Spelling and Grammar in Hamilton English

Hamilton's English writers have put their pedagogical heads together to devise grammar units that make teaching and learning grammar fun instead of painful. The grammar is contextualised so that children understand and have motivations to use new grammatical forms in real writing. The teaching is a world away from the dry, and frankly unsuccessful, worksheet approach.

All of Hamilton's flexible English blocks include age-appropriate SPAG-focussed units. These units can be taught as stand-alone teaching or as part of the whole block.

Each unit covers one or two grammar objectives usually over three days' teaching. The grammar content is presented in the context of a high-quality text. Children's activities engage with the grammar drawn out of the text, so that it is not just an abstract notion, but a meaningful aspect of reading. The third session gets the children writing, using ideas from the content or the form of the unit text. Children have a chance to use the unit's grammar to enhance their own expression, giving context and purpose to the grammar objectives.

Each Hamilton block starts with a unit that we call the 'Core' or the heart of the block. These are useful for introducing children to the key texts that will be used in other units, including SPAG ones, and sometimes they have their own SPAG focus. They are a great way to slip SPAG in under the radar. Children develop spoken language and comprehension skills, and grammar rides in on their coattails.

To help convey the grammar and show children a variety of progressive examples, we have constructed dynamic PowerPoint slide presentations for many of these SPAG units, and some of the Core unit as well. These are ready-to-use on your interactive whiteboard.

Hamilton's exercises provide clear progression in grammar, punctuation and spelling over the six years from Year 1 through to Year 6. Teachers can be confident that they are covering the required spelling, grammar and punctuation sections of the National Curriculum for England – without allowing these aspects to dominate, or reduce the exciting and stimulating aspects of English.

• Year 1 sentence punctuation in the context of giving instructions to a pigeon
• Year 2 conjunctions including coordinating and subordinating conjunctions
• Year 3 prepositions and adverbs to add information
• Year 4 fronted adverbials in the context of training your dragon
• Year 5 relative clauses in the context of Goth Girl
• Year 6 pronouns and determiners for cohesion

Importantly, the unit's teaching resources include exercises for the children to practise the grammar presented in the lesson and on the slides. These exercises are crucial, and can be found in the unit planning that supports the presentations.

• Instructions and Explanations for Year 1 (unit 2)
• Traditional Tales and Fables for Year 2 (unit 5)
• Reports for Year 3 (unit 4)
• Fantasy for Year 4 (unit 5)
• Fantasy for Year 5 (unit 1)
• Stories that Raise Issues for Year 6 (unit 1)