Big Dave gets to grips with pronouns.
Pronouns…
Pronouns.
A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun or noun phrase. You probably use them every day without realising it. ‘Me’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘we’. Pronouns.
This is Dave…
Dave:
Hello!
‘Dave is a crane operator.’ If we wanted, we could instead say ‘He is a crane operator’, because ‘he’ is a pronoun that replaces the proper noun, ‘Dave’. The word a pronoun replaces, in this case, ‘Dave’, is called its antecedent.
‘This house is scheduled for demolition.’ In other words, ‘Waterson House is scheduled for demolition.
'Oh, he’s misjudged that ‘And now the wrecking ball is a big problem because it’s coming all the way back to Dave.’
We can replace ‘the wrecking ball’ and ‘Dave’ with pronouns. ‘And now ‘it’ is a big problem because ‘it’ is coming all the way back to ‘him’.'
Dave is scared. Anyone would be.
‘Anyone’ is an unusual pronoun because it refers to something unspecified. It doesn’t replace anything. It’s an example of a pronoun that has no antecedent, just like Dave is an example of a man who has no luck.
Watch out, here’s that rule again…
A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun or noun phrase.
Should have kept your eye on the ball, eh, Dave?
Pronouns for Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3
Video summary
In this film, Big Dave wreaks havoc during a demolition job and learns the hard way about pronouns.
Teacher Notes
Show students a piece of writing that over-uses pronouns and thus becomes ambiguous.
Work with students to improve the writing to make its meaning explicit.
Explore the use of pronouns in a persuasive speech and comment on their effectiveness.
This clip is useful for teaching English at Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 and the equivalent in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland.
Relative Clauses. video
Mr Selfie gets to grips with relative clauses.
Prefixes and Suffixes. video
Farmer Frank gets to grips with prefixes and suffixes.
Homophones and Homonyms. video
Mr and Mrs Selfie's tanning trip goes awry as they learn the important differences between homophones and homonyms.
