AG2 are (copula or auxiliary) with coordinated subject noun phrases
Intervention Outline
You will need:
- Two small ovals, one large oval, diamonds (is/am/are), semicircle, cloud, hexagon.
- Small toys , action pictures.
- Red / blue pens.
App settings: Turn on plurals, plural present tense diamond and coordinated nouns in oval.
NB Check the child can use are with plural nouns (AG 1 &2).
If so, continue with Step 1
If not, complete AG 1 & 2 .
For steps 1-3, you could use these PowerPoint slides
1. Using small ovals lay out two sentences: “The cat is brown. The dog is brown.” Underline cat and dog with a single red line and ‘is’ with a single blue line. (Only colour code the parts of the sentence you are focussing on). Agree with child that both the cat and the dog are brown. Pick up the two small ovals and place them inside a large oval and write ‘and’ between them. Ask the child to count the red lines = 2 . Teach that these ‘add up’ to more than one and need a ‘more than one’ diamond word, i.e. ‘are’.
Repeat with multiple examples.
2. Repeat step 1 with other sentence types
a) prepositional phrase e.g. “The cat and the dog are on the mat”; oval – diamond –semicircle.
b) verb phrase e.g. “Three cats and the dog are sleeping”; oval – diamond – hexagon.
Repeat with multiple examples of a plural noun phrase in the oval e.g. “Mum and Dad are…”
3. Repeat with combinations of singular and plural nouns in the oval
e.g. “The cats and the dog are…”
“Jim and his dog…”
- Practice: You could practise by dragging and dropping the correct shape in – see here.
- Reducing shapes: use fewer and fewer shapes/lines, but then bring back to check responses.
- Monitoring: SLT start to make “errors”, get student to spot and correct them
- Using shape templates as an aid
- Without the templates
Complete written error detection written practice as appropriate written plural error detection exercise
- Consolidation:
- At the end of each session, review verbs covered in previous sessions
- start to mix up sentences to use a range of subjects, copulas, auxiliaries and verbs consecutively.
- Complete written cloze exercises if appropriate mixed present agreement cloze
- Generalisation: Watch video clips and ask the student to create a running commentary. Look at picture books and say What is happening now? NB If you ask ‘what are the boys doing now’ an acceptable response would be just ‘running’. Give prompts that require a full Subject auxiliary Verbing sentence.
Additional Resources

