1 A Guide to Using Grammar and Spelling Bug Contents What is Grammar and Spelling Bug? 2 The science behind Grammar and Spelling Bug 2 How do I get going with Grammar and Spelling Bug? 2 What s included in Grammar and Spelling Bug? 3 Looking at the teacher resources 3 The Diagnostic Check 3 The Teaching Guidance 4 The Summative Assessment 5 The Pearson Primary English Ladder 6 The Curriculum Coverage Chart 7 The Text-Type Planning Chart 7 The Pupils and Teacher s Glossaries 8 Looking at the pupil resources 8 The Video Tutorials 8 The Game Sequences 9 The story 9 Points 9 Mini-Writes 10 Planning with Grammar and Spelling Bug 10 Differentiation 10 How do you timetable Grammar and Spelling Bug? 11 A suggested route through the units 12 Reviewing Grammar and Spelling Bug assessment 15
2 What is Grammar and Spelling Bug? Grammar and Spelling Bug gives you all the tools you need to deliver the grammar and spelling requirements of the Primary English National Curriculum, without having to reach for a hefty academic tome. With comprehensive teaching guidance to support high-quality lesson planning, and with assessments available at the click of a button, you ll have more time to devote to applying your creative ideas! What s more, your pupils will love practising their newly acquired skills over and over with the programme s exciting, time-travel themed games. Built to find the fun in learning grammar, punctuation and spelling, Grammar and Spelling Bug is bursting with online practice games and video tutorials that help children to master essential skills. Your pupils will travel through the ages, from Aztec to Victorian times, completing exciting practice games and learning key skills at every step, without even knowing it! The science behind Grammar and Spelling Bug Grammar and Spelling Bug works because it: uses lively games and videos to inspire children to understand and apply their new grammar and spelling skills successfully; gives instant pupil feedback, which encourages children to keep trying to get tasks right; secures mastery, as children are motivated to practise again and again with hundreds of engaging and varied practice games; prepares you and your pupils thoroughly for the objectives of the curriculum; provides the tools you need to assess and manage your pupils progression, alongside your other teaching plans. Grammar and Spelling Bug is based on the Pearson Primary English Ladder, which is researched by Professor Debra Myhill of the University of Exeter. For more information on the Pearson Primary English Ladder, see page 6 of this guide. How do I get going with Grammar and Spelling Bug? If you have any technical queries, have a look at the Getting Started Guide in the Teacher Toolkit section of the Grammar and Spelling Bug Resources area on ActiveLearn. This will take you step by step through how to set up Grammar and Spelling Bug for your class.
3 What s included in Grammar and Spelling Bug? Each unit of Grammar and Spelling Bug contains: a Diagnostic Check (not applicable to certain units), Teaching Guidance, a Video Tutorial, a Games Sequence, a Summative Assessment. To support your teaching, the Grammar and Spelling Bug Teacher toolkit (found in the Grammar and Spelling Bug Resources area on ActiveLearn) also contains: this Guide to Using Grammar and Spelling Bug the Getting Started Guide the Pearson Primary English Ladder the Curriculum Coverage Chart the Text-Type Planning Chart the Teacher s Glossary the Pupils Glossary. Looking at the teacher resources The Diagnostic Check Purpose The Grammar and Spelling Bug Diagnostic Checks help teachers to assess children s existing understanding of the prior knowledge that each unit requires. As grammar in particular is a cumulative skill-set, much of the work involved in understanding and applying new skills requires a firm understanding of their underlying concepts and practices. For example, to learn about the passive voice, children will need to have a clear understanding of what constitutes the subject and the object of a sentence; to learn how to punctuate lists, they will need to understand how to use a comma. The Pearson Primary English Ladder provides an overview of all the prerequisite skills necessary for children to complete the Grammar and Spelling Bug programme.
4 Use For each Diagnostic Check, Grammar and Spelling Bug supplies a question sheet, which includes space for the children s answers, and a separate document that confirms the correct answers. Diagnostic Checks can be delivered either as an oral test or printed out for each child (which is especially appropriate if you are not confident in specific children s knowledge of a skill). Plan to run the relevant Diagnostic Check in advance of teaching each unit, to allow you to assess whether all of the children in your class are ready to progress with the objective. Planning with Grammar and Spelling Bug, on page 10, contains more-detailed suggestions on timetabling Grammar and Spelling Bug, and page 12 details a suggested route through the units. Use each short check as a tool for your formative assessment of writing and plan to review objectives learned in previous years if children are not confident with them. Although each check shows children a target mark for each question, it is important to stress that the purpose of the Diagnostic Check is not to provide summative assessment, but to inform your own assessment of what support the class might need. If the Diagnostic Check leads you to believe that there are specific skill areas, rather than whole units, that need addressing, use the summative assessment from the relevant previous unit of Grammar and Spelling Bug to identify the precise composite skills that require attention. The Teaching Guidance Generally speaking, Grammar and Spelling Bug provides one simple set of Teaching Guidance for each grammar and punctuation unit. There are three exceptions: the Years 5 and 6 units Expanding Noun Phrases and Formal Language deal with particularly complex concepts, so two teaching guides are provided for each. Just one, longer guide is provided to cover all of the spelling units. The Teaching Guidance is split into four key sections: On Your Marks! This overview of the session s objective, with a child-friendly key definition, is designed to give you at-a-glance information on all the basics that you ll need to hold your grammar and spelling session. Get Ready: This section provides, in a nutshell, what you need to know before teaching the session. It gives a rundown of the prior knowledge children will need and a more in-depth explanation of any terminology covered, as well as the common purpose and application of the skill in question.
5 Get Set: The most detailed part of the Teaching Guide, Get Set shows a clear list of all the resources available for the unit in Grammar and Spelling Bug. Next, it covers a range of different activities that are perfectly suited to teaching the unit s objective in whole-class or group scenarios. The activities are often designed to show progress, so the first activity may involve identification skills whereas the final activity will involve application. Get Set also includes a list of all the online games for the unit, which allow children time for practising with the Bug the time-travelling Time Hopper! For more information on the games in Grammar and Spelling Bug, see page 9 of this guide. Go! Once children have taken part in whole-class activities and gone on to practise using the online games, they are ready to begin applying their new skills in their writing. Use the suggestions in the Go! section to plan opportunities for spelling and grammar consolidation in your wider English and cross-curricular work: they provide hints on noticing the convention in question, and on its application in shared reading, shared writing and independent work. It is vital that children make links in their language work and understand the relevance of a particular element of punctuation or grammar. The single, extended Teaching Guide for spelling broadly follows this format. Rather than focusing on a specific spelling requirement, it supplies a wide range of strategies to support children s learning of both spelling patterns and spelling exceptions. A Diagnostic Check is provided for some spelling objectives to complement this, and all have a related Summative Assessment, Games Sequence and Video Tutorial, so you can be sure to support children specifically on each requirement. The Summative Assessment Purpose The Grammar and Spelling Bug Summative Assessments are designed to allow you to assess whether or not each child has mastered the composite skills for each National Curriculum requirement, and to identify any composite skills that need improving. Each question links to a different composite skill, to allow you to identify any areas in which children may need more support. Each Summative Assessment is marked out of ten. Scores can be used to contribute to summative judgements using the thresholds below. 10 out of 10: The child is exceeding age-related expectations. 8 9 out of 10: The child is on track to meet age-related expectations. 3 7 out of 10: The child is working towards age-related expectations. 1 2 out of 10: The child is working below age-related expectations.
6 In order for children to exceed age-related expectations, they must show the ability to apply the skills in question accurately and consistently across a range of written contexts. The Mini-Writes at the end of the Game Sequences allow practice of this. The Teaching Guides also suggest text types for application in independent writing, where relevant. For more information on the Text-Type Planning Chart, see page 7. If children prove to be secure with the composite skills for all of their year group s units, they will have met the age-related expectations for grammar, punctuation and spelling given in the National Curriculum for England. (For coverage of the Northern Irish, Welsh and Scottish curricula, use the Curriculum Coverage Chart contained in the Grammar and Spelling Bug Teacher Toolkit.) Use For each Summative Assessment, Grammar and Spelling Bug supplies a question sheet, which includes space for the children s answers, and a separate document that confirms the correct answers. There is one Summative Assessment provided for each unit. Plan to use the relevant Summative Assessment soon after teaching each unit. If children are not meeting age-related expectations, the structure of the questions allows you to assess precisely which composite skills they're having trouble with. You will then be able to easily look back at the bank of activities in the Teaching Guidance, and at the games available online, to tailor your further teaching to that particular skill. As the games are designed to encourage children to play more than once and contain banks of questions (only some of which will be asked during each attempt), children can play every game more than once. If a group of children has mastered the skills, while others are looking for more support, you can use the suggestions in the Go! area of the Teaching Guidance to stretch children to apply their skills in independent writing. The Pearson Primary English Ladder The Pearson Primary English Ladder is designed to support your planning for progression in technical English skills. It covers all the spelling and grammar requirements in the National Curriculum Programmes of Study for England and all of the technical skills requirements from the Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh curricula. (See the Curriculum Coverage Chart in the Grammar and Spelling Bug Teacher Toolkit for an overview of what is covered.)
7 The first column of the ladder shows the prerequisite skills that children need to have covered in order to make progress with each requirement, and can be used (along with Diagnostic Checks) to assess whether or not children are ready for a particular unit. The skills, along with a breakdown of their composite elements, can be found in the progression ladder for each year group. The second column of the ladder contains the composite skills that break down each National Curriculum requirement into a step-by-step progression. These composite skills feed into each individual activity in a unit s Teaching Guide, each online game and the questions in the Summative Assessment. The Pearson Primary English Ladder is written by Literacy Advisors Lindsay Pickton and Christine Chen, and has been reviewed by Professor Debra Myhill at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Writing and Research, University of Exeter. It is designed to provide an excellent route of progression through technical English skills and can also be used in schools not following the National Curriculum for England. The Curriculum Coverage Chart The Curriculum Coverage Chart demonstrates the correlation between the units in Grammar and Spelling Bug and the following UK curricula for children aged 9 11. England: National Curriculum Programme of Study (2013) England: National Curriculum Programme of Study (1999) Wales: National Literacy and Numeracy Framework (2013): English KS2 Scotland: Curriculum for Excellence: Outcomes and Experiences in English and Language for Second Level (up to end P7) Northern Ireland: Northern Ireland Curriculum: Language and Literacy KS2 The Text-Type Planning Chart The Text-Type Planning Chart shows the correlation between the major text types covered in Key Stage 2 and the technical skills that fit well with each. This document is designed to support you in your medium-term and long-term classroom planning for literacy, and to ensure that you are easily able to provide opportunities within a given text type for children to practise and apply technical skills. Further ideas on linking a technical skill to a text type can be found in the individual pieces of Teaching Guidance, under the Go! heading.
8 The Pupils and Teacher s Glossaries Grammar and Spelling Bug provides two glossaries: one for teachers and a simpler one aimed at pupils. The Pupils Glossary contains the statutory terminology from the National Curriculum, as well as all the terminology used in the Grammar and Spelling Bug programme. The Teacher s Glossary contains extended definitions of each of the terms, as well as terminology that, although not necessary for children to learn, may prove helpful for describing how language works. Looking at the pupil resources Each unit in Grammar and Spelling Bug contains a Video Tutorial and a Game Sequence. These pupil resources have easy-to-understand, child-friendly unit names, which are supplied for your reference in each unit s Teaching Guide. The videos and games (introduced by the pupils guide character, the Time Hopper) can easily be set as homework. See the Getting Started Guide for more details on how to access and allocate these resources. The Video Tutorials The Grammar and Spelling Bug Video Tutorials are intended for use as reminders for children when they are practising their grammar and spelling skills independently. They can also be used during teaching, for reinforcement. They provide useful examples of grammatical terminology, punctuation use and spelling patterns. The videos do not cover all of the terminology a child may need for each unit, but are intended to cover the essential and most difficult aspects of it. Each video ends with a suggestion for children to investigate the skill in question further (which could be set as separate pieces of homework). When children use the videos, encourage them to pause if and when they need to.
9 The Game Sequences The Grammar and Spelling Bug online games provide children with fun, independent skills practice, accompanied by instant feedback that supports the application of knowledge. Each game corresponds to a specific composite skill for its unit. Within each game, children are given three chances to get each question right. Encourage children to press the Try Again button if they haven t scored 5 out of 5, as each game contains a larger bank of randomised questions. When allocated for easy access from home, these games make ideal homework activities. The story When accessing their online resources, children become involved in a narrative that runs through the Grammar and Spelling Bug videos and games, and keeps them compelled to finish their journey. The Time Hopper bug (who guides pupils through each unit) is on a journey through time, and the children join him in his adventures. The Time Hopper visits points in history from ancient China all the way through to the Victorians! Points When playing the Grammar and Spelling Bug games, children score points (shown in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen) only if they answer correctly first time. This marking scheme is intended to reflect fairly how far children have mastered each skill. Encourage them to try again if they haven t secured 5 out of 5. If children answer a question incorrectly, they are given encouragement from the Time Hopper, who is always present in the game screen s top left-hand corner. This often points the children to the i button in the top right-hand corner, which recaps the spelling rule or grammar guide. Children can refer to the i button at any point during the game, if they need help. By looking under the Activity Reporting tab, you can easily see how your class is performing, as each game returns a score detailing how well a child has done. The scores are expressed as coloured lozenges using a traffic-light approach: White: A white icon containing the word View shows a game that requires teacher feedback. A blank white icon shows a game that has not yet been completed. Red: The pupil got 0 39% of the questions correct during the first attempt of their final play of this game. Amber: The pupil got 40 79% of the questions correct during the first attempt of their final play of this game. Green: The pupil got 80 100% of the questions correct during the first attempt of their final play of this game.
10 Mini-Writes The Mini-Writes at the end of the grammar and punctuation Game Sequences allow contextual application of the skills addressed by the games. To view a Mini-Write, click on the white icon containing the word View that appears against the activity under the Activity Reporting tab (see above). A window will appear, detailing the question that was asked and the answer that the pupil gave. You are able to leave a comment for the pupil (in the box on the top left) and choose the appropriate traffic-light rating for their answer. Accurate application should include correct highlighting of the skill, as this makes the child s understanding transparent (and saves marking time for the teacher). Inaccuracy in a Mini-Write, and therefore inaccuracy in contextual application, suggests insecure understanding of the skill in question. If children exhibit inaccuracy, they may return to the games for independent practice. You may also wish to give them additional teaching (at individual, group or whole-class level, as appropriate). Mini-Writes may also be used as opportunities for peer-evaluation and support, as part of the learning process, and can be printed if required. Planning with Grammar and Spelling Bug Differentiation The Diagnostic Check is designed to allow you to judge to what extent your class may need to re-cover a previous objective (or a small area of it). This will vary depending on how technical skills have been taught in your school to date. The Teaching Guidance for each unit provides enough different activities to allow you to go back and focus on the basics when you need to do so. Lower-attaining children will be able to cover the first of the activities in the programme, and are encouraged to play the online games repeatedly. The support provided online (the always-accessible spelling rule or grammar guide, and the Time Hopper s instant feedback) should help them to cover the majority of each objective. These children may not be able to get to the end of the Game Sequence, however, without further support and repetition of the lesson. Higher-attaining children will be able to cover the whole range of activities that Grammar and Spelling Bug offers, as well as the online games. The games are designed to stretch high-attaining pupils, as well as to provide support, in particular through the Mini-Writes at the end of each objective and the Go! suggestions in the Teaching Guidance.
11 How do you timetable Grammar and Spelling Bug? Grammar and Spelling Bug is designed to be flexible, to fit around your existing literacy provision. Below are two suggestions of how you can timetable teaching sessions using Grammar and Spelling Bug. Option 1: One objective every two weeks This option is designed to allow time every other week to re-cover any tricky areas. In this way, full coverage of the programme for each year can be achieved over 23 weeks. Week 1: Monday Tuesday Wednesday Week 2: Monday Wednesday Diagnostic Check (15 minutes) Teaching Guidance (20 minutes) Games Sequence (30 minutes) Online games can be provided via booking the IT Lab, or as part of a carousel of laptops during carousel sessions. Application of skill in independent writing (30 minutes) Summative Assessment (15 minutes) Option 2: One objective every week This option is designed to provide intensive coverage of the programme through homework tasks and doesn t require you to use IT in class. In this way, full coverage of the programme for each year can be achieved over 12 weeks. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Friday In class: Diagnostic Check (15 minutes) In class: Teaching Guidance (20 minutes) For homework: Games Sequence (30 minutes) In class: Application of skill in independent writing (30 minutes) For homework: Completion of independent writing (30 minutes) In class: Summative Assessment (15 minutes)
12 You can also include Grammar and Spelling Bug in your wider literacy lessons. It is important to recognise that the two objectives that contain two Teaching Guides (the Years 5 and 6 units Expanding Noun Phrases and Formal Language ) will require twice the normal allotted teaching time to complete. A suggested route through the units In England, the Department for Education has not prescribed an order in which grammar, punctuation and spelling objectives should be covered. Therefore, the order in which children may encounter each Grammar and Spelling Bug unit has been designed to fit flexibly with your own approach to teaching literacy, and to link to your own curriculum planning. (The Independent Reading and Writing section, within the Go in the Teaching Guidance, suggests appropriate text-types for the application of grammatical skills, where relevant.) However, the following suggestions may be used as a guide to the order in which you may wish to work through the sessions. Spelling and phonics Within each year group, the order of the spelling or phonics units should be defined on a class-by-class basis, based upon formative assessment. You may, for example, find it helpful to have a continual focus on common exception words (alongside any phonics and spelling patterns), as accurate application of these in different written contexts is the goal. Grammar and punctuation The concepts behind grammar and punctuation objectives do build upon one another. With this progression in mind, you may wish to introduce the units in the sequence below for each year group. Year 1 Words and Sentences Making Sentences Capitals Sentence Punctuation Pulling Sentences Together Using and Grammatical Terms The Grammatical Terms unit is useful as a tool for reinforcement and revision, or may be used throughout the year alongside the teaching of appropriate skills.
13 Year 2 Past and Present Noun Phrases Conjunctions Types of Sentences Imperative Verbs Apostrophes Commas for Lists The Past and present and Conjunctions units will almost certainly need to be revisited during the year, as their concepts are more complex than may initially be apparent. Lower Key Stage 2 Years 3 and 4 share National Curriculum programmes of study, so the Grammar and Spelling Bug units are the same, allowing for repetition of each. The key to progression will be the application of the above skills in increasingly more challenging written contexts. Formative assessment will be crucial in determining the extent to which the units are repeated in class teaching and in independent work. Nouns and Pronouns Using Adverbials Direct Speech Connecting Clauses Time and Cause Possessive Apostrophes The Present Perfect Tense The Direct Speech units may be usefully re-visited whenever children write narratives. The units on The Present Perfect Tense may not useful in every written form, so you may wish to refer to the text-type suggestions in the Go section of the Teaching Guidance.
14 Upper Key Stage 2 Years 5 and 6 share National Curriculum programmes of study, so the Grammar and Spelling Bug units are the same, allowing for repetition of each. The key to progression will be the application of the above skills in increasingly more challenging written contexts. Formative assessment will be crucial in determining the extent to which the units are repeated in class teaching and in independent work. Expanding Noun Phrases Hyphens Degrees of Possibility Relative Clauses Parenthesis Commas for Clarity Perfect Verb Forms Colons, Semi-colons and Dashes The Passive Voice Formal Language Bullet Points Grammatical Terms The Commas for Clarity unit will almost certainly need to be revisited during the year, as its concepts are more complex than may initially be apparent. The unit on Bullet Points may be introduced usefully during the teaching of appropriate non-fiction texts. The Grammatical Terms unit is useful as a tool for reinforcement and revision, or may be used throughout the year alongside the teaching of appropriate skills. Reinforcing and revisiting Children in all year groups are expected to have attained the targets for the previous years programmes of study. If formative assessments highlight gaps in knowledge, it may therefore be helpful to revisit units from previous year groups.
15 Reviewing Grammar and Spelling Bug Assessment There is a wealth of assessment material and opportunity to gather evidence of attainment in Grammar and Spelling Bug, as has been outlined in the previous sections. This section pulls together all of that information, to allow you to make the most of all the assessment opportunities Grammar and Spelling Bug has to offer. The Diagnostic Check Diagnostic Checks are short activities to be used before a unit is taught, to determine children s understanding of the prior knowledge each unit requires. They can be used orally or printed off for children to complete. The Summative Assessment Summative Assessments are designed to provide evidence of whether a child has mastered the composite skills for each National Curriculum objective and is on track to meet age-related expectations. Carrying out these assessments will also help you to identify areas that require further work. Mini-Writes Mini-Writes allow you to assess children s accuracy in the contextual application of skills. They may also be used as opportunities for peer evaluation and support, as part of the learning process. Game Sequences Children s scores in the Game Sequences record data about pupil performance. Here you can view information on which units and games your pupils have accessed, their progress through them, and their scores for completed games.