English Grammar & Punctuationusually ages 8–9

Fronted Adverbials and Commas

Use fronted adverbials to vary sentence openings and punctuate them with commas

How to tell they’ve got it

Tick these off as you see them — no test required.

Write a sentence beginning with a time adverbial, e.g. 'Later that day, the children ran home'
Rewrite 'The fox crept through the garden at midnight' with the adverbial fronted and a comma placed correctly
Identify and correct a missing comma after a fronted adverbial in 'Before breakfast she packed her bag'

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Try this together

When your child writes a story or a report, do they sometimes start a sentence with a phrase like "After lunch," or "Quietly, the fox moved closer," — and put a comma after that opening phrase?

Where this sits on the map

Stuck here? Check the skills it builds on first. Confident? Here’s what it unlocks.

Builds on

Expressing Time, Place and Causeages 7–8Fronted adverbials build on understanding conjunctions, adverbs, and prepositions to express time and cause

Commas in listsages 6–11Comma after fronted adverbial extends comma usage introduced for lists

Fronted Adverbials and Commasthis skill · ages 8–9

Unlocks

Commas After Introductory Elementsages 10–11Introductory element commas build on fronted adverbials

Commas to avoid ambiguityages 9–10Commas after fronted adverbials is a specific clarity use; this topic generalises that pattern to all ambiguity-prevention contexts

Expanded noun phrases (age 9+)ages 9–10Fronted adverbials often contain prepositional phrases; prior work with adverbials builds awareness of how preposition phrases function in sentences

Linking paragraphs with adverbialsages 9–11Fronted adverbials are one of the key mechanisms for linking paragraphs (e.g. Meanwhile, Later that day)

solid = must come firstdashed = helps

Curriculum alignment

Candidate matches to official curriculum codes — machine-suggested, unreviewed (v0.1).

Show candidate curriculum codes · 1 ACARA · 1 VIC

Australian Curriculum v9 candidate

AC9E5LA09low confidenceYear 5 · Language

use commas to indicate prepositional phrases, and apostrophes where there is multiple possession

Victorian Curriculum 2.0 codes & levels only

VC2E5LA09low confidenceEnglish · Level 5 · Language strand

These are candidate alignments generated by semantic matching — machine-suggested and unreviewed (v0.1), not official or verified mappings. For official curriculum content see australiancurriculum.edu.au, curriculum.nsw.edu.au and f10.vcaa.vic.edu.au. Don’t rely on them for registration or compliance purposes.

Nearby on the map

Abstract nounsages 8–9 Agreement in sentencesages 8–10 Comparatives & Superlativesages 8–9 Expanded noun phrases (age 8+)ages 8–10

All Grammar & Punctuation skills →