KS2 English Grammar & Punctuation Syllabus

Here we have provided the syllabus we cover for KS2 Engliish Grammar & Punctuation. If you click on the section you'd like to look at, an example question will appear. You can also try a demo test to get a better understanding of how BOFA works. The syllabus has been taken from the National Curriculum.

Yr 5&6 Code Example	Strand	Description
G1.1	Nouns	Singular, plural, common, proper, concrete, abstract, collective.
G1.2a	Verbs in present and past progressive continuous	To mark actions in progress. Some irregular past tense forms are favoured in British English; in particular, the past participle of ‘to get’ will be considered creditworthy in the test when formed as got rather than gotten.
G1.2c	Modal verbs	To indicate degrees of possibility, might, should, will, must
G1.3	Adjectives	Adjectival phrases-the woman, in the red, shiny dress, is the owner.
G1.4a	Conjunctions - cause	e.g. if, because, although,…
G1.4b	Conjunctions - time & place	expressing time, place and cause using conjunctions (e.g. when, before, after, while, so, because)
G1.5	Pronouns	Pronoun/noun choice to aid cohesion and avoid repetition
G1.5a	Possessive pronouns	Possessive- owning words-my, his, her, yours, its,
G1.5b	Relative pronouns
G1.6a	Adverbs - ily	The use of –ly in Standard English to turn adjectives into adverbsS
G1.6b	Adverbs - time, place & cause	e.g. then, next, soon, therefore,…
G1.6c	Adverbs - degrees of possibility	e.g. perhaps, surely
G1.6d	Adverbials	Using fronted adverbials
G1.7	Prepositions	Expressing time, place and cause using prepositions, [for example, before, after, during, in, because of]
G1.8	Determiners	Use of the forms a or an according to whether the next word begins with a consonant or a vowel
G1.9	Subject and object
G2.1	Statements	how the grammatical patterns in a sentence indicate its function as a statement
G2.2	Questions	How the grammatical patterns in a sentence indicate its function as a question, e.g. the use of question tags. Subject-verb inversion (eg: Is this your favourite?), or the use of do/does if there is no modal or auxiliary verb (eg: Do you like this one?). A correctly punctuated question tag (eg: This is your favourite, isn’t it?)
G2.3	Commands	how the grammatical patterns in a sentence indicate its function as a command
G2.4	Exclamations	how the grammatical patterns in a sentence indicate its function as an exclamation (exclamations starting with what or how, e.g. What a good friend you are!)
G3.1a	Relative clauses	Relative clauses beginning with who, which, where, when, whose, that, or an omitted relative pronoun
G3.1b	Subordinate clauses	Using when, if, that, or because
G3.2a	Noun phrases - description & specification	Expanded noun phrases for description and specification
G3.2b	Noun phrases - adjectives, nouns and preposition phrases	Noun phrases expanded by the addition of modifying adjectives, nouns and preposition phrases
G3.2c	Noun phrases - expanded	Expanded noun phrases to convey complicated information concisely
G3.3	Co-ordinating conjunctions	co-ordination using or, and and but
G3.4	Subordinating conjunctions	subordination using when, if, that and because
G4.1a	Simple past and simple present	simple past tense and simple present tense
G4.1b	Verbs in the perfect form	use of the present perfect form of verbs
G4.1c	Modal verbs	indicating degrees of possibility using modal verbs
G4.1d	Present and past progressive	use of the progressive form of verbs in the present and past tense to mark actions in progress
G4.2	Tense consistency	Correct choice and consistent use of present tense and past tense throughout writing
G4.3	Subjunctive verb forms	recognising subjunctive forms
G4.4	Passive and active	use of the passive to affect the presentation of information in a sentence
G5.1a	Capital letters -names	Using a capital letter for names of people, places, the days of the week, and the personal pronoun ‘I’
G5.1b	Capital letters -sentences	Use of capital letters to demarcate sentences
G5.2	Full stops	full stops to demarcate sentences
G5.3	Question marks	question marks to demarcate sentences
G5.4	Exclamation marks	exclamation marks to demarcate sentences
G5.5	Commas in lists	To separate main and subordinate clauses
G5.6a	Commas to clarify meaning	commas to clarify meaning or avoid ambiguity in writing
G5.6b	Commas after fronted adverbials	A comma is used after a fronted reporting clause (if applicable).
G5.7	Inverted commas	Direct and indirect speech.
G5.8a	Apostrophes - plural possession	Difference between plurals and possessive, plural possession-boys'
G5.8b	Apostrophes - contracted forms	The full contraction must be correctly spelt and the apostrophe correctly placed for the award of the mark.
G5.9	Punctuation for parenthesis	Brackets, dashes or commas to indicate parenthesis
G5.10a	Colons - independent clauses	A colon should always be followed by a lower case letter, unless the word is a proper noun or the pronoun I.
G5.10b	Colons - list	colon to introduce lists
G5.11a	Semi-colons - independent clauses	semi-colon to mark the boundary between independent clauses
G5.11b	Semi-colons - list	semi-colons within lists
G5.12	Single dashes	Use of the dash to mark the boundary between independent clauses
G5.13	Hyphens	How hyphens can be used to avoid ambiguity
G5.14	Bullet points	Punctuation of bullet points to list information
G6.1a	Synonyms	how words are related by meaning as synonyms
G6.1b	Antonyms	how words are related by meaning as antonyms
G6.2a	Prefixes - adjectives	e.g. un- The whole word (ie: the root and the prefix and / or suffix) must be spelt correctly for the award of the mark.
G6.2b	Prefixes - nouns	e.g. super–, anti–, auto–
G6.2c	Prefixes - verbs	e.g. dis–, de–, mis–, over– and re–
G6.3a	Suffixes - adjectives	e.g. –ment, –ness, –ful , –less and –ly
G6.3b	Suffixes - nouns	e.g. –ness, –er. Regular plural noun suffixes –s or –es (e.g. dog, dogs; wish, wishes), including the effects of these suffixes on the meaning of the nouns.
G6.3c	Suffixes - verbs	e.g. –ate, –ise, –ify
G6.4	Word families	Word families based on common words, showing how words are related in form and meaning
G7.1a	Standard English- verb	standard verb forms (e.g. I did / I done, We were / was, He was / were, isn’t / ain’t)
G7.1b	Standard English- pronouns	pronouns (them / those, that / what)
G7.1c	Standard English- adverbs	adverbs using –ly (run quickly / quick and anything / nothing)
G7.2	Formal and informal vocabulary	the dfference between vocabulary typical of informal speech and writing, and vocabulary appropriate for formal speech and writing, e.g. ask for / request
G7.3	Formal and informal structures	the difference between structures typical of informal speech and writing, and structures appropriate for formal speech and writing
G7.4	The subjunctive	recognise vocabulary and structures that are appropriate for formal speech and writing, including subjunctive forms