Lesson video

Hi everyone my name is Miss Smith, and welcome to lesson eight of our unit, the Golden Compass.

In today's lesson we are going to be writing prepositional phrases.

So when you are ready, let's get started.

In our lesson today we are going to begin with some sentence level work and correct sentence, before we look at prepositional phrases and remind ourselves of the technical grammar involved in writing a prepositional phrase.

And then we'll finally write some phrases for our own writing in this unit.

Things that you need in today's lesson, you will need something to write on, something to write with, and as always, you need to make sure that your brain is switched on and ready to learn.

So let's start by correcting a sentence.

So in my sentence, and I'll read it in just a second, I wonder what you can spot any mistakes.

As the street continued to meander the children were eventually led by wilful lyra to the black, iron gates of her dear college, Jordan.

Can you spot the mistakes in my sentence? Pause the video and have a look.

Well done if you have found anything missing or was incorrect in my sentence.

I might give you a couple of clues to help you keep looking.

Think about comma rules, think about capital letters.

Okay we're going to have a look together now so if we think about comma rules first of all in this sentence.

We need a comma after the word meander.

Mmm.

I would think why do I need a comma after the word meander.

I'm going to read the sentence one more time, we need to be thinking, what the rule is in me having a comma after the word meander.

As the street continued to meander comma the children were eventually led by wilful lyra to the black, iron gates of her dear college Jordan.

We need a comma because the comma separates two clauses in a complex sentence.

Separates the subordinate clause and the main clause.

Now subordinate clause makes needs the main clause.

The main clause already makes sense on its own.

So wonder which part of this sentence makes sense on its own.

That's right it's the second part.

The first part as the street continued to meander is the subordinate clause.

Second part, the children were eventually led by wilful lyra to the black, iron gates of her dear college Jordan.

That's our main clause it makes sense on its own.

Did you spot where the capital letters is needed? It's for our proper noun lyra and it's so easy to miss capital letter for a proper noun.

So just make sure you are checking your writing that your proper nouns or names have capital letters.

One final thing you might notice at the end of the sentence is a really, really high level piece of punctuation a dash.

We've got as at the black, iron gates of her dear college dash Jordan.

Can you name another punctuation mark that could replace be swapped in, in place of the dash? If you can remember, how do you know you can use that piece of punctuation there? So can see next to the word why you've got a colon you can replace the dash with a colon, both of those pieces of punctuation are used and the information after that piece of punctuation clarifies something in our main clause in this example gives us the name of the college which is Jordan.

Well done if you you've you remembered that colon could replace a dash.

Okay so let's have a look first of all at prepositions.

Prepositions indicate position or direction.

Here's some examples of prepositions, under, towards it's a direction between another position word.

These are prepositions.

Prepositions help us to understand the relationship between the subject in the sentence and the object in the sentence.

We've got two examples here: The girl walked across the road.

The girl is the subject in our sentence and the object is the road.

Across is our preposition.

So helps us to understand the direction the girl is travelling in across the road, when she's walking.

In the second example: we have Lyra walked behind Billy.

Lyra is doing the walking, she's our subject and Billy is our object.

Behind is our preposition.

So in our first example our object is not moving, it's inanimate and in our second example the object is another person because it's possible to walk behind or between two people.

Okay so let's just think then about prepositions and of the words at the bottom of the screen which of the words would you classify as a preposition and which are not a preposition.

Pause and sort those into the right box, now.

Okay let's have a look.

So the prepositions from the list we have against, among, beside and towards and there were two words that were not prepositions.

The first was Lyra.

Lyra is a proper noun, the na somebody's name.

And the second majestic.

Majestic is a is an adjective.

So now let's think about prepositional phrases.

A prepositional phrase includes a preposition, a noun and sometimes an adjective.

We've got two examples here, the first She sat under the tree.

So our phrase is underlined under the tree is our prepositional phrase.

Under our preposition, telling us the position, where she is sitting and the noun is tree.

There is not an adjective in that sentence.

In the second example, we've got, She sat under the leafy tree.

And so in that phrase, under the leafy tree, we have an adjective that describes our noun, the tree.

Remember a phrase does not contain a verb, so these are examples our underlined parts of the sentence, are examples of phrases.

So ba big question again, what is the difference between a phrase and a clause? Can you remember? That's right.

A phrase does not contain a verb.

A prepositional phrase then is a type of adverbial phrase.

So here in this example, we have she found it behind the sofa.

We've got our preposition, behind and our noun sofa.

And adverbial phrases don't contain verbs and they also indicate how, where, something's located or how something happened.

In this sentence, it tells us where the founding happened she found it behind the sofa.

Always remembering that really important point that a phrase does not contain a verb.

Okay, final bit of sorting.

Thinking about the phrases or their parts of sentence at the bottom, I'll read them in a second.

Thinking whether they are prepositional phrase or not.

At the bottom, we've got between the narrow walls, walking towards the college, under the historic arches and glistening iron gates.

Can you sort them into each box? And press pause to do that now.

Okay let's have a look.

Between the narrow walls is a prepositional phrase preposition between, noun walls and its got an adjective, narrow.

Glistening iron gates is not a prepositional phrase.

This follows adjective, adjective noun but that pattern we're familiar with in expanded noun phrases.

So glistening iron gates is an expanded noun phrase describes the gates.

We've got walking towards the college, something in maxed that means it is not a phrase but it's a clause and it's the verb walking so walking towards the college is a clause, it's not a prepositional phrase.

And finally, under the historic arches, is a prepositional phrase.

The preposition in the sentence, that's right it's under and then our noun, arches and an adjective, historic.

The is the determinate, it introduces the noun.

So your task today, is to add a prepositional phrase to each section of your plan.

So for our opening scene, where Lyra, Roger and Billy and his friends are running through Oxford to the college.

We want to add a prepositional phrase for each image to the planning that we've already spent time doing.

Remembering that a phrase does not contain a verb.

And it might be a really good idea to add this phrase in a different colour, so that it stands out on your plan.

So here is, a reminder of each points in our opening scene, so that you can pause the video, when you are ready, and complete the task writing the prepositional phrase for each image.

Okay, well done for having a go at writing prepositional phrase for every image of this scene.

I'm going to share some phrases with you now, and as always you might want to add these to your plan as well, so that you've got a really well developed plan called prepositional phrases to use later, in our writing of this scene.

Okay, for the first image, My ideas were through the thick grass, across the vast field, so I included an adjective to describe each noun in my prepositional phrase.

Then I thought over the ancient cobbles and beside the ornate buildings.

These are really going to help when we are trying to do some setting adjective, as well as tell the narrative of this opening scene.

So when Lyra is outside those college gates, I said in front of the iron gates and between the narrow walls.

And then under the stone arch and beside her faithful companion.

Always trying to think of other ways to refer to these characters that are in the scene rather than just using their names every time.

And finally, into the sprawling college and beyond the college walls.

Congratulations that's the end of lesson 8 so reminder of everything you've completed today we worked on sentence, we have work at the beginning, correcting a sentence, before diving into the technicalities of prepositional phrases.

And well done for adding a prepositional phrase for each points in our opening scene.

You should feel so proud of your hard work and effort today adding even more detail to your plans for your opening scene.

Have a great rest of the day.