Experience and Grammar day

This half term we have begun our next unit of writing, which we’re extremely excited about as it is going to be supporting us with our final product. Our genre is a type of monologue- a speech- focussing on ‘I have a dream for Doncaster’. We were immersed into the writing by watching example videos of monologues in films we love to obviously enjoy as the audience, but importantly build background knowledge and understand a purpose of speeches. We then participated in a conscience alley to reflect on our opinions of the pros and cons of Doncaster, as well as reflected on issues within our own community. We then backed this up with research our chosen dreams for Doncaster.

In grammar day, we consolidated clauses; we found the subject, verb and object within a clause. We also played punctuation bingo, which was a huge hit! This developed our knowledge and led us to today’s learning – Miss’ expectation of us using Y6 standard punctuation. We learnt about the purpose of colons and semicolons and made our very own sentences we could add into our introduction next lesson. The grammar refresh was definitely needed ready for progressing in our writing as well as ready for our grammar test next week.

Subordinate Conjunctions

In writing on Friday, we learned about subordinate conjunctions and how they add further information to the main clause. We learned I SAW A WABUB to help us remember the subordinate conjunctions. Then we worked in pairs to experiment with the position of the subordinate clause. We realised that the subordinate clause can either be at the start or end of the sentence. However, if it is at the start of the sentence, we must remember to use a comma to separate the main clause and the subordinate clause.

Grammar in MI

Today we discussed cohesion within and between paragraphs. We spent some time unpicking different paragraphs on different extinct animals. We discussed TIDE, where we found the transition/introductory sentence, the we found the development sentences then moving onto the ending sentence. We used highlighters to show these different sections. We then focussed on the Tecopa pupfish again using TIDE to explore the paragraph. From here we grouped our facts into sections which will support us when we write our plot point.

We then moved onto modifying the different verbs in a paragraph with adverbials. We looked at a piece of text, identifying the verb/verb phrase, the subject and the leftovers. We quickly realised that the sentences were very simple and included lots of repetition. From here we used TRaMP yo modify an adverbial, thinking about time, reason, manner and place. We then moved the adverbials around to show different structures. We are looking forward to continuing with this tomorrow.

Writing in MI

MI have started their new writing/grammar unit looking at extinct animals. Over the last few days we have been taking part in a series of diagnostic tasks that are allowing us to digest lots of grammar that will be needed when it comes to writing our own non-chronological report. Today we thought about adverbials of time, manner and place along with identifying main and subordinate clauses. We moved our sentences around changing the order of the main and subordinate clause. We have added our anchor charts to our working wall which we will use when we start to write.

Conjunctions

The last thing we needed to learn before moving on to our writing sessions was how to join two independent clauses together. We learned all about coordinating conjunctions, known as FANBOYS – for, and, nor, but, or, yet and so. We then worked through a few example sentences in which we had to identify which conjunction had been used. Once we’d identified this, we looked at the independent clauses either side of the conjunction. We identified each verb and subject, allowing us to see how we had two independent clauses with a subject and a verb joined together with one of the FANBOY conjunctions. We also learned that these conjunctions can be used to join more than one subject together to create a compound subject (for example, The moon and the stars).

Verb, Subject, Leftovers in paragraphs

Crew Hamill have tried really hard to develop their knowledge of verbs, subjects and leftovers by identifying them within paragraphs. We have been looking at unpunctuated paragraphs, with no capital letters, commas and full stops, and have used our knowledge of independent clauses having a subject and a verb to be able to work our where the punctuation belongs. We have found this tricky at times due to some of the vocabulary being difficult to understand but after working on it for a while, we are now much more confident!

Computing meets PVPG

Recently, we have been enjoying our computing lessons so much that the children are using AI(artificial intelligence) at home. It is so lovely to see this high level of engagement and even a couple of children have made story books (with the help of AI). It has now become a regular occurrence to read them as we walk down the corridor to break. With us hooked with AI, Miss thought it would be a good idea to incorporate this into our grammar application lesson. The children loved prompting AI to generate a short paragraph with no punctuation that they had to then identify the verb/verb phrase, subject, coordinating conjunction, leftovers and then punctuate to identify the main clauses. Obviously this was my favourite short paragraph!

When leftovers could belong to both clauses

Today, we looked at what happens when you are building single-sentence clauses but you have ‘leftovers’ that could belong to either clause you are creating. We followed our script to identify verbs and subjects, then labelled the leftovers that were easier to identify (the leftover at the end belonging to the second clause). We then looked at how the leftover in the middle could belong to either clause. It could be the ending of the first clause, adding extra information, or it could be used at the beginning of the second clause with a comma being used after it. We had a go at doing this in pairs and playing around with the structure of our clauses before completing our exit ticket to illustrate what we had learned.