Year 3 vocabulary glossary

summarise

To give a short account of the main points of a text, without unnecessary detail.

author's choice

A deliberate decision a writer makes, such as which word or detail to include, and why.

fact

A piece of information that can be checked and proven true.

opinion

A personal view or judgement, which cannot simply be proven true or false.

play script

A text written to be performed, made up mostly of dialogue and stage directions.

paragraph

A section of writing made up of one or more sentences, usually grouped around one main idea.

plan

To organise your ideas before writing, often as notes or a simple structure.

draft

An early version of a piece of writing, before it has been fully checked and improved.

edit

To make changes to a piece of writing to improve its content or ideas.

proofread

To check a piece of writing carefully for spelling, punctuation and grammar errors.

pronoun

A word used in place of a noun, such as 'he', 'she', 'it' or 'they'.

preposition

A word that shows the relationship between a noun and something else, often about place or time, such as 'under', 'before' or 'in'.

conjunction

A word that joins two words, phrases or clauses together, such as 'and', 'but' or 'because'.

determiner

A word placed before a noun to make its reference clear, such as 'the', 'a', or 'this'.

clause

A group of words containing a verb, which can form part of a sentence or a whole sentence on its own.

main clause

A clause that makes complete sense on its own and could stand as a sentence by itself.

subordinate clause

A clause that adds extra information but does not make complete sense on its own — it depends on a main clause.

fronted adverbial

A word or phrase placed at the start of a sentence, before the main clause, to describe when, where or how something happens, followed by a comma, such as 'Later that day, we went home.'

inverted commas

Punctuation marks ( " " ) placed around the exact words someone says.

root word

The most basic form of a word, before any prefixes or suffixes are added, such as 'help' in 'helpful'.

morphology

The study of how words are built up from smaller meaningful parts, such as roots, prefixes and suffixes.

etymology

The study of where a word came from and how its meaning has developed over time.

silent letter

A letter written in a word but not pronounced, such as the 'k' in 'knee'.