Friday 20th November
2015
Spelling, Punctuation and
Grammar (SPAG)
Mrs Coulson and Miss Mitchell
Aims of today…
•  Explain the expectations in Reading in Year 6
•  Explain the terminology used within SPAG
lessons
•  Explain what your child is expected to be able to
do by the end of Year 6
•  Support you in your own subject knowledge
•  Provide you with ways that you can support your
child at home
Task One…..
Get into teams and choose a
team name….
Team Task
•  You have 2 minutes to complete as many
as you can for the worksheet on your
table.
New Curriculum
•  The importance of SPAG. There is a separate
test to assess their knowledge
•  Children are expected to be fluent in reading,
writing and their spoken language.
•  Editing and proofreading has a bigger focus so
this year
•  We have introduced Grammar Hammer in Years
One to Six
•  Higher expectations for all year groups
Many meanings mission.
•  On your table are words that have more
than one meaning.
•  You have 2 minutes to write down as
many meanings for the following words.
•  Date
net
type
•  Leaves
rose
•  Point
right
Renewing our subject knowledge
The children will need to know 8 main word types:
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Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Determiners
Prepositions
Pronouns
Conjunctions
Expectations for Year 6
•  In your booklet are handouts to show the
expectations for Year 6
•  Key Learning in Reading
Key Stage 2
•  The new national curriculum will be assessed for
the first time in May 2016
•  The current Year 6 children will be the first to
sit these papers
•  The key stage 2 English grammar, punctuation
and spelling test is designed to assess grammar,
punctuation, language strategies and spelling
Some subject knowledge for yourselves…
The following slides are available in a handout for you to refer to throughout the year.
Nouns
Nouns are the biggest word class (everyone and everything needs a
name!)
A noun is the name of a person, place, animal, thing or idea.
•  Nouns can be singular or plural
•  They can be proper (Alsatian), common (dog),
collective (team), or abstract (justice). Abstract nouns (Lv6) are
those that you cannot see/touch and can be emotions.
•  Noun phrases- a ‘phrase’ takes its name from the overall job that
this group of words is doing…
So – ‘the big, blue, shiny bicycle’ – is a noun phrase
Pronouns
Pronouns stand in for a noun,
I, you, he, she, it, we, they,
My, your, his, her, our, their.
Pronouns are important for ‘cohesion’.
If children overuse them, the reader is not sure who is
being discussed. If they underuse them, the writing can
sound very repetitive and boring.
Determiners
•  Determiners … ‘home’ you in on the noun.
The most common determiners are
‘the’ and ‘a’
Some more determiners:
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this dog, that dog,
all dogs, every dog, some dogs, no dogs, each dog
one dog, two dogs
his dog, her dog, my dog ( what other category ?)
Verbs
Action words?
Find the action word in the following sentences
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We are enthusiastic teachers
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Many animals are endangered
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The boys played football
A verb is a ‘doing’ or a ‘being’ word. It tells us what is happening in the
sentence.
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The most common verb in the english language is the verb ‘to be’
A verb can be a single word or a group of words which together form the ‘verb
phrase’
The choir will be singing at the village hall.
The choir has been singing at the village hall.
The choir might be singing at the village hall.
The choir would have been singing at the village hall.
Adverbs
The lion was staring.
How?
The lion was staring menacingly.
Adverbs modify the verb.
They tell us how (adverb of manner), when (adverb of
time), or where (adverb of place).
Last Thursday, the lion was staring menacingly.
Last Thursday, at the Safari Park, the lion was staring menacingly out towards
the keepers.
Adverbs can move about the sentence, affecting the emphasis, but not
the meaning.
Prepositions
Prepositions express a relationship of meaning between 2
parts of a sentence, usually to do with space or time.
Simple prepositions may include:
about, across, after, at, before, behind, by, down,
during, for, from, to, inside, into, of, off, on, onto,
out, over, round, since, through, to, towards, under,
up, with.
Adjectives
Describing words? How many adjectives can you find in
this highly descriptive passage?
The storm had ripped violently through the village, uprooting houses and
leaving possessions strewn across the valley. Pots, pans, tables, chairs,
household items of all kinds had been abandoned in the mud. No children
played in the playground, but a teddy –bear lay against the roundabout,
staring blankly at the scene.
An adjective describes ( or modifies) the noun.
•  It might nestle close to the noun- or be elsewhere in the sentence..
The silver car stood in the driveway.
The car in the driveway was silver.
Conjunctions (Connectives)
Sentences can be made longer by joining two
clauses or parts of clauses together.
Words that link two parts of a sentence together
are called conjunctions ( the word ‘connective’ is
used in the draft/sample test material).
For example …because, so, while, for, and, but,
or, yet, even though, provided that….
Types of Questions
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The Reading Assessment Focus list
Use a range of strategies, including accurate decoding of text, to read for meaning
Understand, describe, select or retrieve information, events or ideas from texts and
use quotation and reference to text Deduce, infer or interpret information, events or
ideas from texts
Identify and comment on the structure and organisation of texts, including
grammatical and presentational features at text level
Explain and comment on the writers’ use of language, including grammatical and
literary features at word and sentence level
Identify and comment on the writers’ purposes and viewpoints, and the overall effect
Relate texts to their cultural and historical contexts and literary traditions.
•  Assessment focusses and types of questions
•  There are 7 assessment focuses used to tighten and focus
questioning. These can be used to develop children’s understanding
and promote thinking at three levels:
•  Literal questions – recalling information that is directly stated in the
text
•  Deductive and Inferential Questions – asking children to work out
answers by reading between the lines, combining information from
different parts of the text and by going beyond the information given
•  Evaluative and response questions – thinking about whether a
text achieves its purpose, or making connections with other texts
Ways to help with skimming and
scanning
Skimming is used to quickly gather the most important
information or ‘gist’. It’s not essential to understand each
word when you are skimming.
Run your eyes over the text, noting important information.
Use skimming to quickly get up to speed on a current business
situation.
Examples of Skimming:
•  The Newspaper – to quickly get the
general news of the day
•  Magazines – to quickly discover which
articles you would like to read in more
detail
•  Business and Travel Brochures – to
quickly get informed
How to Skim?
Working quickly…
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Read the title if there is one.
Read the introduction or the first paragraph if there is one.
Read the first sentence of every other paragraph.
Notice any pictures, charts, or graphs.
Notice any italicized or boldface words or phrases.
Read the summary or last paragraph if there is one.
How to scan
1. State the specific information you are looking for.
2. Try to anticipate how the answer will appear and what
clues you might use to help you locate the answer. For
example, if you were looking for a certain date, you
would quickly read the paragraph looking only for
numbers.
3. Use headings and any other aids that will help you
identify which sections might contain the information you
are looking for.
4. Selectively read and skip through sections of the passage.
Skimming and scanning
•  On your table is a newspaper article and a
selection of questions with missing words.
Fill in the answers as quickly as possible.
Conclusion
—  Skimming and scanning is used when reading all
types of documents.
—  We skim to get the idea of what a document is
about and typically skim all documents before we
actually begin to read.
—  As we skim, we…
—  think about the topic
—  think about what we already know about the topic
—  start to guess or anticipate the details we are going
to read about.
—  We scan for specific information.
—  We work quickly when we skim and scan.
Helpful websites and resources
CPG books
•  KS2 English: Grammar,
Punctuation and Spelling
Study Book
•  KS2 English Targeted
Question Book: Grammar,
Punctuation & Spelling Year 5
Helpful websites and resources
for Year 6
CPG books
•  KS2 English Targeted
Question Book: Grammar,
Punctuation & Spelling Year 6
•  KS2 English SAT Buster Grammar
Supporting your child reading:
useful websites
•  www.booktrust.org.uk a useful website giving you top tips on how to
read with your child. It also provides recommendations for varying
ages
•  Lovereading4kids.co.uk provides book reviews by children, for
children. There are also interviews with authors giving an insight
into how they developed their stories. Again, this website
categorizes the books into ages.
•  Commonsensemedia.org This website provides book reviews which
can be narrowed via age, topic or genre. It also has a ‘what parents
need to know’ section, rating everything from how educational it is,
level of violence and positive role models.
Thank you for coming.
•  Please fill out a feedback form to let us
know how you found this session.