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Classroom lesson plans and interactive smart board activities.

Words

This lesson looks at words and word-formation and is designed for KS1 students.

Goals

  • To explore the definition of the notion 'word'. 
  • To explore how words are formed and understand some word-formation processes.
  • To explore how words create meaning.

Lesson Plan

Start the lesson by asking your students to discuss what a ‘word’ is. It's a surprisingly tricky thing to define! 

Next, display the following words on the board:

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The use of tense in sports commentaries

This activity looks at the use of tense in two descriptions of the same event: a football match. Students are asked to think about why different tenses used, and what kind of role they play in creating the meaning of the text.

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Clause patterns in online recipes

Exploring how and why different clause patterns are used

This activity looks at different clause patterns (statement; question; command; exclamation) in an online recipe. Students are asked to think about why different clause patterns are used, and what kind of role they play in creating the meaning of the text.

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Noun phrases in descriptive writing

Goals

  • To explore the role of noun phrases in descriptive writing.
  • To consider how noun phrases can have ‘descriptive weight’.
  • For students to apply this in their own writing.

Begin by asking your asks students to discuss what ‘things’ are in this description:

In my room, there is an enormous swimming pool, and underneath one of the big windows there is an ice-cream machine.

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Deixis in drama

Exploring how deixis works in dramatic texts

Deixis is a word of Greek origin meaning 'pointing'. Thus, words which are deictic 'point' to different times, spaces and people. The meaning of these words is dependent upon the context in which they are used. 

For example: if a teacher stands at the front of a room, at 9.13am on Wednesday 28 June and says to a student 'I want you to come here now', then the following deictic words mean:

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Restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses: Activity 4

Have a go at writing your own relative clauses by mixing and matching the clauses below. Join them together with that, which or who.

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Restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses: Activity 3

Non-restrictive relative clauses are often – although not always – surrounded by commas, which separate the additional information that the relative clause contains. In the following examples, see if you can put the commas in the right place to separate out the restrictive relative.

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Restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses: Activity 2

Sort these examples of relative clauses from the ICE-GB corpus according to whether you think they are restrictive (identifying) or non-restrictive (adding). Were there any cases where you had difficulty deciding which reading to choose? What clues did you use to help you decide?

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Restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses: Activity 1

In what situation would somebody use the clause the car which is yellow?

For example:

  • The car which is yellow is mine, the car which is blue is yours, and the car which is red is John’s.

If I say the car which is yellow, am I giving you more information about a particular car we were already talking about by telling you its colour, or am I helping you to identify the car by telling you that it is the yellow one I want to discuss, rather than a red or blue one?

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Restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses

In this lesson, we look at the difference between two kinds of relative clause. A relative clause is a special kind of subordinate clause, and like other subordinate clauses it is introduced by a subordinating conjunction. More specifically, the introduction of a relative clause can be carried out by a relative pronoun.

The two types of relative clauses we will be looking at are:

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Englicious (C) Survey of English Usage, UCL, 2012-21 | Supported by the AHRC and EPSRC. | Privacy | Cookies