Lesson video

Hi! Welcome back to grammar with me, Ms Richards.

Now this is a very exciting lesson because it's actually our final lesson on sentences.

I know, it's our last one.

Don't panic, 'cause there's another unit coming after this and we'll get to practise all of our grammar and put all of our grammar into creative writing which is really exciting.

So don't worry, it's not the end of your time with me at all; we've got plenty more to do.

But, today is the end of the work that we're doing where we're really practising and focusing on sentences.

Of course, sentences are still going to be really important in the next unit on creative writing and I'm so excited for what we're going to be doing there, and building different stories.

But for today, what we want to do is think about all that knowledge on sentences that you have and really bring it together.

So I'm really really excited, and I hope you are too 'cause we're really going to see today just how much you've learned.

Before we get going though, before we can see how much you know and how brilliant you now are, what we're going to need to do is just make sure we're totally ready.

So if you can get pen and notebook, different colour pen if you want a different colour for marking and just try and make sure you're somewhere nice and quiet, no one's going to interrupt you.

Have you turned all your devices off on your phone? That kind of thing just so there's no distractions, no interruptions.

Press pause on the video to do that, get yourself all organised, all set up.

Press play when you're ready; I can't wait! Okay, I'm sure you're all ready 'cause you know the drill by now.

If you have forgotten all of the things that you need though, just pause the video here and make sure you've got your pen, paper so that you're ready to start.

Let's have a look at what today's lesson involves then.

This lesson is a complete overview of everything you've done with me, and then obviously that builds on the work that you've done with the previous grammar teachers and maybe things that you already knew anyway.

So today we're going to start by just going back over our definitions, but kind of doing some matching and some sorting; we're going to have a go at identifying some mistakes, we're going to have a go at adding some extra information into sentences; and then as a nice little task you're going to have a go at writing a little story.

Not quite the same size story that you'll be doing in the next section of grammar, but just a go at putting everything together to create a story.

And as always, you're going to have a quiz to finish off this unit.

Okay, let's get started.

Nice and easy, I know you're brilliant at this, what I'd like you to do is have a look.

I've given you two key terms: Subject.

Verb.

I'd like you to take a look at the definitions on the right hand side.

So A, "the main action that the subject is or was doing"; B, "who or what is doing the main action".

I'd like you to match those definitions with the key terms subject or verb.

You could copy them out and write them out completely, or you can match the number with the letter.

It's up to you.

Pause the video now to do that.

Hopefully you got this.

So the subject, number one, the subject matches with B 'cause the subject of our sentence is "who or what is doing the main action"; and then the verb is "the main action that the subject is or was doing".

So the subject is who or what, and the verb is the action.

Great, sure you got it.

if you didn't see make sure that you've got those answers again.

So we know our definition, we know what subject is, we know what a verb is, what I'd like you to do now-- I told you there was lots and lots of tasks today, lot's of you really really working on your knowledge, your understanding.

I'd like you please to pause the video, and to copy these sentences out.

What you're going to do is to underline the subject in each of the sentences and circle the verb.

Nice and easy.

Pause the video now.

Hopefully your answers look like this.

So A, "the whole class" is the subject, and they "turned to look".

That's the action, the verb that they were doing "at the shouting boy".

B, "I" is the subject, and "lost" is the verb.

"I lost my sister in the carnival crowd." And then C, you should've had that "Mary" was your subject, and our verb is "was", that's the main verb, but if you got "was inspired" that's also of the verb phrase.

"Mary was inspired to begin dance lessons".

So "was" technically is the main verb there but "was inspired" is also the action that she's doing so that's okay too.

Hopefully yours look like this.

Now you'll know from our work with subject and verb that this links into our independent clauses.

So what I can do is start to colour code.

"The whole class turned to look at the shouting boy." That gives me my independent clause.

If I look at B, we can see that "I lost my sister", "my sister" is the extra information, the object for that sentence.

So "in the carnival crowd" becomes our subordinate clause.

It gives us that extra information on where the main action was happening; where the sister was lost.

And then for C, "Mary was inspired to begin dance lessons,", that becomes our independent clause, "because she saw an incredible performance at the theatre." is our subordinate, that's our extra information.

Now "Mary was inspired" does stand alone, but in this case she was inspired "to begin dance lessons", so we're including all of that in our independent clause because "to begin dance lessons" has become the object there.

Great, so that was just a reminder that once you've got the subject and the verb it's really easy to find your independent clause, and then that let's you find your subordinate clauses as well.

Super easy recap there, nice and quick, and hopefully you're really really confident on that.

You've found your subject, you've found your verbs.

So one of the other things we've done this unit is we've looked at identifying the mistakes and we've looked at the mistakes that students, and adults, people make when they're writing sentences.

And there's a few different things that they do or rules that they didn't know.

So you're going to have a go now at identifying those mistakes and fixing them so that they're correct.

Okay, the three mistakes that we have talked about in this little unit are fragments, comma splices, and fused sentences.

I'd like you to pause the video now, and match each of these key terms with the definition.

You can write them all out, or you can match the number with the letter.

So let's just read those definitions quickly.

A, "two independent clauses that have been joined with a comma.

This is a mistake." You're going to need to decide if that's a fragment, a comma splice, or a fused sentence.

B, "Two independent clauses that have been joined without any punctuation or without a coordinating conjunction." And C, is "Where the sentence have been left incomplete." So it's missing a subject or it's missing a verb.

Pause the video now and match those definitions.

Hopefully you got this.

So one, the fragment, was C.

A fragment is "where the sentence has been left incomplete." Two was A.

That's a comma splice, is when two independent clauses have been joined with a comma, and it's a mistake.

We know that.

We don't join two independent clauses with a comma.

So that meant that three is B.

A fused sentence is when you have two independent clauses that have been joined without any punctuation or without a coordinating conjunction.

You know that.

That's a nice little recap for you.

Now it might be really useful if your not 100 percent confident on fragment, comma splice, and fused sentence to pause the video now and make sure you've got these definitely written down, 'cause you're going to need them for the next task.

If you are really confident with what they all mean then that's fine if you just put the numbers and the letters.

Fantastic.

We've got five examples here, and they are all wrong in some way, but different mistakes have been made.

So, your task then is to work out for each of the examples if it's a fragment, a comma splice, or a fused sentence.

You need to look at the example carefully, you might need to go back and look at your definitions of each one, and work out if it's a fragment, a comma splice, or a fused sentence.

You must write down what you've identified each sentence as.

You could challenge yourself to then see if you could fix each one and make them correct.

But it's just important, what I'll really be looking for is that you've identified for each example if it's a fragment, a comma splice, or a fused sentence.

Pause the video now to complete your task.

Hopefully you got the same as me then.

So A is a fragment.

"One sunny morning" does not have all the information that we need in order for this to make sense by itself.

It's got to be attached to an independent clause for it to make sense.

B is a fused sentence.

"A young boy ran downstairs with excitement, he remembered it was his birthday." You've got two independent clauses there, and there's no punctuation or coordinating conjunction to fix them.

Did C trick you? "When he saw his presents, stuck his tongue out at his little sister." Did you think that was a comma splice? Because "when he saw his presents", then with the comma? Actually, this is missing the subject of the sentence.

"When he saw his presents," he "stuck his tongue out" or Dan "stuck his tongue out." We don't have a subject for sentence so it's actually fragmented even though there's a subordinate clause in there and most of an independent clause.

D is a comma splice.

"She cried loudly" that's an independent clause; "their mother came to see what had happened" is also an independent clause.

So, putting a comma there is incorrect.

You might've thought that that was a subordinate, and you might not have been able to find anything wrong, but "she cried loudly" is an independent clause.

"She" is the subject, "cried" is our verb, and then "loudly" is an adverb that tells us how she cried.

It just gives us that extra information.

E, "The sister jealous of her brother", that's a fragment too 'cause we're missing a verb.

Did you notice that all of those sentences were linked? So if you challenged yourself to fix this you might've just fixed them separately, and you might've put something completely different for A, or you could've turned it into a little story.

"One sunny morning," comma, so I've now turned that fragment into my subordinate clause "One sunny morning," comma, "a young boy ran downstairs with excitement." full stop.

Capital H.

"He remembered it was his birthday.

When he saw his presents, he," 'cause I put the subject back in, "stuck his tongue out at his little sister.

She cried loudly," semi-colon, "their mother came to see what had happened.

The sister was jealous of her brother." All of those sentences linked, so you could've fixed them by turning them into a little paragraph.

It's okay if you didn't, that was just a bit of a challenge.

The most important this was if you are identifying them correctly and you knew what was wrong with each one so you'd know how to fix it.

Are you doing really well then? I'm sure you are.

I'm sure you're being brilliant at this.

Now that we've covered all the different definitions and we've had a look again at all the mistakes that people make when they're writing sentences, let's go back over how we add extra information into our sentences.

You know what I'm talking about, don't you? You fed up with seeing these slides yet? You know I'm talking about subordinate clauses, And you know this rule inside-out now back to front, but that's okay.

It's really important to keep practising these rules, It's really important to keep reminding ourselves of them as well.

So you know then that we have subordinate clause, comma, independent clause.

And I can hear you shouting this at the screen already, I know it, I can just tell, you're going to know what I'm about to say.

If we have a subordinate clause in front of an independent clause, we put a comma! Easy! So easy, I know you've got this.

And you know this one as well, don't you? If we have a subordinate clause after our independent clause, there's no comma.

Really really simple.

really straight forward.

Before the independent clause we have a comma, after the independent clause we don't have a comma.

And then we can combine that, and we know we keep our subordinate clause rules.

So we know that we keep the comma when it's before, we take away the comma after, and we can have both in to give lots of detailed information in our sentence.

Makes a really nice complex sentence.

You also know that you don't need to learn all these terms, but subordinate clauses can contain all sorts of wonderful information.

They can be temporal clauses that tell us the time the independent clause is taking place; they can be place or prepositional phrases that give us place and tell us where the independent clause is taking place; they can be the conditions around the independent clause from happening, the reasons why the independent clause is happening; the result of an action in the independent clause; or they can be concessive, and they can give us an opposite idea.

You don't need to know those terms, you don't even need to identify what kind of subordinate clause you're using.

You just need to know that we can add so much information into our independent clauses.

There's loads of detail that we can put in place.

Let's have a practise then.

This is a bit of a different way of looking at it.

I've given you an independent clause here.

"David's stomach rumbled." What I'd like you to do is add in the subordinate clause, "as he hadn't has any lunch." Remember your punctuation rules please.

Think about where you're putting it, and remember that little trick.

It's quite useful to say the sentence out loud with the subordinate clause in place to see if it sounds better in front or after the independent clause.

Pause the video now to give that task a go.

Hopefully your answer looks like this.

"David's stomach rumbled as he hadn't had any lunch." There we go.

Did you do anything different? Did you do it this way 'round instead? "As he hadn't had any lunch," comma, "David's stomach rumbled." This is one of these great subordinate clauses, remember we talked about, that can go in either position in the sentence.

So it's absolutely fine, you can give yourself a tick if your sentence looks like this: "David's stomach rumbled as he hadn't had any lunch." Remembering that there's no comma there because it's after the independent clause.

Or your answer might look like this, with the subordinate clause first and a comma to separate it from the independent clause.

Either way 'round, absolutely fine, give yourself a tick.

Let's have a go at another one then please.

Your independent clause: "She admired how beautiful Venus was." You've got two subordinate clauses here, so you're going to have to think about which position they both fit in to make the most sense, and to be clearest in what you're saying.

And then don't forget your punctuation rules.

Remember that trick to read it aloud to see if it really works.

Pause the video now to have a go at this one.

Hopefully you've got an answer that looks like this.

"As she looked through her telescope," comma, small S now because it's in the middle, "she admired how beautiful Venus was against the inky dark sky." "As she looked through her telescope," comma, "she admired how beautiful Venus was against the inky dark sky." That's the way that one feels like it works the best, because "against the inky dark sky" is our extra information of where Venus was.

"As she looked through her telescope" gives us the context of how she's admiring Venus, so it just feels like that's the most suitable answer 'cause it's quite chronological there.

Okay, another one for you then please.

You're going to do exactly the same thing.

Pause the video, copy this sentence-- sorry.

you're going to copy this independent clause out, but you're going to add the two subordinate clauses to it to make it a full sentence.

So think carefully again which of these subordinate clauses needs to go before the independent clause, which needs to go after.

Don't forget your punctuation.

Pause the video now.

Let's have a look.

This is what I put.

"Even though his teachers told him he wasn't allowed," comma, "Henri brought sweets for the coach journey." Did you do it that way 'round as well? Did you remember your comma for the first subordinate clause but not a comma on the second one? I'm sure you have 'cause you know that rule as well as I do now.

Let's be really really clever now.

We want to add even more information.

So what we're going to do now is as well as we've added two subordinate clauses to our independent clause of "Henri brought sweets", you're going to add a list in as well, and this list is going to go in the independent clause.

So "Even though his teachers told him he wasn't aloud," comma, "Henri brought sweets for the coach journey." And you're going to add in the list of cakes, chocolate, fizzy drink.

Pause the video now.

You might need to write this out again rather than trying to pop a little arrow in, so write your sentence out again and add this information into the independent clause to make a list.

And you should have an answer like this.

"Even though his teachers told him he wasn't allowed, Henri brought sweets," comma, "cakes," comma, "chocolate and a fizzy drink for the coach journey." It doesn't matter if you put those in a different order, you might have said "Henri brought sweets," comma, "chocolate," comma, "a fizzy drink and cakes for the coach journey." That's okay, they could go in any order.

That's the great thing about a list.

But you must remember to have put an "and" to join the final two items on the list, and to use a comma for every other item in between.

So give yourself ticks for getting that right, or just pause the video now to correct it if you've made a mistake.

I've got a great task for you now.

So what you're going to do is pause the next slide and read all the instructions but I'll talk you through them first anyway.

And then you're going to have a go at using all of your sentence knowledge, all of your ideas about how to add extra information into a sentence.

To have a go at writing a little story.

Let's have a look then.

On the right hand side of your screen we've got this little story prompt.

And it's four stages of something that happened.

So it's an actor performing to an audience, and they get injured.

So we can see in the first box that the actor is performing to the audience, and then we see in the second box on that top right that they're now sat down on the stage and they seem to be holding their leg.

Some of the audience members look a little bit concerned, don't they? In the third box, so that's the one on the bottom left, we can see that somebody's come on stage and that's a medic whose come on stage, and they're having a look at the actors leg.

And then in the last box we can see that the actor has stood up again and they're obviously doing their best to try and perform but actually now they've got a bandage on their left leg, and you can just see that in the picture that there's something on their leg, and that's a bandage that the medics put on.

So our poor actor has tripped over the wires for those lights, and fallen on stage and injured themselves.

Your task then is to write a story that describes that.

Thinking really carefully about how you can use subordinate clauses to add extra information.

You might be able to put a list in.

Can you make it really dramatic? I've given you some words on the left-hand side of the screen that I'd like you to include in your story.

Plummeted.

Theatre.

Audience.

Bandage.

Tripped.

Knelt.

Wires.

Actor.

Medic.

Performed.

Now they're not in the order that you're going to use them at all.

Okay, you can move those around, but they're a really good starting point to help you describe this.

If you're not sure what plummeted means, then that's something falling, and it falls quite unexpectedly at quite high speed.

And if you look at our second picture, so the top right on the right hand side, what you'll notice is though our actor's tripped over the wire for the light, it's actually then knocked the light down and you'll see that the light is actually on the stage.

There's kind of a little bit of a gap where the wire's hanging as well.

You might decide to do something a bit different with this picture.

So I think the actor has tripped over the wire and knocked it down.

If you decide that there isn't a wire hanging down and that's just the light shining, then you might just make a really dramatic story about the light plummeting onto stage and hitting the actor That's okay too.

But use this prompt now to have a go at writing your own story about the scene from the images.

You're going to have to think really carefully though to make sure you don't use any comma splices or fuse any of your sentences together, and make sure your subordinate clauses are really really exciting.

Give lots of extra information to our independent clauses.

Try and include a list in there as well.

Pause the video now to write your story.

Fantastic, hopefully you've got a really nice little story written there.

So let's just do a few checks then.

Do each of your sentences start with a capital letter? Can you go through your story and give yourself ticks where you've used correct capital letters? But remember, we shouldn't have capital letters in the middle of our sentence unless we were using the proper nouns.

Have you finished each sentence with punctuation? So that might be full stops, might be exclamation marks, might be questions marks, but not commas.

We don't finish our sentence with a comma otherwise that would be a comma splice.

Have you used subordinate clauses? Used a subordinate clause or lots of subordinate clauses to add extra information to your independent clauses? And have you checked the punctuation of those? Remember, you know it, you know what I'm going to say don't you.

Subordinate clause in front of the independent clause, we use a comma.

Subordinate clause after the independent clause, does not have a comma.

Have you checked through for any fragments? Made sure that you've not used any comma splices? Not used any comma splices, so we don't have two independent clauses joined with a comma.

And then have you used the vocabulary words? Now, I would love to see what your story was, what choice you made.

And if your really proud of some of the other work from this unit with me I'd love to see that too.

Bits that you've done really well on, where you've got lots right, I'd love to see your work from this unit.

So what you can do is share your work with Oak National.

"If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak." That will let me find your work and be able to take a look at it and see how well you've done.

You don't have to, it's just if you'd like to.

So please make sure you ask your parent or carer to share your work.

It's been my pleasure to take you through all of the sentence work.

I hope that you've learned something new or reminded yourself of things that you already knew.

And I really hope that you've found it easy and you now feel really confident about all the ways you can add information to sentences, and how to correct any mistakes that maybe you were making.

Although this is the end of our focus on sentences, it's definitely not the end of all of our work.

The next unit is all on creative writing, and we're going to be writing a story together using our knowledge of grammar and using our understanding of how to add more information, extra details, as well as using lots of the information that you'd learned earlier in this grammar unit.

I'm so excited to be doing some creative writing, so I hope I'll see you in the next few lessons.

Before you finish today though or get to excited going on to do some creative writing, don't forget to do your quiz for this unit.

And I look forward to seeing you soon.