Grammar Essentials for age 8

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Nouns, verbs, pronouns, prepositional words, connectives, pronouns Nouns-  special names begin with capital letters Describing words (make sentences more interesting) More (-er) most (-est) Singular and plural nouns Verbs regular  past tense (-ed) Use past tense consistently Use verb tenses with increasing accuracy in speaking and writing Did/ done (has), catch /caught , give/ gave Verbs is/are, was/ were Adverb (-ly) (how words) Find good adverbs to describe the verb Plurals (s, es) more than one Articles a and an Use of article an with words beginning with silent h in an hour Owning words (pronouns) my, his, her, its, yours Opposite words Person verb agreement (I run, you run, he runs, they run) Noun / pronoun/ verb agreement ( I ma, they are, we are, he is) Comparative nouns e.g. long, longer, longest Connectives ‘and’ and ‘but’  to join two simple sentences Collective nouns –e.g.  a team of players Abstract nouns e.g.  feelings, thoughts Main clause & dependent clause Figures of speech – similes, metaphors Other connectives: When, because, until, before, Use these to form complex sentences (dependent clause) Teach sentence with two verbs of equal weight is a compound sentence. Complex sentence contains a main clause and a subordinate clause. A phrase is any group of words which taken together in a sentence, function as a part of speech: Noun phrases act together as a noun - Reading a book is good hobby (what: the subject) Adjectival phrase act together as an adjective – The woman in the red shiny dress is the owner of the cafe (which woman) A Verb phrase forms a verb My mum will be leaving for the station in an hour (what does or did the subject do?)

Capital letter for names Capital letter for start of  a sentence Capital letter for personal pronoun I Capital letter for personal titles (Mr, Mrs) Use full stop for ending sentences Use of full stop for abbreviation Use of full stop for when a word has been made shorter Use question marks for questions words – who, when, how, what, where, which Use comma when we take a breath Use comma in a list Use comma to help make meaning clearer: Julia says her sister is ill. (sister ill) Julia, says her sister, is ill (Julia ill). Use of exclamation mark to Mark surprise, humour, joy Show fear, anger, pain, danger, giving an order or shouting identify speech marks in reading understand basic conventions of speech punctuation Shortening words using full stops or the high comma ‘ Use of apostrophe for ownership /possession Other uses of capitalisation: Personal pronoun I Each line of a poem Begin exact words spoken in inverted commas Words in titles Punctuation to master: ‘ . ? ! ,  “  “