“What… what does that mean?” We’ve all had similar thoughts when helping children with school work. Perhaps we’ve forgotten a key concept from our far-distant school days, or it may be that teaching techniques are radically different from in ‘our day’. Certainly, I don’t recall learning about phonics, numicons and split digraphs when I was a school boy.
We’ve put together the guide below to help parents get their heads around common words and concepts encountered in the modern classroom. In some cases, we’ve given a brief explanation of the term, but all entries link off to a more in-depth guide.
We hope you find it useful if you’re having to do more homeschooling than usual during lockdown.
English And Grammar
Adverbs: Words that modify a verb, like quickly, slowly and helpfully. View our guide to adverbs.
Compound Sentence: A sentence formed from two or more ideas, usually linked by conjugations. View our guide to compound sentences.
Conjugations: a word that connects, links or joins two parts of a sentence or phrase together, like ‘because’, or ‘and’. View our guide to conjugations.
Determiners: Words connected to nouns that give more information, such as ‘these’ ‘their’ ‘my’ ‘your’ or ‘tomorrow’s’ (all of which could be determiners of a noun like ‘apples’). View our guide to determiners.
Ellipsis: Those three dots, and how to use them. View our guide to ellipsis.
Figurative Language: Phrases like ‘couch potato’ and ‘early bird’. View our guide to figurative language.
Fronted Adverbials: Scene-setting phrases at the start of sentences, often giving information about time, frequency, location or degree. E.g. “Every once in a while, I like to read sites other than Kidadl”, where “every once in a while” is the fronted adverbial. View our guide to fronted adverbials.
Homophones: Words that sound the same but have different meanings and/or spellings. For example, they’re, their and there. View our guide to homophones.
Hyphens: View our guide to hyphens.
Idioms: Figurative saying that aren’t literally true but are universally understood, like raining cats and dogs, or giving someone the cold shoulder. View our guide to idioms.
Imperative Verbs: Verbs that give a command or order, like fetch, give, tidy, wash, etc. View our guide to imperative verbs.
Modal Verbs: Verbs that don’t describe an action, used alongside standard verbs, like will/would, shall/should, may/might. View our guide to modal verbs.
Multi-Clause Sentences: Sentences with more than one verb/clause, including subordinate clauses. View our guide to multi-clause sentences.
Noun Phrases: Any short phrase without a verb (e.g. “the big house on the corner”. View our guide to noun phrases.
Parentheses: Phrases set aside (a bit like this) from the main sentence. View our guide to parentheses.
Passive Voice: “The rabbit was being chased by Peter” as in passive voice. Peter chased the rabbit” is the active voice. Our guide explains the difference, and the pros and cons of using passive voice. View our guide to passive voice.
Persuasive Writing: Any writing that tries to convince the reader of a viewpoint. This includes adverts. View our guide to persuasive writing.
Phonics Phrases: The sounds that make up words, learned from the earliest days of school. View our guide to phonics phrases.
Possessive Apostrophe: View our guide to possessive apostrophes.
Prepositions: A short word which is used to refer to when something happened, or where something is in relation to something else (e.g. since, between, during). View our guide to prepositions.
Present Perfect Tense: When you combine present tense with a form of the past tense, for example “She has worked at the school for a very long time.” View our guide to the present perfect tense.
Relative Pronouns. Words that refer back to a noun which has already been used, and introduce a subordinate clause that gives more information about the noun. For example, “Holly had a new toy, which was plastic”, where “which” is the relative pronoun. View our guide to relative pronouns.
Split Digraphs: Usually, a pair of vowels split by a consonant, such as 'a–e', 'e–e', 'i–e', 'o–e' and 'u–e', where the dash represents a consonant. View our guide to split digraphs.
Synonyms And Antonyms: Words that have similar or opposite meaning, respectively. View our guide to synonyms and antonyms.
Area And Perimeter: View our guide to area and perimeter.
BODMAS: An acronym to help remember the 'order of operations'. BODMAS stands for Brackets, Orders, Division/Multiplication, Addition/Subtraction. View our guide to BODMAS.
Counting On Maths: When adding two (or more) numbers, start with the largest and ‘count on’ the next number. An early maths technique. View our guide to counting on maths.
Numicons: Brightly coloured shapes representing the numbers 1 to 10, used in the first year of school. View our guide to numicons.
Partitioning Numbers. A way of computing that breaks numbers up into simpler numbers. For example, 89 + 37 = 126 could be partitioned into 80 + 9 + 30 + 7. View our guide to partitioning numbers.
Proportion And Ratio: View our guide to proportion and ratio.
Bachelor of Science specializing in Chemistry, Master of Research specializing in Biomolecular Sciences
Matt BrownBachelor of Science specializing in Chemistry, Master of Research specializing in Biomolecular Sciences
With a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry and a Master's in Residency specializing in Biomolecular Sciences and roots in the Midlands, Matt has developed a passion for writing about London. As a former editor and prolific contributor to Londonist.com, he has authored several books exploring the city's hidden gems. In addition to his work, Matt enjoys spending time with his two preschool-aged children.
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