Vary Your Sentence Openers

Year 4 EnglishFronted Adverbials3 pages

About this worksheet

A three-page Year 4 writing task on varying sentence openers. Page 1 has a five-sentence paragraph about a walk in the woods where every sentence starts with Then. Pupils rewrite it using a word bank of six fronted adverbials, including Deep in the woods, Without warning and As the sky darkened. Page 2 asks for a five-sentence paragraph about a storm, with at least three different fronted adverbials, beside a photo of a lightning storm over a village street. The key gives a sample answer for each task. It follows England National Curriculum grammar.

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Curriculum objectives covered

Writing - vocabulary, grammar and punctuation

โ€œusing fronted adverbialsโ€

Task 1 replaces five repeated Then openers, and Task 2 needs at least three different fronted adverbials.

Writing - vocabulary, grammar and punctuation

โ€œusing commas after fronted adverbialsโ€

Both tasks remind pupils to put a comma after each adverbial, and the key marks every one.

What's inside this worksheet

A Trip to the Woods

A boxed paragraph with a photo of two children on a woodland path, a word bank of six adverbials, and eight lines for the rewrite.

The Storm

A prompt to write five sentences about a storm, with ten lines and a photo to set the scene.

Answers

A sample rewrite of the woods paragraph and a sample storm paragraph, each with a note on what to accept.

How teachers use it

Before a story

Read the Then paragraph aloud in a flat voice. Pupils will tell you what is wrong before you ask.

Word bank choices

Not every adverbial suits every sentence. Ask pupils why Carefully fits the tree roots better than Without warning.

Storm writing

Play a short rain or thunder clip while pupils write Task 2, then ask them to underline their fronted adverbials.

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