✕

Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

What are modal verbs?

What are modal verbs?
Modal verbs indicate possibility, obligation or ability. Find out how your child will be taught about modal verbs in grammar lessons in KS2 and the kinds of activities they might be asked to complete in the primary-school classroom.

What are modal verbs?

A modal verb is a special type of verb.

Modal verbs change or affect other verbs in a sentence. They are used to show the level of possibility, indicate ability, show obligation or give permission. Modal verbs behave differently to ‘ordinary’ verbs.

The most common modal verbs are:

  • will
  • would
  • should
  • could
  • may
  • can
  • shall
  • ought to
  • must
  • might

Modal verbs explained

Possibility
Modal verbs can be used when we want to show how likely something is to happen. For example:

It might rain tomorrow.
"I shall go to the ball!" said Cinderella.
We will have fish and chips for tea.

Ability
Modal verbs can be used when we want to show a skill or someone's ability to do something. For example:

Jack can sing.
We could walk.

Obligation and advice
Modal verbs can be used to state when something is necessary/compulsory, to give an instruction or to give advice. For example:

You must tidy your room.
She ought to help with the shopping.
James should cook the dinner tonight.

Permission
Modal verbs are used to give or ask for permission for an activity. For example:

You may have another biscuit.
You can get down from the table now.
Could I go to the toilet, please?
 

What and how are children taught about modal verbs in primary school?

As of September 2014 the national curriculum requires children to be taught grammar more explicitly.

Children will be familiar with words such as will, would, should, could, can, may, might, shall, must and ought to in KS1 and lower KS2 through reading and most likely use them in their writing. However, in Year 5 children will be formally taught the grammatical term modal verb.

In Year 5 children should be able to identify modal verbs in texts when reading and will be shown the different effects of using modal verbs in their writing via teacher modelling and they will most likely be given exercises or short writing tasks to complete. Children may be asked to highlight modal verbs in a text, discuss the effect of a modal verb on a sentence when reading, and choose a modal verb to complete a sentence or change a modal verb to alter a sentence in a writing task.