To think ‘generaliser’ is not a grammatical term?

[Whyohsky]

DC (yr 2) came home from school talking about ‘generalisers’ today. Is this some newly coined term? Years studying languages and I have never heard of it. Google brings up various pages on Twinkl and other KS1/KS2 teaching materials but I can’t find a definition anywhere, in the same way that one can for e.g. noun/subjunctive/relative clause. Happy to be corrected!

I found this (very old) explanation from 2011, back in National Curriculum level days. Does it help?:
Key Stage 2 Literacy:
Generalisers
For Level 3 writing and beyond, children are required to use generalising words. These add a personal voice to the piece of writing or simply generalise about a statement. They are very similar to the Openers children will be using too.
sometimes
never
always
often
in
addition
usually
the majority
perhaps
maybe
on the
whole
generally
presumably
occasionally
in general
as a rule
in most case

Thanks Lougle - I think I found the same thing. I’m just a tad worried that we are teaching children about something that - well - isn’t a thing though! The same with ‘openers’ - since when was ‘openers’ a grammatical term?

I don't think they are terms, but they are functions of language, aren't they, and necessary for good flow in writing.

Hmm.. Maybe function wasn't the word I was looking for, really....

It’s jargon, and quite newly coined because nothing else fitted I imagine.
I had an aunt who refused to acknowledge the word prioritise, as it hadn’t existed when she was young. There was priority, which i think is an abstract noun, and she couldn’t bear it being turned into what she called a quasi- verb.

It’s certainly descriptive, I suppose I just find it odd that a generation of children are being taught something as fact when it doesn’t even have a dictionary definition. I suppose I find it contrived is what I mean...

ohyesiam.

Not new.

1500 and 1800's respectively.

It seems to me that it's the same sort of idea as teaching children "froggy arms" instead of "front crawl". It's a word to describe a concept that makes it easier to understand.

If you're going to get up in arms about teaching children things that aren't things, a good place to start would be the concept of atoms. We first learn about them as mini solar systems, with the electrons orbiting the nucleus, because it's a good starting point onto which to build further knowledge that slowly becomes more like reality.

Terry Pratchett called it something clever which I have sadly forgotten.

Certainly not up in arms but I find myself unable to help my child as I don’t know what these things are...

Temporal adverbs might be what I’m after...

But you use them all the time, don't you? So as soon as you see that list of words, you know that what they are trying to do is to get the children to be a bit more expansive with their writing.

Yes, very contrived.

I remember my DD coming home from school and talking about "numeracy" many years ago. It's obvious what it means, but I'd never heard it before. I think it was to somehow make a nice pair with "literacy".

Soon after, I became a teacher myself, but I always called it Maths! Mathematics is, after all, not all about numbers.