How important is handwriting in levelling writing?

[metamorphosis]

Dc (year 2' turning seven in March) seems to be a good writer but his handwriting isn't that small and isn't joined.
You can read it but occasionally he still does a capital b when he needs a lower case one too.
Conversely he spells very well (words like excited, different, cautious) and uses ambitious vocabulary. He uses all sorts of punctuation, speech marks, ellipses, exclamation and question marks and starting to use brackets. His stories seem good and sometimes quite funny. I have an older dd and her writing content at the same age was not as good at all but she did write a lot neater and smaller.

Will there be a limit on what
Level he can get? I heard they cannot go above level 2 if their writing isn't joined up but this wouldn't seem fair when other aspects of his writing are quite good.

anyone?

He sounds fab,and I would think pretty ahead of most for year 2. My dd is also year two but we have learning through play here until year 3,so they don't do puntuation or anything yet. However just going by her class he sounds clever and as though he's doing really well.I can't advise on levels though as we don't have those either,or sats.

um punctuation,sorry!

He sounds like he would be a 2A by the end of Y2 with a finger tip into a 3C.

Handwriting is not as important at this age as it is later on and even then there are not huge marks for handwriting.

That's reassuring. I know levels don't really matter but it would be a shame if the handwriting held him back if he deserves a level 3 in other ways.

It's not. It's only taken into consideration if he's borderline between 2 sublevels, poor handwriting might tip it into the lower one.

When the handwriting is really shocking :o I get the child to type it. So obviously in that case it doesn't matter a jot. :)

It's not that bad that you can't read it, it's only that it's not joined or as tiny and neat as some of the girls in the class produce. The only other thing which seems like it'd hold him down is the very occasional use of a capital letter where it's not needed. I mean once in a whole story.

Sounds like none of this will matter too much then if the content and spelling is good.

By the time he grows up maybe they won't need to write much anyway .

If you think about it in SATs terms ( even though we shouldn't!) handwriting in year 6 is a maximum of 3 marks out of 50. you would get 2 marks for neat, consistent handwriting even if it isn't joined! So he has another 4 years to aim for that "extra" mark!

Metamorphosis Your DS sounds very similar to my DD2, great content, spelling, vocabulary, punctuation...but not brilliantly neat (maybe something to do with her being a leftie? ) Anyway, I had exactly the same concerns as you but needn't have worried as she got a level 3 for her writing in year 2.

Also echoing what snowball3 said, handwriting accounts for only 6% of the mark in year 6 writing SAT.

Very helpful - thanks everyone and nice to know it's not worth worrying about too much

The key thing for level 3 writing is consistently using a range of extended sentences, commas and beginning to structure his writing, using paragraphs for example. Hths

Not sure he does paragraphs but he makes chapters in his stories - would that count?

My ds yr 4 has terrible writing. It has caused us lots of problems - if his teachers can't read it, they mark it wrong. Poor guy, tries so hard and yet can't get it legible.

I would say that legible handwriting is critical

It is legible so that's not a problem. It isn't cursive though and I had heard and read that you have to have cursive writing to get a level 3.

OP If you look on the level descriptors that mrz has linked to in the past the last point for level 3 is indeed "Writing is joined and legible" ; But if all the other criteria is there a 3 must have to be awarded regardless of cursive or not, IME. Check with your child's teacher, maybe schools have different rules. Let us know how you get on

There is weighting towards language choice, sentence structure and organisation, handwriting (& spelling funnily enough) hold very little weighting. Chapters are not enough for organisation. Your son definitely sounds like a 2a (but it is hard to say without reading your son's work).