Hyphens in Prefixed Words
PROCEDURALUse hyphens to avoid ambiguity in compound modifiers and prefixed words, distinguishing between meanings that change based on hyphen placement
Mastery Evidence
- Distinguish between 'man eating shark' and 'man-eating shark' by adding or removing hyphens
- Use hyphens with prefixes to clarify meaning such as 'recover' versus 're-cover'
- Apply hyphens correctly in compound adjectives before nouns such as 'well-known author'
Assessment Prompt
“Can [child] explain why "a man-eating shark" and "a man eating shark" mean completely different things — and use a hyphen correctly in their own writing to avoid that kind of confusion?”
Curriculum Standards2 alignments
Eng.App2.Y6.Punc.4The national curriculum in EnglandHow hyphens can be used to avoid ambiguity [for example, man eating shark versus man-eating shark, or recover versus re-cover]
Eng.UKS2.Write.VGP.2bThe national curriculum in EnglandIndicate grammatical and other features by using hyphens to avoid ambiguity.
Prerequisites2
- Compound WordshardAges 5—8
- Expanded noun phrasessoftAges 6—7
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- Compound Words hard
Using hyphens in compound modifiers builds on understanding how two component words can combine to create a single compound word
- Defining Words soft
Defining words by attributes supports choosing descriptive adjectives for noun phrases
- How Many in Total? soft
Sorting and categorising objects uses the same counting/cardinality skills from maths
- One-to-one counting hard
Cardinality principle builds on one-to-one correspondence — you must count correctly to know the last number tells 'how many'
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