Year 5 SPAG
Workshop
January 2016
“Grammar to a writer is to
a mountaineer a good pair
of hiking boots or, to a deep-
sea diver, an oxygen tank.”
Aim
To help you understand how we teach SPAG at
Knaphill.
To help you understand how we are preparing the
children for SATS.
To help you understand how you can support your
child at home.
• Emphasis on presentation skills and in particular handwriting –
Penpals/Handwriting lessons
• Displays are enriched with children’s work to motivate children to
produce quality work.
• Regular extended writing opportunities across the curriculum
including in Science and Topic.
• New writing ‘I can statements’ are now in Topic books as well as
Literacy books. These are heavily grammar based now.
• Grammar and Spelling Starters at the start of our Literacy lessons
• Spelling rules and patterns are taught every week using a new
scheme of work (Big Spellings).
• Every half term children complete a practice SPAG test (Rising Stars).
How are we teaching it?
Grammar and Punctuation:
• Converting nouns or adjectives into verbs using suffixes
• Verb prefixes
• Relative clauses/relative pronouns
• Modal verbs
• Adverbs
• Paragraphs
• Adverbials
• Brackets, dashes and commas
• Determiners
• Parenthesis (brackets)
New Curriculum Expectations – Year 5
• Grammar and Punctuation:
• Informal and formal speech and writing
• Passive voice/active voice
• Expanded noun phrases
• Adverbials
• Ellipsis
• Layout devices (sub-headings, columns, bullet points)
• Semi-colon, colon bullet points and dashes
• Hyphens
• Synonyms and antonyms
New Curriculum Expectations – Year 6
I can Statements
Warm Up Activity
How many different sentence openers can you think
of to start this sentence?
Thomas swam towards the boat.
Have you tried…?
Simple Sentences
The big dog was barking.
Compound sentences
The boys walked down the road and their parents waved from the house.
Complex Sentences
A complex sentence contains one main
clause that can make sense on its own,
and one or more minor (subordinate)
clauses that are linked to it.
When I arrived, the big dog was barking.
Main Clause: Alice entered the room.
Subordinate Clauses:
who was shaking with fear
although she was scared
feeling full of confidence
Write the above sentence using subordinate clauses
in as many different ways as you can. You can split
up Alice and entered the room.
Relative Clauses
Subordinate clauses can begin with a relative
pronoun (who, whose, which, that) and so are
called relative clauses.
For example:
Alice, who was shaking with fear, entered the room.
SPAG Test End of KS2
• Paper 1: Pupils will have 45 minutes to
complete the test, answering the questions
in the test paper
• Paper 2: Pupils will have approximately 15
minutes to complete the spelling test (not
strictly timed), by writing the 20 missing
words in the answer booklet.
KS2 SPAG Results are reported
by:
A raw score (number of marks
awarded).
A scaled score (score is based on
National Average).
Confirmation of whether or not they
attained the National Standard.
Why not have a go at some of
the questions in the test?
What are your thoughts?
How can you help your child at
home?
Practise spellings with them at home.
Support them with Literacy based homework and
encourage them to use correct grammar (the ‘I
can’ statements are on the website to help).
Remind them to use Standard English when they
write.
When reading at home, point out grammar and
punctuation used.