Teacher notes for this lesson. Two sides of A4, not for pupils.Mild sheetMedium sheetSpicy sheetAnswers
Teacher notes · not for pupils Punctuation sequence

Pause After the Start

Commas after fronted adverbials

Lesson 10 of 14
Year 4 45 min

Objective

Use a comma after a fronted adverbial, and decide whether a phrase is fronted by testing whether it can move to the end of the sentence.

Board title: Commas after the start  ·  Say it: “When the when, where or how comes first in a sentence, we'll put a comma after it, and test it by moving that part to the end.”

Curriculum

  • Y4: use of commas after fronted adverbials
  • Y4: fronted adverbials, Later that day, I heard the bad news.
  • Y3: expressing time, place and cause using adverbs and prepositions (revisited)
  • Terminology: adverbial · fronted adverbial · comma · clause

Success criteria

  • spot the part that says when, where or how
  • put a comma where the real sentence starts
  • move that part to the end to test it
  • know when an opening word needs no comma

Key vocabulary

adverbial · fronted · comma · clause · when · where · how

Run of the lesson

5 min
Starter: write Suddenly the pot boiled over. and The pot boiled over suddenly. Ask why one needs something and the other does not. Don't resolve it.
10 min
Model the move test with the café: cover the opening part of After lunch, he slept and read what is left, then move the same part to the end and read it again, no comma. Do it three times, ending with Without a word, Nonna took over.
8 min
Season the Sentence, Medium band for two minutes to get them voting, then move up to the Commas after the start level and stay there: First, wash your hands and Later that day, we ate are today's model sentences. Class votes on where the comma goes before you tap.
5 min
Trap and votes: The chef, put the pans away. Try the move test, put the pans away the chef is nonsense, so nothing was fronted and no comma. Four votes with WHY (answers: a-left, b-right, c-right, d-left).
14 min
Worksheet, independent. Circulate on Task 3: the tell is a comma dropped after the first word whatever it is, so make each writer move their opening part to the end aloud; if it will not go, the comma comes out.
3 min
Plenary: two children read a Task 3 sentence twice, fronted then moved to the end, and the class calls the comma in or out. Then the class quiz: why must the comma in Polpetta's The soup, is fresh today go?
On screenSPAGhetti → Season the Sentence → Medium. One screen only; no pupil devices needed. Read the bank before you plan, because the band and the lesson do not line up neatly. Medium is the comma set, level 2 is commas in a list, and it is a good two minutes of warm-up for the habit of asking where a mark belongs, but the items that put the when or the where at the front sit in the band above, in the level called Commas after the start: First, wash your hands · Later that day, we ate · After lunch, he slept · Suddenly, the pot boiled over. Those four are the model sentences for today. Play Medium to settle the class and to get them voting, then move up to that level and stay there. Worth knowing too: the level after it puts commas around a clause, The chef, who was tired, sat down, which is not today's objective, but it is the cleanest way to show that a comma after The chef is not automatically wrong, only wrong on its own. ~8 items in 10 minutes with discussion.
SPAGhetti · Punctuation sequence · Lesson 10 of 14  ·  Teacher notes 1 of 2
Teacher notes · not for pupils Pause After the Start · side 2

On the day

If the tech failsSkip the game entirely. Task 1 is the same content on paper, read the four pairs aloud and vote with thumbs. A stack of sentence strips cut in two, so the opening part can physically be moved to the end and back, does the job better than any screen. The lesson still works.
If they're on devicesLesson code CMMAD (on the worksheet footer) opens the right game, locks the café until 10 items are done, then unlocks it as the reward.

Misconceptions to watch for

A comma after the first word, whatever it is. The chef, put the pans away. They have learnt that sentences sometimes open with a comma and have applied it to the subject. The move test kills it in one go: put the pans away the chef is nonsense, so nothing was fronted, so no comma. Expect this to reappear whenever a sentence opens with a long noun phrase.

The comma follows the adverbial to the end of the sentence. He slept, after lunch. The rule has been remembered as 'adverbials take commas' rather than 'fronted adverbials take commas'. Ask what the comma is marking. At the end there is no join to mark, so nothing is being marked and it goes.

One word is too short to need a comma. Suddenly the pot boiled over. They accept it after a phrase but not after a single adverb, because the pause is smaller when they say it. Length is irrelevant. Suddenly, Later and First take the comma exactly as Later that day does.

The comma placed by ear rather than by structure. Every Friday we scrub the big oven, until it shines. They put it wherever they ran out of breath. Have them read the sentence, then find the opening part with a finger and put the comma at the point where it ends, a decision about structure, not about breathing.

The three sheets

Same four tasks on every sheet, in the same order, with the same look. Only the demand changes. Print the one each child needs; nobody does two.

Mild

Same four tasks as every other sheet, same order, same look, the demand is lower, not the dignity. Shorter passage in Task 2, and in Task 3 a word bank or words to tick, with printed sentence starters. Give it to anyone who needs a way in, and expect them to move up.

Medium

The core sheet. Give this to most of the class. No word bank; in Task 3 pupils choose from a few close options, then use one in a sentence of their own.

Spicy

Same four tasks, more demand, a longer passage with a subtler error, and Task 3 asks for two things at once. Not extra work; harder work. Nobody should be doing Spicy and the Medium sheet.

Adaptive teaching

  • Support: sentence strips cut in two, moved front to end and back, before anything is written. Game on Mild.
  • SEN: gentle mode on; read Task 2 aloud before they edit, covering the opening part with a finger each time.
  • Stretch: Task 3 extension, one sentence that opens with a where part and closes with a when part.
  • EAL: pre-teach adverbial by function, not by name, the words that tell you when, where or how. Many languages front these freely without a comma, so the mark is the new information, not the word order.

Play it

Lesson code CMMAD at playspaghetti.com. The code is printed on the bottom of every pupil sheet with a QR, and Class Quiz in your dashboard opens the plenary quiz for this lesson pre-picked.

SPAGhetti · Punctuation sequence · Lesson 10 of 14  ·  Teacher notes, not for pupils 2 of 2  ·  Ludora