Hyphens Story Starters Year 6 Grammar Worksheets

This Year 6 teaching sequence has been designed to support pupils to revisit and recall how hyphens are used. An interesting and engaging image is provided as a visual prompt to stimulate discussion and inspire creative writing.

Pupils will revisit the grammar focus, in this case hyphens, before completing the short writing task, applying what they have learnt.

What is included in this story starters resource pack?

• Grammar challenge
  Hyphens avoid ambiguity in sentences. Here children are given a picture of ‘man eating shark’ (don’t worry, it’s just a child’s toy) and then have to draw a ‘man-eating shark’
• Writing challenge
  Think of another example of a phrase where a hyphen is important for making its meaning clear. You could invent one of your own or use one of the examples given (such as ‘Ruby’s great-aunt’ / ‘Ruby’s great aunt’) and write and illustrate the two versions of your phrase
• Teacher’s notes

What is a hyphen?

A hyphen is a punctuation mark that’s used to join words, or parts of words, together. This then becomes a hyphenated word.

What is a hyphenated word?

Use a hyphen to join words or separate syllables of a single word. Hyphenated words show the reader that two or more elements in a sentence are linked.

When should words be hyphenated?

Hyphenate two or more words when they:

• come before a noun they modify.
• act as a single idea.

Hyphens can be used to avoid ambiguity (eg ‘man eating shark’ versus ‘man-eating shark’, or ‘recover’ versus ‘re-cover’).

Hyphenated words list of examples

check-in, empty-handed, get-together, in-depth, know-it-all, one-sided, runner-up, warm-up

National Curriculum English programme of study links

Using hyphens to avoid ambiguity

This resource is part of the Tricky Grammar Story Starters collection.
View more from this collection

• teacher notes
• activity sheets