Week 1-3

• Action verbs express an action, such as jump, dance, eat or ache
• Reporting verbs relate to speech and how something is said, such as whisper, suggest, exclaim or shout
• Sensing verbs express thinking, feeling or understanding, and include verbs such as believe, know, imagine, enjoy, fear, see or hear
• Pedagogy refers to the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept
• Tense: Verbs come in three tenses - past, present, and future
• The past tense is used to describe things that have already happened

  • The present tense is used to describe things that are happening right now or continuous
• A creative pedagogy for teaching grammar should draw attention to linguistic choices and possibilities available to children, focusing on the creative shaping of text
• Grammar in the English National Curriculum is descriptive, focusing on how language is used rather than prescriptive rules
• Different views of grammar are often presented as opposites, with a descriptive view focusing on developing learners' knowledge about language through exploration of different text types
• Key teaching principles:

  • Link a grammar feature to its effect on the writing
  • Use grammatical terms, but explain them through examples
  • Encourage high-quality discussion about language and effects
  • Use model patterns for children to imitate
  • Support children to design their writing by making deliberate language choices
  • Encourage language play, experimentation, and risk-taking
• Encouraging high-quality discussion about language and effects helps children make meaningful connections between grammar and writing, encouraging them to take ownership of decision-making in writing
• Using authentic examples from authentic texts strengthens the links between reading and writing, allowing young writers to explore what real writers do and the choices they make
• Imitation is a powerful tool to support initial learning about a text, allowing children to try out new structures and play with new forms of expression
• Creative imitation is the first step in creating original combinations
• Support children to design their writing by making deliberate language choices
• Writing is a complex act of decision-making, encompassing choices about content, structure, layout, sentence lengths and types, and vocabulary
• The phrase 'conscious control' emphasizes giving more autonomy to the writer and less to the teacher, making choices more visible to encourage children to take responsibility for shaping and controlling their own texts
• Writing as a design process highlights the need to plan a text for a specific purpose for a specific audience, viewing language as putty that can be shaped and crafted in various ways
• Playful experimentation in writing encourages language play, experimentation, and risk-taking
• Writing should be enjoyable and playful, helping writers see the elasticity of language and the possibilities it offers
• Encouraging writers to push language boundaries, test possibilities, and understand that not all ideas work the first time round is part of the creative process
• Teaching writing should focus on what language can do rather than on strict rules, accuracy, and error correction
• Pedagogical approaches should give explicit guidance on writing while allowing for playful activities that enable exploration and experimentation with new knowledge
• Young writers need help in learning how to communicate through writing, express themselves and their ideas, and help readers understand their message
• Understanding verbs and verb phrases is crucial for building a strong foundation in writing
• The verb is the powerhouse of a sentence, driving its meaning
• Be and have are the most commonly occurring verbs in written text, linking information, showing relationships, and indicating existence
• Lexical verbs are 'doing' words that carry meaning, categorized into action verbs, reporting verbs, and sensing verbs
• Auxiliary verbs help form verb phrases expressing differences in meaning related to time, tense, or mood
• Modal verbs express possibility, certainty, or tentativeness, forming complex verb phrases
• Understanding tense and aspect in writing involves past and present tense, with English having only two tenses: present and past
• Regular verbs form the past tense by adding -ed to the base form, while irregular verbs have unique past tense forms
• In narratives, we can choose to tell a story in the present tense or in the past tense
• Many narratives, like fairy tales, are told in the past tense, signaling that the story has already happened
• Stories in the present tense unfold before the reader's eyes, creating a sense of immediacy
• The present tense is used in information and explanation texts to convey facts that are universally true or timeless
• Recognizing past and present tense helps children make appropriate choices in their writing
• Finite verbs inflect to show tense and person, while non-finite verbs do not show tense and do not indicate the doer of the action
• Non-finite verbs include the present participle (-ing form), past participle (-ed form), and infinitive (to + base form of the verb)
• In complex verb phrases, the finite verb is always first and inflects for tense, while non-finite verbs follow