Monday 17 September 2007

Yr 6 Prose Style: The Comma before Connectives. Tuesday, 18th September




L.O. To revise the use of the listing comma
To understand that we place a comma before a connective

Do remember that you mustn't use commas where you should use a full-stop. If the words could stand alone as a proper sentence then you need to put a full-stop or a joining word ('and', 'but' etc) in, and not a comma. Another name for these 'joining words' is connectives.

There is a secret to getting commas in the right place: the connective. We use a connective to joing together two sentences that might otherwise stand on their own. For instance, 'Mr Hitchen thinks he is cool' is a sentence. As is, 'He looked stupid trying to dance.' It is when you join these two sentences together that you need a connective. Join the two sentences together and you get this: 'Mr Hitchen is a criminal mastermind, but he looked stupid trying to dance.' Do you notice where I put the comma? That's right - before the connective.

(Strictly speaking, we don't generally put a comma in front of because.)

Click here to have a go at a fun comma game!

Please complete the 'compound sentences' and 'run on' sentences worksheets. Please write the answers in your book, not on the worksheet. Ta!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mr hitchen is a crimianal by giving us homework, but he is not a mastermind.

Year 6 student
P.S. He cannot dance at all!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

criminal...hmm

Anonymous said...

really! He can't dance? When i was at the falcons he was always dancing and singing.