Nouns and noun phrases in Year 2

2014 National curriculum requirements for Year 2 children relating to nouns	Terminology used in Year 2
Expanded noun phrases for description and specification [for example, the blue butterfly, plain flour, the man in the moon]	noun, noun phrase, adjective,
Formation of nouns using suffixes such as –ness, –er and by compounding [for example, whiteboard, superman]	compound (noun), suffix
Formation of adjectives using suffixes such as –ful, –less	adjective, suffix
Use of the suffixes –er, –est in adjectives	adjective, suffix
Consolidation of previous learning	Continuing to use terminology from Year 1.

In Year 2, there is much more emphasis on children using the correct terms to understand and develop noun phrases in their writing.  At the end of Year 2, the grammar and punctuation test will use the terminology in questions designed to check children’s understanding of these grammatical features.

However, continuing to develop noun phrases and sentences orally is an important part of the writing process.  Children need to make choices about what words and phrases they will use, so experimenting out loud will help them investigate a number of possibilities and decide what sounds best and communicates their intended message to the reader.  Playing oral games with your children to create noun phrases will help them to try out different ideas for describing people, objects and places.

Adding words to the noun phrase is called ‘expanding the noun phrase’. In Year 2, children should investigate using more than one adjective and again, as in Year 1, should be encouraged to vary the words they start their noun phrases with (these words are called determiners, but this terminology is not required until Year 4).  

Following on from ideas for Year 1 children, pictures can again be used to build description. 

With a picture you can:

• Collect adjectives to describe the noun and play around with combining them.  For example, small, slim, green, white, brown, lazy, patterned, sunbathing. If children write these phrases and they have more than one adjective, they will probably need to use a comma to separate these: that green, brown and white lizard, a small, slim lizard.
• Use two words placed together to act as an adjective.  When we want two words to work together as an adjective, we need to put a hyphen between them, e.g. long-tailed, beady-eyed.
• Play around with alliteration in the noun phrase, e.g. the lazy lizard, the long-tailed lizard.  (Alliteration is the use of two or more words beginning with the same sound, which usually means they also begin with the same letter.)  This can also be carried on in the rest of the sentence: The lazy, long-tailed lizard lay in the sun.

When children have been taught the suffix work in Year 2, you can add these adjectives to your games, e.g. a beautiful lizard, this helpless lizard.  Take any opportunity to talk about other words that are similar to these (e.g. beauty, help, helpful) and how the spelling is different.

With the suffixes –er and –est, you can create sentences in threes and see how imaginative you and your child can be.  For example:

• The small lizard hid inside a watering can.
• The smaller lizard curled up inside a flower pot.
• The smallest lizard slipped inside an empty snail shell.

Sometimes we can’t add –er and –est without changing part of the adjective.  This happens when the adjective ends in –y.  In these cases, we need to change the –y to an –i and then add the suffix: happy, happier, happiest.

We don’t always add –er and –est to adjectives.  With some adjectives we need to use more or most, e.g. more beautiful, most expensive.  Children should learn that we don’t use more and –er together (more slimmer) or most and –est together (most friendliest).

Compound nouns are formed when two existing words join to create a new noun, e.g. super + man = superman, white + board = whiteboard.  You can copy the table below to enlarge, print and cut out cards which can be used in games to create compound words.  You can change the words in the table for new compound words that you find.

Turn all the cards face down and play a type of Kim’s game by remembering where the matching cards are.  Each player turns over two cards.  If they make a compound word, both cards can be kept by that player.  If not, hide the words by turning them down again, but try to remember where particular cards are so you can match them next time.  The winner is the player with the most compound words when all the cards are gone.

super	market	post	man
fire	work	police	woman
hand	bag	grand	father
green	fly	black	bird
play	ground	motor	way
news	paper	flap	jack
pop	corn	leap	frog
lamp	shade	horse	shoe
home	work	rain	bow

Standard English

Standard English is a dialect of English which uses what is considered to be 'correct' grammar and is used in formal situations.  It contrasts with other, local dialects of English which we use in our everyday life in whatever area of the country we come from.

Dialect is more than just an accent: each local dialect may have different ways of using grammar and different vocabulary.  For instance, if you come from Newcastle, in your dialect you would use 'me' instead of 'my' and 'wor' instead of 'our'.  You might 'hoy' something, instead of 'throw' it.

We must ensure children understand that it is not wrong to use their own, local dialect.  Every dialect has its own rich grammar and vocabulary and is used perfectly to communicate in its own area.  However, we need to explain that the Standard English dialect should be used when we write, and also when we speak in formal situations, so that we can be understood everywhere in the English speaking world.

Pronouns used to replace nouns and noun phrases

Once children learn to chain a few sentences together to create a piece of writing, it is important for them to understand that they don’t have to repeat the same nouns and noun phrases in every sentence.  If you read the following examples, you can see how repetition interferes with the flow of reading, but replacing some of the nouns and noun phrases with pronouns makes the text easier for the reader to understand.

• Jack went to town and Jack took the cow to sell at the market.  When Jack got to town, Jack looked for a buyer but Jack could not find a buyer.  Jack was getting worried but then an old lady gave Jack some magic beans for the cow.  When Jack got home, Jack’s mother was very cross with Jack and Jack’s mother threw the beans out of the window.
• Jack went to town and he took the cow to sell at the market.  When he got to town, Jack looked for a buyer but he could not find one.  Jack was getting worried but then an old lady gave him some magic beans for the cow.  When he got home, Jack’s mother was very cross with him and she threw the beans out of the window.

When pronouns refer to a person, we call them personal pronouns.  Children need to understand that we use different personal pronouns in different sentence slots:  we need subject pronouns in the subject position of a sentence and object pronouns in the object slots.

Subject pronouns                    Object pronouns

(use in the subject position        (use in the object position

before the verb)                         after the verb)

I                                                 me

he                                              him

she                                            her

it                                                it

you                                            you

we                                             us

they                                           them

For example,

• He saw her.
• I saw them.
• She saw me.
• My family and I saw them. 

Children will sometimes confuse these pronouns, which is incorrect in Standard English and will be marked incorrectly in the grammar and punctuation test:

• Me and my family saw them.  (Incorrect as object pronoun me used in the subject position.)
• She saw my family and I.  (Incorrect as subject pronoun I used in the object position.)

These sorts of mistakes usually happen when ‘I’ or ‘me’ is used with another subject or object.  For example, children will rarely say ‘Me saw them.’ or ‘She saw I.’ and will recognise these structures as wrong since they sound strange.  However, when another subject or object is added, the strangeness is not as apparent.  Many adults also make these mistakes and incorrect use is often heard in the media, so it is difficult for children to distinguish correct Standard English.

There are other types of pronouns, but the subject and object pronouns are the first that will need to be taught.

Activity: Take Tibbles Out: using subject and object pronouns correctly

Nouns and noun phrases in Year 1

2014 National curriculum requirements for Year 1 children relating to nouns	Terminology used in Year 1
Regular plural noun suffixes –s or –es [for example, dog, dogs; wish, wishes], including the effects of these suffixes on the meaning of the noun	singular, plural
How the prefix un– changes the meaning of verbs and adjectives [negation, for example, unkind, or undoing: untie the boat]

Although children in year 1 are not required to use the terminology noun and adjective, it is likely that teachers will start using these terms to help pupils develop their sentence writing. 

Teachers will focus on building children’s repertoire of nouns, making sure children understand what the word means, and then encouraging them to segment (sound out) the word so that they can use their phonic knowledge to spell the word.  Children will also start to use the terms singular and plural.  The Year 1 requirement to spell plurals correctly will be linked to their learning in phonics, so that they understand that nouns usually end in –s in the plural, but that there are certain nouns that will need –es for their plural spelling.  The rule for this is as follows:  The suffix –es is used after words ending in /s/, /ch/, /sh/ and /z/ and when ‘y’ is replaced by ‘i’.

• bus/buses
• church/churches
• bush/bushes
• buzz/buzzes
• dolly/dollies

When children start to write sentences, there are lots of things for them to remember and try to focus on: forming the letters correctly, choosing the right words, spelling the words correctly, remembering finger-spaces, capital letters and full stops, keeping their writing on the line and the right size, etc.  They may have lots of ideas about what to write, but the quality of what they write rarely matches up to their spoken ideas.  Therefore, their first written sentences are likely to contain very basic noun phrases, often starting with ‘the’ or ‘a’, e.g. The boy, a dog.

During Foundation Stage and Year 1, children will be taught to read and write a number of words which can vary the starts to these noun phrases.  The table below contains many of these words, some of which can only be used with a singular noun, some with a plural noun and some with both singular and plural.  Your child should be encouraged to use these words as these will improve the variety in their writing and also reinforce the spelling of these (often very common) words.

a	an	the	this	that	these	those
my	his	her	our	your	their	some
all	one	two	three	other	many	another

You can use the table to create cards to match up to pictures of singular and plural nouns.  Discussing what the words mean and whether they can be matched with the nouns in the pictures will help your child develop understanding around their use.  Here is a picture to start you off.

flowers	rose
fern	leaves

 

• the flowers
• some flowers
• many flowers
• these flowers
• my flowers
• a rose
• the rose
• one rose
• our rose

The above are all correct, but we couldn’t have:

• a flowers
• many fern
• an leaves

In Year 1, children will also be encouraged to describe people, objects and places.  Much of this description will take place by creating spoken sentences.  Looking at a picture and choosing a noun to describe is a good way to start children build noun phrases.  In the picture above, you could ask your child to describe the rose.  How big is it? What colour is it?  They might describe it as ‘the pink rose’ or ‘the small rose’.  Could they put that noun phrase into a sentence? (The pink rose is in the garden.)

In that example, ‘pink’ and ‘small’ are adjectives, describing the noun ‘rose’.  In Year 1, we want to encourage children to use adjectives to describe the nouns they want to use in spoken and written language, even if they do not use the terms adjective and noun yet.

As children’s understanding of adjectives increases, we can start to introduce the second of the above National Curriculum requirements: using the prefix ‘un’ to change the meaning of an adjective.  For example, kind/unkind, happy/unhappy, sure/unsure.  Discussing these changes to the meaning of words will help children understand that this structure only works with certain adjectives, not all.  As with all work on grammar, it is a good idea for children to practise putting their examples into real sentences.  Teachers will also be linking this prefix to work on verbs.

Nouns and noun phrases

A noun is the name of a person, object or place. 

If the noun refers to an individual person, object or place and identifies it as distinct from any other, it is called a proper noun and will start with a capital letter.  For example, Fred Smith, Buckingham Palace, France.

Nouns used as a general name are called common nouns.  For example, table, field, cat, castle, apple.

We use the term noun for these single words and sometimes they are used as a single word to fill a sentence element slot in the sentence:

Andy won Wimbledon.

I like apples.

Art is enjoyable.

It is more usual for nouns to appear in sentences as part of a phrase, i.e. two words or more, working together to fill a slot in a sentence.  Let’s have a look at examples of how we can combine a noun with other words to make a noun phrase.

an apple

the apple

the green apple

the small, green apple

the small, green apple with spotty skin

the small, green apple which I picked from the tree

Nouns and noun phrases can be used in different places in sentences, but they usually fill the subject and object slots.

Over the primary years, your child will be taught how to expand noun phrases in the ways exemplified above.  You will notice that some words can be placed before the main noun in the phrase (apple); sometimes words can be placed after the main noun.  You can link below to information for how nouns and noun phrases are developed in each year group, along with the new National Curriculum requirements and terminology.  It will be useful to look at all year groups leading up to your child’s current year so you have a complete picture of what they should know.

Nouns and noun phrases in Year 1

Nounsand noun phrases in Year 2

Nouns and noun phrases in Year 3

Nouns and noun phrases in Year 4

Nouns and noun phrases in Year 5

Nouns and noun phrases in Year 6

When learning about nouns and noun phrases, children will also need to understand that sometimes we need to replace these with pronouns to avoid repetition in our writing.

What is a verb/verb phrase?

Sentences in English are all about the verb: they are the ‘workhorse’ words of the sentence and tell us not only what is happening, but provide important information about when it happened and what sort of sentence type is being used.  They are so important that, to be called a sentence in English, a verb must be present.

Verbs fill the verb slot in a sentence, which usually follows the subject (although sometimes we change the word order in a sentence to create different effects).

Although in the majority of verbs describe an action, we must be careful not to use 'doing word’ with children to describe the verb, because it could also be a 'being' or 'having' word.  Let’s look at some sentences to consider these differences:

• The dog ran in the park.
• The boy jumps in the puddle.
• Mum drove to the shops.

The verbs in the above sentences all involve some sort of action and, in children’s minds, these are words which describe something being ‘done’.  They will often refer to these verbs as ‘doing’ words.  ‘Doing verbs’ is a better term.

• The princess was happy.
• Dad is in the garden.
• She seems cheerful.
• I feel hungry.

If children are used to using the term ‘doing word’ and you ask them where the verbs are in the sentences above, they will struggle.  They do not see forms of the verb ‘be’ (e.g. am, is, are, was, were) and other verbs such as ‘seem’ or ‘feel’ as an action, or something that is ‘done’.  They will often say that the verb is ‘happy’ or ‘hungry’.

• I have a headache.
• She owns a pony.

These verbs are also difficult to see as ‘doing’ words.  A better term is ‘having verbs’.

So, when starting to talk about verbs with children, it’s better to use the terminology ‘doing verb’ (e.g. jump, run, cook, drive), ‘being verb’ (e.g. am, is, are, was, were, seem, feel) or ‘having verb’ (e.g. has, have, had, own). 

Verbs are used in many different forms and tenses, some of which are listed below against a sentence exemplifying their use.  Children will learn the terminology for these forms at different points in their primary education, but they will already be using many of these in their everyday speech and writing. 

• The dog runs in the park.   (Present simple)
• The dog ran in the park.   (Past simple)
• The dog is running in the park.   (Present progressive)
• The dog was running in the park.   (Past progressive)
• The dog has run in the park.   (Present perfect)
• The dog had run in the park.   (Past perfect)
• Run in the park!   (Imperative form of the verb used in commands)

You will notice that some of these verbs consist of one word and some have two words. When a verb uses more than one word, we can call it a verb phrase.  The words are working together to fill the verb slot in the sentence.