It’s the final countdown. I’ve calculated it’s 49 days until I make my great escape from the classroom. There will be many things I will miss, but, as I’m sure many teachers will agree, there seems to be so much more that I will be glad to see the back of.

Number Two – The dreaded Fronted Adverbial

By some miracle, I managed to survive over four decades on this planet without knowing what a fronted adverbial was. As a child who loved to write, I daresay I used them without even realising. And back when I was 11, in the dark ages, they probably didn’t have a name. I didn’t have to endure a dull PowerPoint to explain what they were. I wasn’t forced to highlight a text overloaded with these sentence starters or sort vast quantities of them into categories before going crazy trying to work one into every sentence in a five page story. Nope. I survived without fronted adverbials. In fact, I survived without any formal grammar training, apart from the standard capital letters and full stops. I’m proud to say that all my grammar knowledge came from studying foreign languages at A-Level. And I’m now thankful for that because, without it, I wouldn’t have a clue what all these poor Year 6s are having to regurgitate on a daily basis at the moment.

So what did I do instead? I have the fondest memories of primary school. Writing stories without any learning objective. Stopping all lessons to watch the Mary Rose emerging from the depths of the Solent. Lying on the library floor eating grapes, pretending I was a Roman. Planting lots of trees in all weathers just because we could. Playing British bulldog (before it was banned). Being given a rectangle on the wall for my own artwork. Listening to stories. Raising chicks. And no SATs. No need to know what the dreaded fronted adverbial was. 

Unfortunately, today’s children need to know and I won’t miss forcing this grammar point down their necks, until they want to pull down the Twinkl poster laden with examples and batter me with it! They should be learning skills and qualities they can use throughout their adult life instead of the sweet FA also known as Fronted Adverbials. And don’t get me started on determiners!

Read another thing I won’t miss at The Final Countdown Day 50