disappointing evidence of DD's writing in year 1

[Bronte]

I had the chance to look at her writing book at parents evening and was saddened to see little evidence where she had been challenged to use her imagination.
There were sheets which analysed a traditional story, she had regurgitated a bit of the 3 little pigs, she had made "notes" about the beginning and middle of a traditional story. Most bizarrely, she had drawn pictures of things she had done on a school trip and under each one had written the dreaded connective words. Just a word though, not a sentence. As you may tell I am very opposed to this kind of deconstructed teaching.
Back to my original point. Why haven't they had the opportunity to invent their own story and actually DO writing instead of writing about writing?
Is this typical? I hope not.

[PassTheTwiglets]

Maybe she'll be going on to do that? DD did the exact same work on trad tales but they then went on to write their own.

[compo]

She's only little!

[LindaLaPlumeDeMaTente]

IME there are not many ops for children to do stories completely from scrartch and in a lot of cases children would find that hard. They need to learn the story templates and they get these from traditional tales

The written product is not always a good indication of what your daughter learnt from this lesson.

They may have done a lot of oral storytelling or stories in drama

[cory]

There is time. Seriously there is.

[Goblinchild]

A list of connectives would indicate to me that she'd been expected to complete the sentence with her own words and hadn't.
Does she make up stories and use extended narrative orally at home?

[Bonsoir]

If you want to encourage your DD to do creative writing, buy her a lovely plain page exercise book and a lovely pencil and tell her it is her "Secret Book" and invite her to write secrets, and to illustrate them, in the book.

You might have to give her hints as to what her first "secrets" are, but she'll quickly catch on.

[2pinkmonkeys]

dd also year 1 did cinderella and wrote a bit about the stry and the charictors in the story, but then went on the write their own ending to it. They do seem to do quite a bit of creative writing whcih dd loves. have they been doing creative writing and then using it for dispalys so its not in their books?

if you want her to be more creative as others have said then encourage her at home. she is only young though and some children at this age arnt confident enuogh in their own abilities to write creatively.

[Bronte]

Nice idea Bonsoir.
Compo. "She's only little" . Quite. So why is she learning about connectives and making notes?
Linda. I will find out about the oral and drama input. I always do loads of this in my literacy teaching but then feed it into story writing. The children love writing their stories down in minature "books" and illustrating them. they read them to children in reception and clamour to take them home.

Yes, she can write down little stories at home.

[mrz]

We use "Big Talk" to develop writing with the younger children on the premise that if they can't say it they won't be able to write it. So we do lots of storytelling with the children developing the ideas and an adult scribing. The children then use the model to create their own story and do write creatively.

[moondog]

That's the madness of contemporary teaching in Britain.
I have little respect for it after years seeing the damage it wreaks and have come to the conclusion that most children leanr in spite of how they are taught, not because of it.

That means that most of those who struggle will struggle more and more until it reaches crisis point.
Then a disparate army of well meaning but mainly ineffectual 'outreach professionals' will drop in (disturbing the class in the process) to add their two penn'orth.

I sit with my six year old every night of the year and ensure that he writes something about his day. He then copies it out a few times to ensure his actuall orthographic skills are addressed and not just his ability to hinge together a written narrative.

It works.

[moondog]

And in the process, I expect him to spell properly-unlike my good self.

[mrz]

www.sentenceplay.co.uk/Games.htm I use the games here with my class - I give a point for remembering a capital to start the sentence another for a full stop (or appropriate punctuation) another for a sentence that makes sense and a bonus if everything is correct
You could also try coloured pens (sparkly gel pens appeal) and each sentence is written in a new colour