How to teach active and passive voice (Year 6)

Overview

Laying the groundwork, this unit considers how pupils first need to learn to identify the subject, verb and object within a sentence before they begin to experiment with the effects of using the active and passive voice. From here we can see that, with active voice, the subject of the sentence does the action, whilst with passive voice the subject of the sentence has the action done to it by someone or something (the agent). Breaking this down further, Rachel demonstrates how we must use the verb ‘to be’ in conjunction with the past participle when writing in the passive voice. This helps children understand that they can write in the passive voice when they want to emphasise what has happened, rather than who or what undertook the action (useful, for example, if they want to foreground the science, rather than the scientist, in a scientific report).

Course Materials:

Presentation Slides - Download

.pptx file

Training Handout - Download

.pdf file

Course Creator

Directory of the Primary English literacy consultancy, Rachel has over 20 years’ experience in primary education, in which time she has been a SENCO, English subject lead and deputy headteacher. She previously worked as an English consultant for Coventry Local Authority and has written for publishers including Collins and Teach Primary magazine.

About the Course

Whether you're looking to teach joining words with 'and' in Year 1, or you need your Year 6s to recognise the subjunctive form, this series of grammar videos from Rachel Clarke will arm you with some excellent strategies.