What grammer do they learn in reception?

[carriedawayannie]

DD has told me today they are learning full stops and I feel awful that I haven't really been encouraging any grammer in the written things we do together. I've been letting it go as I thought she was to young.

The only things I've been doing is capitial letters and finger spacing.

What will she be learning at school?
What should I be doing with her?

[muminthecity]

As far as punctuation goes, we have been teaching full stops and capital letters in my reception class since they first started writing sentences. We have recently moved on to question and exclamation marks.

As for grammar, we do much of what mrz has said, but we wouldn't necessarily tell them the correct names, e.g. we would encourage them to describe what they are writing about, but wouldn't call them adjectives unless they asked. So, for example, if a child wrote "I saw a flower" I might ask them what the flower looked like, how they could describe it etc and encourage them to add it in.

[simpson]

DD is learning sentence connectives (I think they are called).

She is pretty good at full stops, capital letters and the odd exclamation mark.

But her teacher is now concentrating on how to structure a story atm, beginning, middle and ending etc...

[Periwinkle007]

you aren't expected to teach her though. My parents were picky about grammar so I managed to learn some and apostrophes was the only thing I felt truly confident about other than using the right form of there/their/they're etc. The only apostrophe I get lost on is it's and its. never got the hang of that one.

basically if it belongs to someone then it is their name so
the dog
and then the 's

so the dog's.

however if it belonged to the dogs (plural) then it would be
the dogs's. but would be written as the dogs'. not sure whether technically it is more correct as the dogs's or the dogs' but thats the way it is.

at least that is my understanding of it and someone will no doubt come along now and tell me I have been wrong all these years.

if you aren't confident with grammar then don't panic, the school will teach her. perhaps look for one of the beginner's dictionary/thesaurus/grammar books and you can look things up together? I keep meaning to get something like that because I think it would be really helpful and I also think children are more likely to remember something if they have looked it up and 'discovered' it for themselves.

[intheshed]

In DD's school they call words like and, but etc 'connectives'- just to confuse you even more! And they have 'describing words', not adjectives.

I have recently noticed the word 'because' sneaking into her writing, and she said her new target is to make her sentences longer.

[mrz]

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/9987974/The-glamour-ofgrammar-an-object-lesson.html

[Pozzled]

Once again, mrz I find myself wishing that you were my daughter's reception teacher. Or at least in charge of literacy at her school.

I'm not entirely sure what DD1 has been taught, but I don't think they've got beyond basic sentences with a full stop and capital letter. They have only just progressed onto long vowel sounds in phonics. It's a bit of a concern knowing the kind of stuff they should be covering.

[mrz]

In the past we taught children how to use grammar but didn't always teach the correct terminology for the parts of speech. Personally I think it's more important they know how to use correct grammar than to know that the is a determiner but we decided that it makes sense to gradually introduce grammatical terms than to try and teach them all when children are older.

[Pozzled]

I agree.

It doesn't bother me that DD1 hasn't been taught words like 'adjective' but it does bother me that she hasn't yet been taught that she can try to make her writing interesting by using describing words. (Just an example- what I mean is that the teachers appear to have very low expectations).

[Rollmops]

mrz, I so hope you were joking with '... the word they used has a "posh name"... ' - A POSH NAME!? A POSH name???????????????
How utterly ridiculous.

[learnandsay]

I don't get it, what's so ridiculous about telling four and five year olds that determiners and connectives are posh names?

To be fair, instead of talking about poo poo and wee wee we could all refer to faeces and urine at home. And at school teachers who wanted to could refer to all plants by their Latin names. The children wouldn't be phased by it. But they would probably hate certain teacher's lessons.

[WomblesOfCairngorm]

Why on earth would they hate those lessons? My children love being told the 'complicated, grown up words'

[Pozzled]

My classes have always enjoyed using the proper names for things. Younger children especially, it makes them feel grown up.

The same 4 and 5 year olds have a fantastic memory for types of dinosaur/foreign footballers/disney princesses, so why would they be fazed by words like 'adjective'?

[BabiesAreLikeBuses]

Mine didn't know what a vowel was til we found vowel bat on youtube which they had sung in reception. My dts in reception both reading well and come home talking about digraphs and trigraphs, know about full stops and capital letters but that's it for writing. I'm delighted they don't do more writing, as far as they are concerned they do phonics daily and play the rest of the time. Schools seem to disagree massively on how much they should write in YR

[zebedeee]

I agree with rollmops. A 'posh name'. Really? Really!

[mrz]

No Rollmop I wasn't joking ... how do you explain things to your class of 5 year olds? and yes zebedeee ...REALLY!

[1969Sarah]

Mrz I would tell them that the word they used has a "posh name"

Maybe that is why I was asked "Mum, what does posh mean?"

I really struggled to answer that?!

[mrz]

I wouldn't use the word "posh" if it wasn't one they commonly used and was not part of their vocabulary Sarah ... when explaining things to young children it helps to be aware of the language they will be familiar with in the home.

My pupils talk about wearing "posh" clothes for parties and weddings. They talk about someone getting a "posh" new car. They talk about staying in a "posh" hotel on holiday ...

[mrz]

They like their parents use the word to mean "special"

[Maria33]

It's is always it is. "Its" is the possessive of it - as in "the cat licked its paws". The apostrophe is only ever one of omission for it's I. E. it's ALWAYS means it is.
Ahem

To help your children write well, expose them to as much standard English as possible. My ds is a pretty inaccurate writer but he scores well in the new SPAG test because it's multiple choice and he's from a home where Standard English is spoken. I agree with everything Mrz says and I am passionate about teaching grammar but this is what I think about the current approach.

[learnandsay]

It depends on what you're trying to achieve, doesn't it? The disappointment that adults have shown in definite and indefinite articles (useful phrases) for the rather useless and stupid one of determiners is a good example. If the phrases are badly chosen and unrepresentative the fact that they're grown up is neither here nor there. I'd prefer a teacher to cleverly get children to acquire and understand new information than to use grown up names for the sake of it.

[1969Sarah]

Is "special" the best way to explain "posh"? I wasn't being critical and I did truly struggle to define posh to my four year old. The port out starboard home thing seemed way too advanced to use and was flumoxed for other words that she did understand to explain it. Doesn't it have some negative connotations?

[mrz]

No Sarah "special" isn't the best way to explain "posh" unless that is the meaning the child already associates with the word ... my class wouldn't understand if I said these words have a "special" name ...determiners but they do understand "posh". Obviously your child may be happier with the idea of determiner being the "special name" for this group of words or the idea that the "correct name" for this category of words is determiners or the "grammatical term" for these words is determiners ...

[1969Sarah]

I wish I had asked her now where she had heard it used? What made her ask? I was in the shower at the time she asked me! Interestingly my assumption was that someone had used it negatively. Not sure why!

[zebedeee]

Posh doesn't mean special - unless the 'upper class' are special. All the examples given equate something that costs money with being posh. I doubt they would describe a special stone they have found as 'posh'. Words are free for everybody to use.