TP-14.4

www.teachwire.net | 59 second sentence. Note also that the teaching of punctuation here is integral to the teaching of grammar and the teaching of meaning-making. Children can be creative in their options within the focus grammatical area, but we’d recommend sticking to that grammatical focus. The extent to which this sharpens the mind and develops creative thinking can take your breath away. Once, when asked for an adverbial to express ‘when’ as part of a ghost story, a child offered, “when they were least expecting it”! Gimmick-free games Why does holding bits of paper, moving positions, remembering to put punctuation marks in and arguing about the merits of a different word order seem to work so well in terms of memory and application? It’s multi-sensory, of course, but not in a gimmicky, distracting way: everything is purposeful, and every addition and change must be considered for impact on meaning and context. And it’s really, truly collaborative: lots of minds focused on the impact of a single sentence, irrespective of individual ‘writing ability’. So why did so many of us stop using this strategy? Observationally, it seemed to disappear when interactive whiteboards reached ubiquity, around 2006. But we also wonder if it never received the promotion that more Mini whiteboards are perfect for adding words and phrases. Model what you want so that children don’t write too small, don’t rewrite the whole sentence and don’t capitalise or use full stops to demarcate. In classes where children are not yet ready to use mini whiteboards themselves, take oral suggestions and write them on boards yourself. Keep circulating the children. Many will enjoy being at the front of the room, holding the strips and mini whiteboards, but when they are there they don’t get to see the evolving sentence. If working with a small group, use smaller paper strips. Move them around on the table, devising other moveable markers for punctuation. Children can still contribute their own words and phrases. Use extra small whiteboards or small blank paper strips. commercially-packageable grammar strategies have had. Human sentences, after all, require only big bits of paper, pens, good classroom management and sound grammatical knowledge. Tips for success Select the grammar to be taught. Things that work well with this technique include clause structure (and using conjunctions to join them); adding a relative clause; adding and trying phrases in different positions (particularly how-when-where adverbials and avoiding ambiguity); adding adjectives and/or changing modal verbs. Human sentences lend themselves less well to changing tenses and exploring the passive. Be clear about the grammatical feature you’re teaching. And almost always stick to it. Allow children to try different devices in the sentence only once they have secured their understanding of clause structure and your main teaching point. Have strips of paper ever-ready. A pile of them makes lesson prep quicker and easier – and they’ll be there if you want to lead an impromptu session to explore a usage or address a misconception. One sheet of flip-chart paper with three vertical slices produces four perfect sentence strips. Always start a session with a simple sentence. This reinforces the all-important sense-of-a-sentence and teaches children to start from a main clause and then make additions in their own writing. Never use a capital or full stop on starting-point sentences. This fixes the sentence andmeansnothing can be addedat either end. Instead, have the childrenholding the stripsuse a simplephysical (and moveable) reminder, eg a fist for stop; ahand-on-head (a “cap”) for a capital (note that thiswill require twochildren tohold evena short sentence). Other punctuationmarksmaybe devisedwithappropriate handpositions! Planning to ‘drop in’ a word, phrase or clause? Pre-doctor the sentence strip so that itmay easilybe split at the crucial part. Score it ready for tearingor cut it and lightlyaffix thepieceswith small bits of tape. Christine Chen and Lindsay Pickton are primary education advisers supporting English development nationally. GIVE IT A GO TODAY Download this ready-made set of human sentencemakers fromPlazoom. The resource focuses on relative clauses with sentence fragments that can be cut up for children to reassemble - making both simple andmore complex sentences. tinyurl.com/tphuman RESOURCES RECOMMENDED TEACH READ I NG & WR I T I NG primaryeducation advisers.co.uk