Have a first from Oxford. Can't do ks2 sats

[TheNext]

In particular the spag. I have never heard of a subordinating conjunction before. It has literally not been a thing that has touched my life. When I googled it, I recognised the thing in the description but I have never had to know the name. I have straight As all the way through secondary education and a good career and this is something I have never needed.

And they are making 10yos memorise this? And adverbials (also had to google). Ye Gods! Why?

I think either the children find it difficult or not really depend on how good they teach at school, and knowledge of individual teacher.

I watched the grammar tutorial video on khan and it was actually not that difficult to understand as a non native English speaker. (And video was very fun to watch.)

Ds(yr5) had grammar worksheet homework to identify sentence type this week. Done it with ease. I think teachers are doing great job, imo.

In my year 2 there is a boy who was 6 only a month ago and this week was expected to write a sentence with a time adverbial and an expanded noun phrase. It's a learning curve for us all!

Lord Trash we are teaching it as it's been added to the curriculum!! We have no choice! As to why it's been added to the curriculum, who knows why.

I'm a y6 teacher, the grammar is not particularly difficult to teach or to learn, it's just completely pointless and a waste of time.

The writing assessment framework has just changed and has moved SLIGHTLY (like, mms) away from this grammar focused write-by-numbers approach. Let's hope this is a good sign.

Oh agreed that we should teach grammar but the way in which it is tested is completely ridiculous. E.g. Children's answers were marked incorrect if the space between the dot and a comma was deemed 'too big', even if it was used correctly.

What they teach my Y6 dd is what I did in Y8 back in 1990. It's a farce. It's all cery well learning all this shit but after seeing some Y7 teachers recently, realised she won't need to know it. It's all to pass pointless SATs.

Whatever happened to loving learning? What happened to broadening children's horizons by giving them the tools to discover their world? What happened to imagination? Why is the focus so narrow and learned by rote? It's sapping kids' creativity. I may be too much of a hippy when it comes to education, but I have had so many arguments all the way up to the headteacher about this.

For instance, the kids were doing a history project on the workhouses. My dd is fairly able and finished her worksheet. I asked her later about Poor Laws and how parishes administered aid and she had no clue what I was talking about. All she was told was that poor people who couldn't house and feed themselves went to workhouses and inside they had crap conditions. Well woop-de-do. Where is the politics and culture behind it all? When I explained what I thought was very basic history, she told her teacher and he said to me I shouldn't be filling her head with all that. I asked why, and he said it goes beyond the scope of the curriculum. In other words, teach what it tells you to on some bit of paper, and no more. I despair.

To teach it is a nightmare, especially when the kids are told or know they won't use it after. The curriculum has many unnecessary parts and many of the spag terms just aren't needed, it's soo important to have good English but recognising the passive voice, different adverbials and conjunctions seem soo irrelevant. I hate teaching it but you can make it fun!

I'm pretty sure that's just that particular school, Heathen. They don't go into huge amounts of depth in history, but they certainly encourage the children to go off and research in more depth elements in each topic that they find particularly interesting.

JoJo I never ignored grammar when I was teaching English. Good grammar skills are nothing to do with knowing what a fronted adverbial is.

Skeleton By 'they' I mean whichever shadowy think tank came up with this plan in the first place. Nothing against primary teachers, who are doing their best to implement this pointlessness.

Knowing your grammar is a really useful foundation both in terms of getting to know your own mother-tounge in-depth, and for learning foreign languages. I was taught grammar (outside UK), and remember using it when learning a second language

The only grammar I learnt was through studying Latin and Greek. It's been invaluable in my understanding of my native tongue (English), and I am very sorry that grammar has not been taught to everyone.

P.S. I adore grammar. Especially the hierarchy of adjectives.

Is it only people who know more than one language that appreciate the value of grammar, then?

You never forget a good teacher. I walked around my old school recently and fondly recalled many of them.

I think it must be very hard to be a teacher now, and my primary school aged children are doing work that I didn't encounter until secondary school.

What I will say is that I have the pleasure of mentoring many of our new graduate intake at work. These are young people with top A levels and competitive degrees, however their actual level of general education and initiative seems fairly poor. Part of me wishes that my own children had the more easy going, rounded education that I enjoyed, and less being spoonfed in order to pass an exam.

I think learning grammar is good for really appreciating your own language and helping to learn other languages. If children in other countries can cope with it, then British children should be no different.
I completely agree about silly rules on size and spacing of punctuation in SATS test though.

I studied English at Cambridge. I'm OK at grammar. I've never forgotten a brilliant seminar on grammar, looking at the Keats. I still have my Quirk and Greenbaum.

Having said that, most of my knowledge of grammar was gained through studying two MFL and A level study of Milton - not in actual grammar lessons. Mind you, looking at grammar through its actual use in texts is probably the better way to start off learning about grammar, tbh.

The Englicious website is very good. Worth having a look at this, whether you are a teacher or a parent. The grammar is correct!!!!! This matters! Sadly, not all the grammar resources available on the internet are correct, which can lead to some confusion.

LordTrash
To access the higher bands on 9-1 new GCSEs, students need to use terminology accurately. This includes literary techniques and parts of speech.

Heathen. So with you there. I fantasized about taking my kids out for year 6 on a "Grand Tour" homeschooling/travelling.

I love grammar and always have - how languages work is fascinating to me.

I do see that some of the SPAG etc taught in primary is silly. But But But when I ask group after group of 11-12-13yos what a verb is, and get told "doing word, miss!" then ask for examples and get "jumping, running, skipping" I do despair.

Jumping is a noun. The verb is jump or to jump. They don't believe me when I tell them. They also don't believe me when I tell them that "do, have and be" are also verbs (and a bit more useful than skip). Sigh. Which is a verb btw.

Some of the grammar in KS2 Sats is using terminology that has been created for KS2 Sats.
One of two are Americanisms, that we have never used here until now.

Clary - slightly disagree with you:
he is jumping is a verb? - present continuous.
he was jumping is a verb? - past continuous (except under KS2 grammar, it has a different name, whatever the Americans call it, I can't remember)

Present progressive he is jumping and past progressive he was jumping. Jumping is a participle here.

I like jumping. That's a verbal noun called a gerund.

Dc are now in y8 and 9 respectively and haven't had to apply any of this knowledge since leaving primary school.

Since leaving primary school two or three years ago? What about the rest of their lives?

You don't know whether they, or their peers, will pursue careers which will require them to express themselves in well-written English. You don't know whether they will have interests which will be enhanced by knowing how the language works.

The English language is a wonderful thing; I hate to see it misused and neglected.

I just don't really understand why schools ever stopped teaching grammar in the first place.

I did teacher training in the 1970s. I remember being told that we shouldn't bother about grammar and spelling, as focusing on correct English would stifle children's creativity. Never made sense to me - you wouldn't set out to train someone to be a skilled carpenter but not teach him how to use his tools properly, would you? So why not teach children how to use English properly?

(I never actually taught in schools, I ended up in a completely different area of education.)

I didn't know that about the new GCSE.

I'm a little worried about that, tbh. One of my dc is going to take the new GCSE. I'm sure her teachers are wonderful but my own (recent) experience of a PGCE has suggested that quite a lot of teachers are a little hazy and on grammar, which suggests that there may be a level of confusion in what she is taught.

That is not meant at all disrespectfully. Grammar hasn't been taught in schools for a good while and there is a generation who are not confident about it.

I know that I've seen lessons that were a little wobbly about past tenses, never mind recognising and naming a gerund.

Seems like such a load of bollards to me.

Mind you, looking at grammar through its actual use in texts is probably the better way to start off learning about grammar, tbh.

Except I come across too many writers, who are presumably also readers, who don't know how to punctuate dialogue correctly. Studying actual texts doesn't seem to work for them.

I think it's amazing how are brains have evolved to learn a language and how languages around the world are so different.
We can learn a language as babies/ toddlers without being aware of all the grammar. However if as an older child or adult you don't then learn how your own (and other) language works, you might find yourself misunderstanding or being misunderstood by others.