Adjectival phrases You already know how to add adverbial clauses. Hello again. We’re going to continue our work on expanding sentences. My aim today is to show you how to write adjectival phrases.

Adjectives give us more information about a noun. For example, The ginger cat sat on the mat. The adjective ‘ginger’ gives us additional information about the cat.

Sometimes we use a group of words to describe something. This is called an adjectival phrase.

Why isn’t it called an adjectival clause? After all, we had adverbial clauses. Well, a clause is a group of words that contain a verb. A phrase is a group of words which doesn’t. And that’s the difference.

The ‘screwdriver’ is the noun. The verb in the sentence is ‘was’. The words ‘too small’ tell us more about the screwdriver so they act like adjectives. As there is more than one word but no verb, it is a phrase. An adjectival phrase.

As an extension and/or an alternative the pupils could write endings and swap to provide openings.

Plenary Clauses are groups of words with a verb. Phrases are groups of words without a verb. You can provide more information about a noun by adding an adjectival phrase.