Think / Sequence

Guidance for teachers - Sentence level literacy

Once pupils have a sequenced list of statements within their Think / Sequence section, then, if appropriate, they should be encouraged to improve the quality of their explanation by adding a connective such as "because" , "so" or "although" to the end of each statement so as to link cause and effect ideas to form a series of sentences. Primary and secondary teachers have found that offering a list of connectives on a card as pupils form their Think / Sequence statements can really improve the quality of the written explanation that they produce.

It may also be appropriate to support older KS2 and KS3 pupils to change their simple sentences into complex sentences. Moving the clauses within a sentence and the use of commas can add sophistication and maturity to a pupil's written explanation and can help to describe relationships more accurately and clearly.

Improving the quality of pupils' sentences
Often children will form simple sentences or clauses which contain a subject and a verb. For example
The red car moved the fastest.   We pushed it the hardest

If you encourage them to use a connective (for example the word because) they can link their sentences
The red car was the fastest because we pushed it the hardest.

This sentence now has two clauses – The main clause is "The red car moved the fastest" and the subordinate
clause is "because we pushed it the hardest".

If you move the subordinate clause around in a sentence you can give the relationship a different emphasis.
Put it first – Because we pushed it the hardest, the red car moved the fastest.
Or even in the middle – The red car, which we pushed the hardest, moved the fastest.
Note; - the pupils will need to know that commas are needed between the main and subordinate clauses.