grammar guidance 2016

[phlebasconsidered]

www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum-assessments-2016-sample-materials
I'm in the midst of drawing up notes about how our grammar teaching needs to change in the light of this. Has anyone else done the same? I am finding it incredible that our year 5's will be expected to know so much new material ( or old material under new names) within a year. I'm just looking for buddies in my misery!

That is a really great link! I am currently teaching a lower ability Y5 English set and have no idea how they are going to be ready for that test at the end of Year 6! I am secure in my own knowledge - I managed to get all the questions right, at least - but am honestly not too sure of some of my colleagues and how we are all going to cope with this.

I am starting some training - 5 days over the next 6 months - put on in order to work collaboratively across schools to share successes and consider realistic ways of even knowing how to help our children approach such a test.

Until this week, I have been teaching the upper ability group and they won't know much of the vocabulary of grammar even if they can answer the questions.

What are your thoughts?

I am fearful, to be honest! It's a huge change. Every child has learnt connectives, now conjunctions. They're used to stand alone grammar questions, now they answer them embedded in a text. Fronted adverbials anyone?

About 70% of the questions are based on new names, new technical language and new phrases and entirely new input! It's truly amazing that the powers that be think this is ok! It will mean a sea change in the way grammar is taught, and it will need to be embedded from Reception onwards. The KS1 grammar is equally demanding.

I think for this Year 5, full on parrat training to the question types is going to be the only way they will stand a chance, and that's not fair. It isn't truly training them about grammar either, merely getting them to recite rules rather than use them.

I'm a secondary MFL teacher I just glanced here because I was interested. I think it's a good thing in the long run that grammar is being taught in this way for my subject - by the time we get to Y9 and they need to KNOW what subordinate clauses, direct/indirect objects pronouns and adverbial phrases are it can feel like we spend more time covering English grammar. As you know, 'Connectives' is a made up word anyway, the powers that be should have stuck with conjunctions in the first place! Although, I feel your pain for the effect this could have on the current Y5... Good luck :)

I know it is very, very wrong but 'fronted adverbial' always reminds me of 'front bottom'. Why can't it be 'a sentence which opens with the adverbial clause'? There's something a bit odd about 'fronted adverbial' - neologistic? American? Business-speak?

But I'm not a linguist - and I assume that this has all been carefully worked out by educationalists and linguists.

Cat, don't assume anything ... I would bet my cat's life think that it was all scribbled on the back of the proverbial envelope by g&t swilling politicians hankering after their prep-school days ...

And I agree re MFL ... in my degree I was, due to my enormous age, one of the few students who had ever been taught grammar and the first year was spent recapping.
Having the MFL degree is the reason that I was selected to teach year 6 SPAG this year, as none of the other teachers can ...I am assuming that for the current year 6, the test is the same as last year?

[[http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/qdvclterm.htm looked up adverbial clauses and found this site - the examples made me very happy...]

I'm an editor, btw, educated at a selective school in the 1980s and I didn't know what a fronted adverb was. WHY do they keep changing the terms? I discovered conjunctions were being called connectives when ds started school, now he's off to secondary they've changed it back again!

oh ffs trying again