Single-clause sentences – Leftovers

Towards the end of this week, we have taken our knowledge of single-clause sentences to the next step by working with ‘leftovers’ – extra information in the sentence that is neither a subject nor a verb. We still had to follow our script in order to identify our verb, followed by our subject but we realised that once we had done this, there was extra words that we hadn’t labelled. We then had to decide which clause these ‘leftovers’ belonged to. Once we’d done this, we could ask ourselves when our subject had stopped doing or being in order to identify the end of the clause. Once we knew we’d got a full, independent clause with a subject and a verb, we were able to add our full stops and capital letters.

After we had done this, we then looked at what these types of single-clause sentences would look like with ‘to be’ verbs, instead of action verbs and repeated the same steps as before.

Single-clause sentences – Pronouns

Following our success of identifying single clause sentences, we moved on to look at what these may look like with pronouns. We worked in pairs to identify repeated words within two sentences that follow on from each other, discussing which pronouns we could use instead, to avoid repetition. We then used this knowledge to follow our script in order to identify verbs and subjects and then add in full stops and capital letters once we were sure we had two full, independent clauses with a subject and a verb.

Single-Clause Sentences

On Monday, Crew Hamill moved their grammar to the next stage as they began looking at single-clause sentences. We looked at what a clause was (a group of words that include a subject and a verb) and then used our prior knowledge of identifying subjects and verbs to figure out where our single clause sentences were. We followed our script, identifying the first verb in the sentence. One we had this, we identified the subject of that verb. We repeated this until all our of verbs and subjects had been identified and then asked ourselves when the verb ended so that we could put a full stop as we had a full, independent clause with a subject and a verb. We could the go back and add in capital letters.

Subject and verb

As our do now, we consolidated our learning about regular and irregular verbs as this was an area from out touchdown on verbs that we need to continue drip feeding into our learning.

We have now moved on to new learning in grammar where we need to understand the subject and verb within a sentence. We used a script to help us identify the verb and then who or what was doing the action.

For example: The skull protects the brain.

What is the first verb?
Protects
What protects? Who protects?
The skull
Therefore the skull is the subject of the sentence.

This script helped us focus and find the subject.

When we moved on to the subject as a pronoun, we struggled with this so we had a practical lesson where we could form a sentence that made sense then identify the verb and who or what did that action. This helped us understand more and this was evident when children went back to purple pen their exit ticket from the previous lesson and got it correct.

Identifying the subject

During the last week of half term, Crew Hamill have worked hard to identify the subject of a sentence. The subject is who or what is doing the action within the sentence. To help us do this, we followed a script in which we identified the first verb (action word) and then asked ourselves who or what did that action. To consolidate this learning, we were given jumbled up sentences. Our first job was to structure our sentences. We knew they began with a capital letter and ended with a full stop so these were the first cards we placed. Then we organised the rest of the words until we had a fully independent clause that made sense. Once we’d done this, we identified the verb and subject.

Irregular Verb Phrases

Our final lesson on verbs began with a game of charades! We circled up, one person chose a verb card and then they had to act out their verb for the rest of the crew to guess. We had a giggle when Jenson started dancing! Following this, we looked at irregular verbs in the past tense and identified what happened when these formed verb phrases. We then had to identify which verb phrases had been formed correctly and correct any which had the past tense verb wrong.

Single-clause sentences in MI

Today we continued our work on single-clause sentences which we are now getting really confident with. We also looked at the ‘leftovers’ thinking about which clause they belong to. We used counters and different coloured pens to show the different clauses and worked in mini crews to check our ideas. Super impressed MI 🙂

Irregular Verbs

Once we were secure in our knowledge of regular verbs and regular verb phrases, we moved on to looking at irregular verbs. These are verbs in which the root word changes when you turn them into past tense. For example, run -> ran. We activated our learning by playing a game of stand up, sit down. We were shown a number of verbs and had to stand up if we believed they were an irregular verb or stay sat down if we believed they were a regular verb. Following this, we looked at a selection of verbs and had to identify the odd one out. We worked in mini crews and were able to identify that 3 out of 4 of our verbs were regular and the odd one out was an irregular verb. We then had a go at turning irregular verbs into past tense – fly -> flew, throw -> threw etc. We ended the lesson by completing an exit ticket to consolidate our learning, showing that we could write irregular verbs in past, present and future tense.