6-Yr Old's Writing Development

[TheRealCarrieBradshaw]

My eldest son has just turned 6, and is doing fantastic in school, in relation to reading, maths, overall behaviour and attitude and his teacher cannot praise him enough, what I'm a bit concerned about is his writing and wondering what the quality of this should possibly be, at his age?

His writing is quite large and scribbly, his 'L's are back-to-front, as are his 'd's and 'b's, although his punctuation seems spot on, and he's pretty in tune with his capitalisation and lower case, but I'm thinking whether his actual writing should be a lot (or at least a bit) neater by now?

Is he Yr1? Writing is a difficult skill for a young child, and unless they have done a lot of 'mark making', drawing and colouring during their toddler years, it may be a new experience for them when start school.

If you can, provide a white board and dry-wipe pens so he can have a go at making letter shapes or various sizes, and then rub them out. When reading books with him, encourage him to look at different sizes of font, also with brochures and junk-mail which may have a wide range of sizes. Praise his efforts, and don't make an issue of size or style yet; being confident to try writing, whether it is copying words, or trying to compose his own sentences, is all good practice. Fear of 'failure' could discourage him from having a go. All children confuse b d p q etc, some into Yr2 or Yr3.

If he is really aware of punctuation, upper & lower case, etc that is great, as many children struggle with that, because they concentrate so hard on spelling, letter shapes, there is no brain-room for other details. Show him commas, question marks, exclamation marks, and speech marks, as he comes across them in books, if you feel he is able to cope with that.

As a retired TA, I am all for parents supporting and encouraging a child's endeavours, but try not to 'push'.

Ferguson thank you so much for your reply, such great advice

Yes, he's in Year 1. When he joined Reception (at the same school he's at now), his teacher mentioned to us at the end of his year that both him and his friend, who came from the same nursery together (not his school nursery), were slightly behind in their Read / Writing than the others who had come up through the school nursery.

I'll definitely try talking more about the different size fonts in books, and leaflets etc, that's a really good idea. I try to be very positive and encouraging but he gets so frustrated in himself and quite upset - I think he is a bit of a perfectionist as I am too

I think you need to ask teacher about how to improve his writing, work together on joint targets.