Grammar terms parents meet in Year 6

The KS2 grammar, punctuation and spelling paper uses terminology most adults were never taught. Here is the short version.

The ones that come up constantly

• Fronted adverbial — a phrase at the start telling when or where: After the storm, the village rebuilt.
• Relative clause — extra detail beginning with who, which or that.
• Modal verb — shows possibility or obligation: could, should, must.
• Subordinate clause — the part that cannot stand alone.
• Determiner — a, an, the, this, some.

How to help without a textbook

Read a sentence and ask your child to tell you the job of each part. Naming the parts matters far less than understanding what they do — the terminology can come second.

A fifteen-minute glossary session once a week keeps the words familiar, which is half the battle in an exam.