Topic: KS3

Relevant for UK National Curriculum Key Stage 3.

Ambiguity and headlines

Newspaper headlines often compress sequences of actions into very compact structures. Sometimes the meaning becomes ambiguous as a result.

Expanding headlines

Exploring the grammar of newspaper headlines

Newspaper headlines are often not full sentences, but they are nevertheless quite easy to make sense of. In this starter, students will use their implicit knowledge of grammar to expand newspaper headlines into complete sentences, and then explicitly analyse what they've done. The Activity slide show appears in the menu entitled 'This Unit' in the upper right corner of this page. In the Activity slide show, five example headlines are presented. Students should do the following:

Identify the pronouns

Click on the words that you think are pronouns to select or deselect them.

Identify the prepositions

Find the prepositions in a range of examples

Click on the words that you think are prepositions to select or deselect them.

Identify the adverbs

Click on the words that you think are adverbs to select or deselect them.

Identify the verbs

Click on the words that you think are verbs to select or deselect them.

Identify the adjectives

Click on the words that you think are adjectives to select or deselect them.

Identify the nouns

Click on the words that you think are nouns. You can deselect them by clicking on them again.

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