Noun phrase expansion using the Sentence Toolkit

This activity is to help children understand how to develop a noun phrase and add more information for their reader.  The tools mentioned come from the Sentence Toolkit.

Use pictures which enable children to describe different people, objects or places with an element of choice about the description.  Many picture books will have illustrations that can be used for this purpose, so description can be linked to the unit you are teaching, e.g. ‘Tell me a Dragon’, by Jackie Morris.

Look at the picture and model describing something in it.  Start off by showing the children the page and telling them which person or noun you are going to describe, using just ‘the’ + main noun, eg the dragon.  Ask children to give you words that describe the picture.  After collection, explain that these are adjectives, which we use to paint in detail.   Model using the paintbrush.  Point out the tape measure from the toolkit display and explain that you can say more about the noun to add detail for the reader or to be more precise.  Model choosing adjectives to put before the main noun and, as you make your noun phrase larger, expand the tape measure.

Depending on what the children need to develop, you could use this activity to model the following elements:

• Decide on adjectives of colour, size, shape, texture, etc. and make choices about the order you are going to say these.
• Add adjectives which describe attributes, e.g. scaly, horned.
• Choose a determiner other than ‘the’ to provide variation, e.g. this, that, several, each, one, my.
• Choose adverbs to describe how much the adjective applies, e.g. extremely, very, quite, rather.
• Decide where you need to put commas in a list of adjectives.  You can use the comma screwdriver from the Sentence Toolkit for this.