irs Words Help v1.1

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IRS Words is designed to help children learn about and construct sentences. To see how the different tools found in the program are designed with this aim in mind it would be useful to have a quick look at sentences and how they are made.

sentence structure

A grammatically correct major (regular) sentence can have the structure;

A sentence can consitst of a subject - typically a noun phrase followed by a predicate - a verb phrase.

noun phrase

A noun phrase consists of an optional determiner (the, a) adjective(s) and a noun.

For example;

The hungry dog ~ The = determiner, hungry = adjective, dog = noun.

The dog ~ The = determiner, dog = noun.

A steak ~ A = determiner, steak = noun.

verb phrase

A verb phrase consists of a verb and a noun phrase.

For example;

eats a steak ~ eats = verb, a steak = noun phrase.

the complete sentence

We can now combine our examples to form the sentence ~ The hungry dog eats a steak.

Looking at the complete sentence you can see how it is important to get the noun phrase and the verb phrase in the correct order;

NP,VP ~ The hungry dog eats steak

rather than,

VP,NP ~ Eats steak the hungry dog

using irs Words

irs Words allows you to use different colour words to show write the sentence using colour coding; nouns ~ red, verbs ~ yellow and adjectives/adverbs ~ green.

Using the drawing tools in irs Words the same sentence would look like this;

irs Words in the classroom

From working with children with a specific language impairment, our experience has shown that the children can annotate their sentences and tell simply from the colours what words they have missed out.

Looking at a simpler version of the sentence (without the adjective) you can see that, when colour coded, the pattern RED, YELLOW, RED (NP,VP) can be seen.

Children can annotate their sentences using irs Words and check by looking at the pattern of colours if their sentence is correct.

By using this colour coding, children find it easier to improve their sentences - adding adjectives for example, as they know (by looking at the colours) where to put additional words. An adjective (green) describes a noun (red) and can be placed in front of the red word.

Along with the ability, in irs Words, of moving and editing their words or phrases, children can build on their work without having to rewrite it.