Conjunctions - Lesson

A whole lesson on conjunctions aimed at children in upper-primary school / lower high school (Yr4-8 England) (P5-7 /Scotland). The lesson takes the form of a highly interactive presentation which is structured as follows:

• What is a conjunction?
• Examples of Conjunctions
• Application of conjunctions into sentences
• Activities

1. Section one on “What is a conjunction”? encourages the children to find their own answer through discussion. A recap is provided of clauses - main and subordinate clauses and how conjunctions interact with these to form sentences.
2. Section two on examples of conjunctions aims to help students create a word bank of different conjunctions that they will be able to apply to their writing. This is delivered by showing pupils examples of sentences with conjunctions and guiding them through identifying the conjunction in each case. By including sentences at this point, it helps the students to already start to develop their application and understanding of how conjunctions fit into sentences.
3. Section three on application of conjunctions into sentences is broken down into small chunks. The section is structured by different purposes a conjunction may have in a sentence for example: comparison, adding information, giving a reason etc. At each point at least three examples of conjunctions are given including an example of how they fit in a sentence. Students are encouraged to take an active part in their learning by the section being structured with various pause points do students to have a go themselves. The section aims to cover many examples of conjunctions but in a way that is relevant to writing. Small chunks help the volume of information to be less overwhelming. Every conjunction mentioned has at least one example sentence included.
4. Section four includes 3 different activities.

• The first activity is a writing activity. To help engage students, the activity includes a highly relatable, relevant and interesting topic. Students are asked to reflect on a recent problem they had and write an “agony aunt” newspaper article describing the problem and solution using conjunctions.
• The second activity is a scavenger hunt activity which involves students searching for conjunctions in different books. This activity does not involve any writing and is designed as an active learning task. It could easily be completed as individuals, pairs, or teams.
• The final activity is a game of Simon Says that has been adapted to include different types of words including conjunctions. This game helps to add fun to your lessons whilst reinforcing the topic and encouraging leadership and listening skills.

The whole lesson aims to be relevant to student experiences and interests and applicable beyond the lesson throughout. Students are encouraged to take an active part in their learning as the lesson is interspersed with many opportunities for engagement through questions, short tasks, longer tasks, and games.

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