Help levelling writing - photos attached.

[writingblues]

I've posted before and received some very helpful advice regarding DDs writing. Despite doing well she has always found the mechanics of writing hard and recently became upset again that the very high achieving DCs in her class can write so much more quickly than her.

As she has continued to dislike writing at home I haven't pushed her to practice but I finally encouraged her to write a story again. I was so pleased because I think her handwriting has come on wonderfully, she wrote the second piece in about half the time of the first and it's got a good chunk more words but takes less room.

Whilst the mechanics of her writing is markedly better, I am wondering if this story is at a lower 'level' than the first because it has less interesting openings and quite a few short sentences / sentences beginning with 'and' and some missing / incorrect punctuation.

Am I correct to see it that way and if the mechanics are now sorted to encourage DD to spend a little time working on interesting sentences and expanding them?

Photos 1 and 2 should be of the first story, 3 of the second.

Here's the story if you can't /don't have time to view photos, spelling punctuation as written:

The escape of Patch the bunny

Once upon a lovely time there lived a bunny who was owned by a little girl named Emily and she was a good girl. One lovely morning Emily had finished feeding her bunny Patch but she had left the door open. So what Patch did was to go out of the door! On her jouney she hopped on a piece of metal and it made a big BANG! Now, there was a fox sleeping in the wood and the sound woke him. He was feeling hungry. "I wonder what that sound was" said the fox. And came out of the wood. The fox saw the bunny and growled "grrrr". The bunny said "eek". But the owner came looking for Patch. She found Patch and said to the fox "shoo away silly fox" and the fox ran away. Emily ran home with Patch in her arms. She put her back in her cage. "I have lernt that I should always shut the cage door" said Emily.

[mrsgirond]

Technically good in terms of punctuation and grammar. Some varied openers but in terms of composition perhaps more complex sentences with embedded or drop in clauses would lift it. Love the continuous cursive handwriting. Some noun phrases would lift the level too. off the top of my head would have it as 2b/2a.

[clairewitchproject]

Is she 6 1/2? If so...her 5 1/2 year old handwriting (the first sample) is considerably better than my 12 year old's.

[mrsgirond]

When giving a piece of work a level handwriting and spelling carry very little weight. The greater weight is given to composition and effect with grammar and punctuation coming next.

[workatemylife]

My DD sounds the same - she loves making up stories, and she likes the 'handwriting' at school, but doesn't seem to like putting the two together to write a story down! From what I saw of her work last term, she has quite similar handwriting, and the use of punctuation looks similar as well. DD writes slightly longer sentences, and I think spells more accurately, but I don't think she is as imaginative in what she writes. Perhaps for this reason, she is a level 2c at the moment. But I am no expert - I've seen a few of these threads and was just struck by how familiar some of your message seemed! These things are ever so lovely to read.

[Playfortoday]

Blimey is she really only just 6? Her writing looks amazingly advanced to me. My child is at a 3 allegedly and I don't think much different. Is she in y1? My y1 child (a different one) still has enormous unjoined up writing that fails to distinguish between tall and short letters.

[writingblues]

Thanks for replies everyone and yes she really is just turned 6.

Clairewitchproject - don't worry, I was told in secondary school that I had writing like a paralysed spider. TBF it was pretty bad, but it's fine now

As I said lots of really high, level 3, achievers in her class so I will keep on telling her that she's doing great even if it she can't see that in class.

[juniper44]

I'd say it's a 2a but that's without looking at any assessment grids etc.

It's a lovely piece of writing, and very good for a Year 1 child. She obviously enjoys writing, and that's the main thing.

The reasons I wouldn't call it a 3 is because the sentences are quite simplistic. She hasn't played around with interesting openers, however they're not all 'the' or 'he'. She has some connectives (so, then and and) but I'd want more for a level 3.
Punctuation wise, she has used speech marks, which is good, and she's tried to use an ellipsis. There are no question marks or exclamation marks and her full stops are inconsistent.

[writingblues]

Thank you juniper44 for taking the time to give me helpful feedback.

The photos are maybe lacking in detail but both pieces have exclamation marks, the first has a question mark and I can't spot any missing full stops, although that might be because I already know they are there if you know what I mean.

The second piece is missing a question mark and should have the punctuation to the left of the speech marks, but she has started to use commas which she wasn't doing before.

I wil encourage her to construct sentences of greater complexity, however she sometimes gets in a muddle when trying to say things. Would that impact her writing? It's most noticible when she's tired - she says the right words in the wrong order or maybe with key words missing. She also gets stuck saying little phrases again and again as she tries to get her thought out, a bit like a stutter.

Thinking about it this was the first time she's written at home without saying the sentences out loud first. Should I encourage her to speak her sentences before writing them?