This teaching sequence has been designed to help children revisit and recall a key grammatical concept from the National Curriculum programme of study in Year 6.
The session provides a motivating and memorable image to stimulate discussion, before introducing the grammar element, which is ‘conjunctions’.
Children have time to practise using this feature, before undertaking a short writing task to apply what they have learnt in the context of creative writing.
This primary resource includes:
- Image prompt story starter
In the image provided it shows a sign from the island of Svalbard in the Arctic Circle, which warns that polar bears can be found all over the island. Can you imagine living on Svalbard? How would the bears affect how people live there?
- Conjunctions grammar challenge
Complete the sentences, thinking carefully about what each conjunction means
- Conjunctions writing challenge
Write a set of guidelines for people who have just arrived on Svalbard to warn them about the bears. Try to use as many different conjunctions in your sentences as you can, each time using the conjunction to share a particular meaning.
What is a conjunction?
A conjunction is a word used to connect clauses or sentences, or to coordinate words in the same clause, such as ‘and’ or ‘but’.
There are four types of conjunctions:
- Coordinate: goes between, and links, words, phrases, clauses or sentences of equal importance. There are only seven: ‘For’, ‘And’, ‘Nor’, ‘But’, ‘Or’, Yet’, ‘So’
- Correlative: pairs, such as ‘either/or’ or ‘both/and’, that connect two balanced clauses, phrases, or words
- Subordinate: also known as a subordinating conjunction. This introduces a subordinating clause, and joins it to the main clause in a sentence
- Adverbial: connects two main clauses. These are words like ‘hence’, ‘therefore’, ‘also’ and ‘then’
National Curriculum English programme of study links
Pupils should be taught to extend the range of sentences with more than one clause by using a wider range of conjunctions, including when, if, because, although