The note
How schools teach it now
This is an 11+ question style rather than a school exercise, but it relies on grammar taught at school: verbs agreeing with their subject (we were, not we was), keeping the tense consistent, 'a' or 'an', and other Standard English forms.
5-minute kitchen-table activity
Write a sentence from a reading book on sticky notes, one word per note, and add one extra word that doesn't fit (such as 'walk' as well as 'walked'). Shuffle them on the table. Your child rebuilds the sentence and hands you the spare. Then they make one for you.
Worked example
These words make a sentence, but one word is not needed. Which one? walked / park / yesterday / the / walk / we / to
- Find the core: who did what? 'We walked'.
- 'yesterday' shows the past, so 'walked' fits and 'walk' doesn't.
- Build it: We walked to the park yesterday.
Answer: walk
Common mistakes to watch for
- Trying to use every word and getting stuck.
- Not jotting the sentence down, so two similar words get muddled.
- Picking a small word like 'the' as spare when the sentence actually needs it.
Encouragement
- Try saying
- “Let's find who is doing what first, then build around it.”
- Rather than
- “It's obvious, just look at it.”