To hate the grammar lessons children are having to do?

[Clawdy]

Trying to help DGS with his work sent from school yesterday. It was co-ordinated conjunctions and subordinate conjunctions, and so confusing. He struggled with fronted adverbials last week, but eventually managed them. I was a primary school teacher years ago, but I found the whole concept difficult. When we finally completed the work, I wondered what on earth was the purpose behind it. How could analysing the difference help with his story- writing? He's eight years old.

Not my class middle class and upper class

I think most people would agree that grammar in some form should be taught but should be relevant. Learning other languages is much easier if you know the terminology and mechanics of your own. But its pointless if language teachers dont follow through. Language teachers - has there been a difference in kids grasping grammar in other languages? Do you use the same terms?

If teaching grammar stops people saying myself when they mean me then I'm all for it

Children learn the language they are exposed to and "fronted adverbials" are all around us e.g. 'Every day, before school, I feed my dog.' or 'For no reason at all, Gove introduced this meaningless shite into the curriculum.'

Exactly.

We used to call them ‘sentence openers’ and we taught children there were many different ways of starting sentences and to vary them was really good.

Then came Gove.

It’s amazing how much damage he did really.

I love language and have a personal interest in grammar, punctuation and word origins but we need to be sensible about it. I know most of my friends and family members don’t have the same interest as me. I wouldn’t presume to think that because I am interested in it, we should include lots of pointless terminology to the curriculum of very young children.

If they leave infant school at 6/7 knowing what a verb, noun and adjective are, and are able to use a range of them in their writing-that’s great. I would want them to know that a sentence requires spaces between each word, a capital letter for I and at the beginning of a sentence, and punctuation at the end and to know when to use . ? or !. I would teach them a range of sentence beginnings and lots of exciting ‘wow’ word vocabulary. I would hope by the end of year two, many may be writing in lovely paragraphs to separate their ideas. I would want to teach phonological awareness well and teach reading and spelling through a range of good multi-sensory strategies through interesting and varied topics. I would want to allow time to encourage reading a range of books for pleasure and writing for a purpose.

I see no need for phrases such as ‘expanded noun phrases’ or ‘fronted adverbials’ in infant schools, but that is what the y2 SPAG test is testing them on and that is how schools are measured.

I think it’s very wrong and I think the over focus on pointless information rather than a love of learning (which isn’t a cop-out-there should be plenty of knowledge as well!) is putting unnecessary strain on small children. I see so much more stress, anxiety and school refusal in lower primary now than I have ever seen in over twenty years of teaching.

But schools have to teach what Michael Gove decided years ago that all children must learn and that seems to be that.

@Highfalutinlootin

Let's keep everyone ignorant and uneducated and slowly watch the English language become mangled to the point we lose all ability to communicate nuance, I always say.

Well you're doing a good job of demonstrating ignorance here. Why not actually try to use some intelligence. This is a good exercise in reading comprehension - OP nowhere suggested that no grammar should be taught. The very clear implication in her post was that too much technical grammar is being taught too early in primary schools.

I teach maths. I think it's very important people have a decent grasp of statistics. I don't however think eight year olds should be taught how to calculate a standard deviation before they have a strong intuitive grasp of manipulating numbers.

There's a conspiracy theory that all this primary school grammar terminology is purposefully too difficult so that schools 'fail' on their SATs results and the government can make them into academies.

@HamAndButterSandwich

deviation before they have a strong intuitive grasp of manipulating numbers.

This is key. Build a very strong foundation first of the basics and then pupils can see the next stages of complexity but it has to be built on something solid and robust. By squeezing all this ultra stylistic stuff instead of allowing pupils the headspace to get lost in books and the world they present we have really taken something destroyed something. It is so depressing to watch.

It needs to be balanced and schemes of work prepared that work with pupils needs. I am finding more and more that this is missing now - that the work is thrown at children without taking into account progression, so everything hits at the same level and speed regardless of whether pupils are keeping up/understanding or not. Perhaps it’s a view that the competition is good and that the ambitious will find a way to make it work for them (home tutors, etc).

@MollySilkNose they are ridiculously hard. I can answer around 95% of the paper using my degree.

Most adults wouldn't be able to get a good pass mark (although if you're middle class you can scrape a pass if that makes sense).

"I am finding more and more that this is missing now - that the work is thrown at children without taking into account progression, so everything hits at the same level and speed regardless of whether pupils are keeping up/understanding or not. Perhaps it’s a view that the competition is good and that the ambitious will find a way to make it work for them (home tutors, etc)."

Absolutely. It benefits the very few children who would thrive regardless. It loses everyone else.

StrictlyAFemaleFemale

Language teachers - has there been a difference in kids grasping grammar in other languages? Do you use the same terms?

I would say that they do need to be able to understand basic English grammar to be able to speak another language successfully. Yes it has helped in MFL lessons.

What I would say though is that GCSE in a language is a lot more challenging that it was when I first started teaching. So I think unless the basics are taught lower down then the students will not be able to succeed when they go onto more complex things later on.

Private schools are likely teaching grammar & probably always have done. If we want state school children to be able to compete with the privately educated then we need to offer the same learning opportunities in the state sector.

It does open up a whole new debate though. In many European countries students are streamed into different pathways depending on academic ability. In the UK we seem to not like this idea and technical pathways are deemed to be not good enough. So instead of accepting that some students just won't be able to go down the academic route and allowing them to take a more vocational route, we're attempting to stop those more academic students learning more complex things.

Taking a vocational route in favour of an academic route isn't an indicator of future success. Some children enjoy learning complex grammar others prefer more practical tasks. I would imagine that someone who is more practical probably didn't enjoy school but is now earning at least double my salary.

So there could be an argument for encouraging more vocational learning - but allowing top sets/grammar schools to teach in a different way. To accept that students who can't remember their English grammar will still get on well in life.

Private schools are likely teaching grammar & probably always have done

I wonder if they are teaching things that are age appropriate and relevant? Fronted adverbials and expanded noun phrases are neither age-appropriate or relevant for year 2 children.

Expanded noun phrases for a year 2 child is simple: dog becomes big, friendly dog. Anybody talking to a child is already modelling expanded noun phrases when discussing new and exciting things surely?

letseatgrandma

No private schools are probably more traditional (I don't know for sure). But Boris got to be PM with a degree in classics. I doubt much of his degree is any use. I think a lot of what we learn in school never gets used again.

@Highfalutinlootin

Let's keep everyone ignorant and uneducated and slowly watch the English language become mangled to the point we lose all ability to communicate nuance, I always say.

This isn't to do with 'keeping everyone ignorant and uneducated', speaking as someone who loves the English language and its grammar I find the names given to some parts of speech baffling. I've looked at the list of names and most are familiar to anyone with a working knowledge of English but some seem to be invented. I find the structure of your post strange by the way, surely the last three words would sound less strange were they at the beginning.

I think my view will be unpopular with many state teachers but I am shocked at what I witnessed in primary.

For context, I attended a selective but non fee paying Convent - very academic. I taught in private and Convent secondaries before state primaries.

The biggest difference and the key factor in whether a school is successful for its pupils is its staff. How much they are capable of intellectually manoeuvring within their own subject so that they can present knowledge in ways that different pupils understand. People like that have to have a real connection to their subject - a genuine connection born out of interest. I have taught in Convents with very little resources and bare walls and that can be liberating with a subject like English. But I really think staff who have a good understanding of their subject and what it can do, can bring that connection into a classroom and bring it alive to children. The rest is just admin. Without that however, you get a dry, caustic curriculum of facts to be learnt with no narrative to hold them together. This to me, is massively missing in the state sector - there is nothing taught to children to hold all the info together in a way that allows you to move onwards and forwards.

Apologies if that is confusing - I didn’t sleep last night.

@Cornetttttto

Expanded noun phrases for a year 2 child is simple: dog becomes big, friendly dog. Anybody talking to a child is already modelling expanded noun phrases when discussing new and exciting things surely?

Absolutely-I’m not saying we shouldn’t and don’t do this.

I taught this to Y2 last year and the term ‘expanded noun phrase’ really confused the children. Asking them to use some exciting adjectives to describe their dog would have been a good idea.

Telling them the adjectives they were writing was an expanded noun phrase, confused them.

Why do we have to call it that? My parents had a traditional 50s grammar school education and both have an excellent understanding of language neither knew what was meant by an ‘expanded noun phrase’. Both obviously know what an adjective is though.

I think we will end up with children who are actually confused between what nouns and adjectives are! Telling young children that they were going to write an expanded noun phrase which actually means they have to write some adjectives, is unnecessary. Far better that they can confidently recognise and distinguish between an adjective and a noun and can write varied and interesting examples of each in their writing.

Oh absolutely. But 'expanded noun phrase' is just a a name for the combination of adjectives with a noun. Just needs learning. Knowing word classes is really important and having the skill to create cohesive clauses within complex sentences takes time which is why it is taught from an early age and then built upon.

Also, I didn’t mean to imply that state teachers aren’t like this - of course they are! just that they are not allowed to teach this way as much as private sector is. I think we really need to look at structural elements in school organisations - senior management for example.

There was an excellent programme on about an academy school that was failing - part of a MAT. All of the behaviour issues were being circulated back into the classroom and the teachers . Only towards the end did the senior staff set up an exclusion room, make their presence really known and back up the teachers and remarkably the problems disappeared.

When a suited wannabe businessman comes in from industry for a few years and sees the bedraggled class teacher all of the stereotypes of teachers as useless and ill disciplined come into play when actually the capacity to assert authority and act upon it has been removed from that teacher in order to give the platform to the SLT but then they are not using it!!!!

This would never be tolerated in business/private schools yet it is endemic in state schools and the good SLT are equally worn down.

Sleep deprived Rant over😕🤪

@Cornetttttto

Oh absolutely. But 'expanded noun phrase' is just a a name for the combination of adjectives with a noun. Just needs learning. Knowing word classes is really important and having the skill to create cohesive clauses within complex sentences takes time which is why it is taught from an early age and then built upon.

Well, we will have to agree to disagree here.

Unnecessarily confusing young children is counter-productive in my view, as a person who spends her days teaching young children.

Far better to teach parts of speech so that six year olds are confident in what they actually are, before confusing them by teaching expanded noun phrases at the same time. Year 3/4/5 maybe, not year 2.

@Letseatgrandma

Cornetttttto
Expanded noun phrases for a year 2 child is simple: dog becomes big, friendly dog. Anybody talking to a child is already modelling expanded noun phrases when discussing new and exciting things surely?

I have had battles with Teachers/TAs about this in class because they have been taught a very specific interpretation and have stuck to it. It is bizarre. One yr 6 teacher taught the class a list of words to learn under the headings of conjunctions/ etc so they didn’t know that the word depends on how it is used in a sentence and that it can change. So, the real knowledge of language is not being taught, just a cheat sheet version.

Govely, an invented fronted frontal adverbial to describe the invented fronted adverbial.

I absolutely hate the grammar we have to teach. A few years ago I was supporting a Y6 child doing the very first test for SATS. The poor boy was sobbing, saying he was stupid because he was going to fail 😢. I ended up telling him that I'd been a teacher (KS1) for years and had no idea what a modal verb was and even though I have an English degree had never needed to know or use it ( I know now, but still never use it!).

Surely this stuff make things even harder for those with SEN. Specifically dyslexia. Trying to get them reading and writing is hard enough.

Then there is the whole complex array of maths techniques to confuse them too.

Giving complex names to simple things can make them inaccessible. For my finance exams I feel intimidated by the topic titles until I realise they are straightforward common sense. I’ll forget the title and come across a question, eg explain the process used in X technique and demonstrate on the data below. I’ll go blank and have to read the answer to realise what they mean.

I’m a teeny bit dyslexic, while my DC 8 is very much so. Bring back the basics of learning to read and write. They can master syntax and complex grammar later.

Giving complex names to simple things can make them inaccessible

This x 1000. It’s just unnecessary.

@Letseatgrandma
Why do we have to call it that? My parents had a traditional 50s grammar school education and both have an excellent understanding of language neither knew what was meant by an ‘expanded noun phrase’. Both obviously know what an adjective is though

Because it's more than just adjectives. For example, in the sentence:
I looked towards the man in the car.
"the man in the car" is the expanded noun phrase.

It also helps people understand how they can use noun phrases the avoid repetition in their writing.
For example:
Christopher strapped his sword onto his trusty stead. The young knight glanced upwards towards the gaping mouth of the cave.
"The young knight" is a noun phrase that is used so that the name Christopher doesn't need to be repeated constantly through the piece.

Yes, that all sounds reasonable for 6 year olds to grasp.
In other news, I regularly teach 11 year olds it's not spelt engerland, but this is much simpler to deal with and not at all pointless.