Writing - Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation

Teach sentence boundaries explicitly by showing that a sentence is a complete thought with a subject and a verb, beginning with a capital letter and ending with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark. Use physical activities: children stand up at the start of a sentence and sit down at the end. In shared reading, identify where sentences begin and end. During shared writing, model deciding where one sentence ends and the next begins. Dictation exercises build awareness of sentence boundaries.

Children frequently write sentences without clear boundaries, either running several sentences together or fragmenting sentences with premature full stops. They may think a sentence ends when they run out of space on a line. Some children use 'and' to join every idea into one continuous sentence rather than using full stops to separate distinct thoughts.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach that every sentence begins with a capital letter through consistent modelling in shared writing and by drawing attention to capital letters at sentence starts during shared reading. Use editing activities where children find and correct sentences with missing capital letters. Provide regular dictation practice where children must apply the capital letter rule. Display the rule prominently and refer to it every time children write. Capital letters for sentence starts should be consistently expected from the earliest independent writing.

Children often use capital letters inconsistently — sometimes remembering for the first sentence but forgetting for subsequent ones. They may use capital letters in the middle of words or sentences for no grammatical reason. Some children write entirely in capitals because they find capital letter formation easier than lower-case.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach the full stop as the most common sentence-ending punctuation mark. Model placing full stops consistently in shared writing and point them out during shared reading. Teach children that a full stop signals the reader to take a brief pause. Use oral activities: read a passage aloud and have children clap or stamp when they hear the full stop. Provide editing exercises where children insert missing full stops into unpunctuated text. Practise through daily dictation.

Children often omit full stops because they are concentrating on the content and spelling of the next sentence. Some children place full stops at the end of every line rather than at the end of each sentence. Others use full stops after individual words or after headings. The full stop is the punctuation mark most commonly omitted by KS1 writers.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach question marks alongside the concept of a question — a sentence that asks something and expects an answer. Identify questions in shared reading: 'How do we know this is a question? What word does it start with?' Teach common question words (who, what, where, when, why, how) and practise writing questions using these openings. Use partner activities where children write questions for each other to answer. Contrast questions with statements to make the function of the question mark clear.

Children may put question marks at the end of all sentences, not distinguishing between questions and statements. They may write sentences that look like statements but add a question mark (e.g., 'The cat sat on the mat?'). Some children confuse question marks with full stops because both appear at the end of a sentence.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach exclamation marks for sentences that express strong feelings — surprise, excitement, commands, or emphasis. Read texts with exclamation marks aloud, modelling the change in voice. Practise writing exclamations beginning with 'What' or 'How' (What a lovely day! How exciting!). Teach that exclamation marks should not be overused — discuss examples of writing with too many exclamation marks and how this reduces their impact. Distinguish exclamation marks from full stops and question marks.

Children often overuse exclamation marks, placing them at the end of every sentence for emphasis. They may not understand that an exclamation sentence has a specific grammatical form (beginning with 'What' or 'How' and containing a verb). Some children use multiple exclamation marks (!!!) for greater emphasis.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach that capital letters are used for people's names, place names, days of the week, and the personal pronoun 'I'. Introduce the term 'proper noun' in Year 2. Use children's own names as the starting point — every child should write their name with a capital letter from the start. Extend to names of characters in stories, the school name, the town name, and days of the week. Practise identifying proper nouns in shared reading and correcting sentences where they are missing.

Children may capitalise common nouns that they consider important (e.g., 'my Dog', 'the Park') while failing to capitalise actual proper nouns. They may not understand the distinction between a common noun and a proper noun. Some children capitalise only the first name of a person but not the surname.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach 'and' as the first conjunction, used to join words, phrases or clauses. In Year 1, focus on using 'and' to join two ideas within a sentence (e.g., 'I like apples and bananas' or 'We went to the park and we played on the swings'). In Year 2, introduce 'but', 'or' and 'so' as additional coordinating conjunctions. Model using conjunctions in shared writing, showing how they combine short, choppy sentences into longer, more fluent ones. Discourage overuse of 'and' to chain multiple clauses together.

Children frequently overuse 'and' as their only conjunction, chaining many ideas into one long, run-on sentence. They may place 'and' at the start of a new sentence rather than using it within a sentence. Some children do not recognise that 'and' can join words ('red and blue') as well as clauses.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach the four main sentence types: statements (telling sentences), questions (asking sentences), exclamations (sentences expressing strong feeling, beginning with 'What' or 'How'), and commands (bossy sentences telling someone to do something). Use practical activities: give children a topic and ask them to write one of each type. Identify sentence types in shared reading. Discuss how the purpose of a sentence determines its type and punctuation. In Year 2, link to punctuation choices and verb forms.

Children often struggle to distinguish between exclamations and statements with exclamation marks. They may classify any sentence ending with '!' as an exclamation, without understanding the specific grammatical structure. Some children think commands must be rude because they are 'bossy'.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach expanded noun phrases in Year 2 by modelling how to add adjectives before a noun to give more detail (e.g., 'the dog' → 'the big, brown dog'). Start with simple adjective + noun combinations and progress to more complex noun phrases. Use picture description activities where children must add detail to make their descriptions more precise. Teach children to choose adjectives for effect rather than quantity — two well-chosen adjectives are better than four random ones.

Children may add adjectives that do not add meaningful information (e.g., 'the nice, good dog'). They may string together too many adjectives without considering their order or impact. Some children confuse expanded noun phrases with expanded sentences, thinking they need to make the whole sentence longer rather than adding detail to the noun.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach present and past tense through oral work before writing. Use the 'yesterday/today' frame: 'Today I walk to school. Yesterday I walked to school.' Practise regular past tense formation by adding -ed, teaching the three pronunciations (/t/ as in walked, /d/ as in played, /ɪd/ as in wanted). Introduce common irregular past tense verbs (went, saw, ran, said, made) as words that must be learned individually. Use shared writing to practise maintaining consistent tense throughout a piece.

Children commonly overgeneralise the -ed rule to irregular verbs (e.g., 'goed', 'runned', 'sayed'). They frequently switch tenses within a single piece of writing without realising, particularly moving from past to present tense mid-narrative. Some children confuse past tense with the time marker 'yesterday' and do not apply tense changes to the verb itself.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Introduce the progressive (continuous) form in Year 2 using the -ing ending with 'is/are' (present progressive: 'She is running') and 'was/were' (past progressive: 'She was running'). Contrast with the simple tense: 'She runs' vs 'She is running' — one describes a habitual action, the other an action in progress. Use pictures showing ongoing actions to elicit progressive forms. Practise converting between simple and progressive forms in oral and written activities.

Children may use the progressive form without the auxiliary verb, writing 'She running' instead of 'She is running'. They may not understand the difference in meaning between 'I eat breakfast' (habitual) and 'I am eating breakfast' (right now). Some children over-apply the progressive to all verbs, including stative verbs that do not usually take this form.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Introduce subordination in Year 2 using the conjunctions 'when', 'if', 'that' and 'because'. Teach that subordination joins a main clause to a subordinate clause that depends on it for meaning (e.g., 'I wore my coat because it was raining'). Model writing sentences with the subordinate clause in different positions: 'When it rained, we went inside' and 'We went inside when it rained.' Use sentence-combining activities where children join two short sentences using a subordinating conjunction.

Children often confuse subordination with coordination, using 'because' as they would use 'and' without understanding that it introduces a reason. They may write incomplete subordinate clauses as sentences (e.g., 'Because it was raining.' as a complete sentence). Some children struggle with the comma needed when the subordinate clause comes first.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach co-ordination in Year 2 using the conjunctions 'and', 'but', 'or' and 'so'. Explain that co-ordination joins two equally important ideas. Teach the meaning each conjunction adds: 'and' adds information, 'but' shows contrast, 'or' offers a choice, 'so' shows a result. Use sentence-combining activities where children choose the appropriate conjunction to join two clauses. Contrast with subordination to build understanding of different clause relationships.

Children often default to 'and' for all co-ordination, not appreciating that 'but', 'or' and 'so' carry different meanings. They may confuse 'but' and 'so', particularly when expressing cause and effect. Some children use co-ordinating conjunctions to start new sentences rather than to join clauses within a sentence.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach commas in lists as a way to separate three or more items in a sentence. Model with simple examples: 'I packed a hat, a scarf, some gloves and a coat.' Teach that the comma replaces the word 'and' between items, with 'and' used only before the final item. Practise with lists of nouns, adjectives and verbs. Use oral rehearsal — children say the sentence aloud with pauses at the comma positions before writing. Provide editing activities where children add commas to unpunctuated lists.

Children may place commas randomly rather than between individual items. They may use 'and' between every item instead of commas (e.g., 'a hat and a scarf and gloves and a coat'). Some children place a comma before 'and' (the Oxford comma), which is not required in UK English conventions taught at KS1. Others forget commas entirely in lists.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach nouns as naming words — words that name a person, place, thing or idea. Use sorting activities: give children a set of words and ask them to identify which are nouns. Introduce the distinction between common nouns (dog, school, book) and proper nouns (Ben, London, Tuesday) with Year 2 pupils. Use sentence-level activities where children identify the nouns in a sentence. Connect noun recognition to expanded noun phrase work, showing that adjectives describe nouns.

Children may think nouns are only concrete objects they can see and touch, not understanding that abstract nouns (happiness, idea) or collective nouns (team, flock) are also nouns. They may confuse nouns with adjectives when a word can function as either (e.g., 'a gold ring' — is 'gold' a noun or adjective here?).

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach verbs as doing words (action verbs: run, jump, eat) and being words (state verbs: is, am, was, have). Use physical activities: call out verbs and have children perform the action. In reading, identify the verb in each sentence — 'What is happening in this sentence?' Teach that every sentence must have a verb. In Year 2, connect verb knowledge to tense work, showing how the verb changes form to show when something happened.

Children often identify only physical action verbs, failing to recognise verbs like 'is', 'have', 'know' and 'think' as verbs. They may confuse verbs with adverbs (particularly -ly words) or with nouns that can also be verbs (e.g., 'play', 'run', 'walk'). Some children think the verb must be the first word in a sentence.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach adjectives as describing words that give more information about a noun. Start with observable qualities (colour, size, shape, texture) and progress to more abstract descriptions (scary, exciting, mysterious). Use real objects: ask children to describe them using adjectives. Play adjective games: 'Tell me three adjectives for this teddy bear.' Connect to expanded noun phrase work and to writing — encourage children to choose effective adjectives that help the reader picture what is being described.

Children may confuse adjectives with adverbs, particularly when both describe something. They may use vague adjectives (nice, good, big) rather than specific, vivid ones. Some children think that more adjectives always make writing better, producing lists of adjectives rather than carefully chosen ones.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Introduce adverbs in Year 2 as words that describe how a verb is performed. Start with manner adverbs ending in -ly (slowly, quickly, quietly, carefully). Model adding adverbs to sentences to give more information about the action: 'She walked' → 'She walked slowly.' Use drama activities: perform an action in different ways and identify the adverb. Connect to writing, encouraging children to use adverbs to make their sentences more descriptive and precise.

Children may think all adverbs end in -ly, which is incorrect (e.g., 'fast', 'well', 'very'). They may confuse adverbs with adjectives, not understanding whether a word is describing a noun or a verb. Some children overstuff sentences with adverbs, writing 'She quickly quietly slowly walked' without understanding that adverbs should add precision, not quantity.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Teach compound words as two words joined together to make a new word (e.g., football, bedroom, playground, sunflower, rainbow). Use word-building activities: give children two sets of word cards and ask them to combine them to make compound words. Discuss how the meaning of a compound word relates to its component parts. This builds understanding of morphology and helps children decode unfamiliar compound words in reading by identifying the two smaller words within them.

Children may try to create compound words from any two words, producing combinations that do not exist. They may not realise that both parts of a compound word contribute to its meaning. Some children write compound words as two separate words (e.g., 'foot ball') or attempt to split non-compound words (e.g., thinking 'carpet' is 'car' + 'pet').

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Introduce grammatical terminology as specified in the National Curriculum Appendix 2 for each year group. Year 1 terms include: letter, capital letter, word, singular, plural, sentence, punctuation, full stop, question mark, exclamation mark. Year 2 adds: noun, noun phrase, statement, question, exclamation, command, compound, suffix, adjective, adverb, verb, tense (past, present), apostrophe, comma. Teach terms in context, using them when discussing reading and writing. Display terms with definitions and examples.

Children may learn grammatical terms as definitions without understanding how to apply them. They may confuse similar terms (e.g., noun/noun phrase, adjective/adverb). Some children can identify word classes in isolation but not within sentences. Others may resist using technical vocabulary, preferring informal descriptions.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.

Begin raising awareness of Standard English in Year 2, focusing on common non-standard forms that children may use in speech. Address subject-verb agreement (e.g., 'we were' not 'we was'), consistent use of standard verb forms (e.g., 'I did' not 'I done', 'she went' not 'she goed'), and double negatives (e.g., 'I didn't do anything' not 'I didn't do nothing'). Approach sensitively: validate children's home language and dialect while teaching that Standard English is used in formal contexts and in writing.

Children may feel their home dialect or spoken language is 'wrong' if Standard English is presented as the only correct form. They may not understand when Standard English is required (writing and formal speech) versus when dialect is appropriate (informal speech). Some children apply Standard English rules inconsistently, particularly with irregular verb forms.

Grammar/punctuation concept — rule-based with objectively assessable outcomes.