Learning Support – English

During English lessons the pupils will learn a range of terminology for word types, sentence types etc. The children’s writing will benefit from using these words correctly. Below is a glossary of the key words we use in class. To help you child you can ask them to spot these different things when they read to you. For example, they may read a page of a story and you may ask them to spot the adjective in the page.

If you wish to print this glossary there is a PDF document below.  

Cherry's SPaG Glossary

Please find below a glossary of the terminology that children are expected to know and use in year two and three.

Glossary and Definitions:

Noun - Nouns are sometimes called ‘naming words’ because they name people, places and things. Nouns may be classified as common (e.g. boy, day) or proper (e.g. Ivan, Monday).

Noun phrase - A noun phrase is a phrase that plays the role of a noun. The head word in a noun phrase will be a noun or a pronoun. Noun phrases are most often used for description and specification. E.g. plain flour, foxes with bushy tails

Statement - The form of a sentence’s main clause shows whether it is being used as a statement, a question, a command or an exclamation. E.g. You are my friend.

Question - Are you my friend?

Exclamation - What a good friend you are!

Command - Be my friend!

Suffix - A suffix is an ‘ending’, used at the end of one word to turn it into another word. Suffixes cannot stand on their own as a complete word. E.g. success – successful, teach – teacher, small – smallest.

Adjective - A “describing word”. The surest way to identify adjectives is by the ways they can be used: before a noun, to make the noun’s meaning more specific or after the verb to be, as its complement. Adjectives cannot be modified by other adjectives. This distinguishes them from nouns, which can be. E.g. The pupils did some really excellent work. Their work was excellent.

Adverb - Adverbs are sometimes said to describe a verb. Adverb describes how or when something is being done. For example...The child slowly walked across the field. The word slowly is an adverb as it describes how the child did something.

Verb - Verbs are sometimes called ‘doing words’ because many verbs name an action that someone does; while this can be a way of recognising verbs, many verbs name states or feelings rather than actions. Verbs can usually have a tense, either present or past (also future). E.g. He lives in Birmingham. The teacher wrote a song for the class. He likes chocolate. He knew my father.