Day 20: A Spreadsheet & A Lamb

Today has mainly been spent creating a spreadsheet for Mrs Pitts to help understand the results of the sample Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling test which is being rolled out to Key Stage 2 this summer.

This examines 39 different aspects of, amazingly, grammar, punctuation and spelling. I’ve added a list of the different elements of the test at the bottom of this post for those who want to quiz themselves on the different elements of the English language.

The paper consists of two parts: one of 46 questions examining grammar and punctuation, and one of 20 spellings which have been omitted from a passage of text.

I’ve attached pdfs below of the sample tests along with answers and a blank version of the spreadsheet.

• Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling 2013-15 – Framework
• Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling Sample – Mark Scheme
• Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling Sample – Paper 1, Answer Booklet
• Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling Sample – Paper 2, Script & Instructions
• Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling Sample – Paper 2, Spelling
• Sample Grammar Test Analysis Sheets

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In other news, we tried something new for tea tonight, band having been abandoned for us with the forecast remaining snow filled.

The meal was Lamb Henry – quite why we need to know his name, I’ve no idea – with sprouts, swede, cauliflower and roast potatoes. Apparently, a Lamb Henry is a whole shoulder joint of lamb. You may think that is a shank, however, that is the portion of meat around the far end of the leg. Our Henry was cooked at 200°C for roughly an hour.

Henry, it has to be said, was delicious.

As well as this, of course, we had a calendar gap at geocaching.com and so found GC441RZ to fill it. I’ll admit, this was our second visit to this location. It had been recently published and we tried to be the first to find it. However, we were beaten to it and so decided to leave it, not write on the log, not log it as found. A slight bit of a tactical move, but we were thinking of the calendar. It would be a cache where we knew the exact location and could go to without much hesitation. When we arrived there, the cache had been placed a good foot higher than it had been before, making it ridiculously hard. It was a good thing I had a pair of drum sticks with which to tease it down to a more manageable height.

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The elements tested within the sample Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling test:

1. Nouns
2. Verbs
3. Adjectives
4. Connectives
5. Pronouns
6. Adverbs
7. Prepositions
8. Articles
9. Statements
10. Questions
11. Commands
12. Clauses
13. Phrases
14. Subordinating Connectives
15. Tense Agreement
16. Subject/Verb Agreement
17. Double Negatives
18. Use of ‘I’ and ‘Me’
19. Contractions
20. Word Meaning
21. Vocabulary In Context
22. Concision/Precision In Vocabulary
23. Synonyms
24. Antonyms
25. Word Groups/Families
26. Prefixes
27. Suffixes
28. Singular & Plural
29. Capital Letters
30. Full Stops
31. Question Marks
32. Exclamation Marks
33. Commas In Lists
34. Commas To Mark Phrases Or Clauses
35. Inverted Commas
36. Apostrophes
37. Brackets
38. Ellipses
39. Colons

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