Using 'and'

Watch this BBC Bitesize video for a recap on how to use conjunctions, remember, the one we're focusing on is 'and'.

Conjunctions are joining words that link together parts of a sentence. The three main coordinating conjunctions are ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘or’.

They can be used to join together two clauses in a sentence. However, the clauses need to make sense on their own. For example:

I had a terrible cold. I still went to work.

You can add the coordinating conjunction ‘and’ in between these causes so the sentence reads:

I had a terrible cold and I still went to school.

Remember though, you can often leave out the subject word in the second coordinating clause. For example:

I had a terrible cold and still went to school.

In this example you can remove the word 'I' from the second coordinating clause.

How can I reinforce 'and' at home?

It isn't easy to find a perfect balance with 'and'; children tend to use it for everything, or not at all! When looking at your child's writing, do you notice that their sentences are short, and that the following sentence is often giving a little more detail? For example, 'Today I went on a walk. It was very warm.' Instead of using a fullstop in-between the two sentences, your child could expand their sentence by linking the two together using 'and' to write 'Today i went on a walk and it was very warm'.

Remember that using 'and' to give a little bit more information at the end of of a sentence (for example, my ball is black and white') is not a conjunction, and is not what we're looking for when encouraging 'and' usage. Rather, we're looking for 'and' to join two sentences together and link ideas. 'My ball is black and white and I can kick it very high'.