks her if she knows
what a verb is. She tells him “They do stuff” and he replies that they do, or have
already done it, and that verbs are the words for what someone or something is
doing, like running or walking.
Captain Grammaticus examines a section of Eva Beaver’s novel and with the
help of the audience he identifies each of the verbs in the prose. Each time the
audience see a verb they make a buzzing sound and Captain Grammaticus
underlines them in turn.
“Help!” said Emily. But no-one went to her rescue because nobody could
hear what she was saying. In desperation, Emily got her dressing-gown and
went as fast as she could to the door, saying at the top of her voice; ‘Fire!
Fire!’”
Colourful verbs: The verbs that Eva has used in her prose are not very dynamic
and Captain Grammaticus decides to work through Eva’s paragraph replacing
each ordinary verb with a more dramatic counterpart suggested by the
audience. Thus, instead of ‘said’ we could use ‘screamed’ or ‘shouted’, instead
of ‘went’ we could use ‘rushed’, instead of ‘got’ we could use ‘grabbed’ or
‘snatched’.
In passing Captain Grammaticus points out Eva’s use of three different tenses of
verb:
She has written
She is writing
She will write the greatest novel of all time
Adverbs
Adverbs are introduced as words that
describe a verb: to shout loudly, to run
quickly, to sing badly.
Poor Dame Kitty Catkin’s final book in her
‘Cat O’Nine Tails’ series has been stolen
and a dastardly clue has been left at the
scene of the crime.
To solve it the audience must identify the adverbs in the series of book titles
and, with the help of the audience, Captain Grammaticus sets about doing just
that.
Firstly they pick out each verb in the book title, then they find the word that’s
describing it, ie. the adverb.
‘The cat with the neatly folded paws.’ Verb: ‘folded’. Adverb: ‘neatly’.
‘The pussy who occasionally caught a mouse.’ Verb: ‘caught’. Adverb: ‘occasionally’.
‘The cat that moved mysteriously.’ Verb: ‘moved’. Adverb: ‘mysteriously’.
‘The kitten that obstinately refused his cat flap.’ Verb: ‘refused’. Adverb: ‘obstinately’.
‘The hungry cat that ate ravenously.’ Verb: ‘ate’. Adverb: ‘ravenously’
‘The eagerly awaited kitten.’ Verb: ‘awaited’. Adverb: ‘eagerly’.
‘The kitten that kipped cosily on the curtain.’ Verb: ‘kipped’. Adverb: ‘cosily’.
‘The cat that looked angrily at the dog’. Verb: ‘looked’. Adverb: ‘angrily’.
‘The cat book that went tragically missing’. Verb: ‘went’. Adverb: ‘tragically’
A rule of thumb for spotting an adverb is to find the word ending in ‘ly’.
Basic Punctuation: sentences
A sentence is a set of words that makes complete sense in
itself and requires a capital letter at the beginning with the
correct punctuation at the end of it.
Back at the ‘Reid and Wright School of Proper English’ Miss
Reid is busy working on her advert for the paper.
‘Are you having problems with your grammar ladies gentlemen do
you need help with your spelling and punctuation well look no
further try Captain Grammaticus’
Using a full stop, an exclamation mark or a question mark, Miss Reid works
through her text with the audience working out where each sentence ends and
what the correct punctuation should be. Thus we punctuate the text as follows:
‘Are you having problems with your grammar ladies? Gentlemen do
you need help with your spelling and punctuation? Well look no
further! Try Captain Grammaticus.’
Miss Reid is satisfied with the sentences, but decides the next job is to insert a
few commas…
Nouns
Nouns are described as naming words. Common
nouns are used to name things such as tables,
telephones, windows.
Proper nouns name
someone or something, such as a river, a town or
a school, and have a capital letter.
Pronouns are used as a replacement for the
noun, such as you, I me, it.
Using the section of Eva’s novel the audience is then asked to identify the
common nouns, proper nouns and pronouns
“Help!” screamed Emily. (proper) ‘But no-one (pronoun) rushed to
her (pronoun) rescue because nobody (pronoun) could hear what she
(pronoun) was shouting. Emily (proper) grabbed her dressing-gown
(common) and ran as fast as she (pronoun) could to the door (common)
screaming at the top of her (pronoun) voice, (common) “Fire!”
(common) “Fire!” (common)
Using this new-found knowledge, Captain Grammaticus solves a clue with the
audience where they have to pick out the pronouns in the following sentence:
‘He that did the crime is he that laughs last and he will laugh longest.’
The solution is ‘He he he’
Captain Grammaticus deduces that the villain is laughing at them!
Adjectives
An adjective is a word that describes a noun, such as
strange book or amazing super-hero.
Our hero, Captain Grammaticus, finding a passage of
descriptive writing about rats, thinks there is something ‘not
quite right’ about the adjectives used to describe them so
with the help of the audience he identifies all the adjectives
in the following passage:
‘The playful rat, cuddly and beautiful, sat on the lady’s lap. His dainty,
appealing, lovable face looked at her with kind eyes, the cutest,
friendliest rat you ever saw. It was difficult to imagine a more graceful,
adorable and loyal companion as that fluffy rat.’
So the adjectives we’ve got are playful, cuddly, beautiful, dainty, appealing,
lovable, kind, cutest, friendliest, graceful, adorable, loyal and fluffy!
These are not the adjectives usually used to describe a rat so Captain
Grammaticus concludes that there is something fishy going on and takes a copy
of the book ‘The Adorable Little Rat’ to investigate later.
Commas
Commas indicate pauses in a sentence to help make a
sentence easier to read, but they are also used in lists to
separate the items and as a pause before an extra bit of
information. They are also inserted after a name at the beginning of a sentence
or before the name at the end of a sentence.
Back at the Reid and Wright School of Proper English, Miss Reid is grappling
with her advert once more. She now has to insert commas in the appropriate
places and with the help of the audience and using the rules above she inserts
them in the following places:
Having problems with your grammar, ladies? Gentlemen, need help with
your spelling and punctuation? Well, look no further! Try Captain
Grammaticus, the literacy-based super-hero, for all your grammatical needs
including commas, full stops, question marks and all other punctuation
problems.
The introduction of commas into the advert text means that it is now much
easier for the reader to understand.
Singular to plural: two spelling rules
Most plurals are formed by adding an ‘s’, but for words
ending in ‘y’ and those already ending in an ‘s’ or soft
sounds such as ‘ch’ or ‘sh’ there are different spelling rules
to form the plurals.
Captain Grammaticus is taken aback by the spelling of certain plurals in the
book ‘The Adorable Little Rat’ and examines the following passage:
The babys were confused. What had happened to the wool? Just then, two ladys in long
black dresss appeared in the hall. They worked for the Joness, the owners of the house, one
was carrying dishs and the other a box of matchs. When they saw the rats, the lady
carrying the box of matchs screamed causing the other lady who wasn’t holding the dishs
properly, to drop them In the confusion, Mrs Cuddles’ babys ran under the maids’ dresss.’
Using the plural spelling rules that a ‘y’ changes to ‘ies’ and that if a word ends
in an ‘s’, ‘ch’ or ‘sh’ you add ‘es’ Captain Grammaticus works his way through
the passage correcting the spellings with the help of the audience. Thus ‘ladys’
becomes ‘ladies’, ‘babys’ becomes ‘babies’, ‘Joness’ becomes ‘Joneses’ , ‘dishs’
becomes ‘dishes’, ‘matchs’ become ‘matches’ and ‘dresss’ becomes ‘dresses’.
Summary
As a summary of work covered in the play the final scene requires the audience
to identify an adverb, verb, adjective, noun, preposition and connective to form a
sentence and save Captain Grammaticus. The resulting sentence tells him how
to escape:
‘Slowly push small button in and sharply turn large dial around then carefully switch
red knob on and gradually pull long lever out.’
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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