As teachers know, a crazed and obsessive meteorite-like thing hit schools in around 2010 and schools have never been the same since. It was called Gove. One thing that Gove did was switch the idea of writing from being something that is 'about' something, to being 'how you write'. However, the 'how you write' was a paraphernalia of old-style grammar, much of it altered and refined by people over the years, though these alterations and refinements are mostly ignored by this SATs 'grammar'. There are also parts of the 'grammar' curriculum that aren't anyone's definition of 'grammar' eg the requirement to answer questions about 'synonyms' (which serious linguists think don't exist, anyway!). This is all part of the Gove that hit Year 6 children in schools in England.
One result of this was the government put up examples of 'good writing' that children had done, on their Gove.uk website. (Sorry, gov.uk website). These are analysed (in terms of this old grammar) so that teachers can tell their pupils what to include in their writing. As I said, it's about 'how' to write, not about 'what to write'. The examples below come from 'Teacher assessment exemplification: end of key stage 2' One problem, the people who've done the analysis of these examples (presumably not Gove as the Gove landed and then disappeared according to that old government principle of Dump and Run - see David Cameron for another example) is that they get the terms wrong! They've labelled the bits of sentences (that they think help children write, and got the terms (as according to them) wrong. I'm not bothered but I just happen to know the terms because I was taught them back in the Stone Age when I was at school and have also kept up with what they teach Year 6 children now.
So here we go: take a look at this (below). However, please don't 'correct' the spelling in the writing they're analysing. That's from the child's own writing.
In short, what they call a 'subordinate clause' is not, according to their own terminology, a 'subordinate clause'. What it is, can be much disputed of course! Some call these things an 'adjectival phrase', or an 'adverbial phrase' or a 'participial phrase' depending on which side of the moon, you can see, on that particular night.
What's really sad about this is that for all the footnotes and comments littered all over the page analysing Morgan's piece of writing, there isn't a single comment that says whether the writing is exciting, or intriguing, or interesting or full of tension or some such. In other words, a child gets the message that writing isn't about writing something that we care about emotionally, culturally or socially in any way. It's about 'getting it right' according to a scheme of 'rightness' that the people forcing this stuff on to us, can't even get 'right' themselves. [If you find these too small to read, just click on them!]
