writing expectations for year 1

[incywincyspideragain]

ds (5yrs) is doing brilliantly with maths and reading but writing is his week point - he is a reluctant writer but his letter formation is ok and spellings are also really good. He has recently gone backwards and is reversing more and more of his letters - there is a huge emphasis on writing sentences and he often has to stay in at break time to complete his work because he doesn't just get on and do it. I think this is because he isn't keen/not interested because this isn't a problem if he is set numeracy work.
We get all numeracy homework and no literacy so I summise that more of his school day is literacy based than numeracy - what kind of exercises could I do to support his literacy? he likes work books but these only seem to be practising letter formation.... I need to speak to the teacher but in the meantime can any of you knowledgable people share with me what exactly yr 1 do for writing? whats the expectation for this point in the year and what are they aiming for for the end of the year?

tia

DD who is yr 1 and 5.8 will write about 2 sentences before getting distracted. We've recently had a couple of story writing homeworks and this is too much for DD, she has ideas for the story but getting it all on paper is too much for her. Her spelling is quite poor, she is enthusiastic and tries to use her phonics and generally gets it wrong. She doesn't reverse letters but reverses several numbers: 3, 7 and 9: a lot. Luckily she isn't being kept in though she often doesn't finish work set. I'm sure many yr 1s find writing difficult, personally I don't make DD do more than she wants. To my mind it's odd to get just numeracy homework, DD gets a mixture of numeracy, writing, making things, talking and listening homeworks, even researching topics, eg we had to watch
lots of weather forecasts together and talk about them when her class were pretending to be weather forecasters, plus weekly spellings and reading book changed twice a week. You can get literacy workbooks from most bookshops that have exercises including sentences.

I'm by no means an expert, but one thing I found worked for my DD was that I would make her a book by stapling together several bits of paper, and get her to write a story in that. She seemed to find writing one or two sentenace per page plus a picture much more manageable than just writing a paragraph.

dd's y1 class seem to be concentrating on writing a sentence with full stops and capital letters. they are also working on extending this sentence with a connective (and ) and time words, for example: She went to the park and then went home.

have you tried to get hinm to draw a cartoon story and write what is happening under each picture? there are some writing workbooks available for children although I do not know what they are like.

He's not interested in drawing either, I tried the book idea but he wasn't inspired, maybe it was too much to think about what to put on it - I guess I need to find a subject that inspires him??

I might have a look at the work books again then but anything set for 5-7 years that I've seen all looks like letters, he has the story in his head but no interest, or difficulty getting it on paper - I wouldn't worry too much if I didn't know what an emphasis School place on writing, ds is upset because he believes you only get star of the week for good writing - I kind of have to believe him on the evidence he is doing year 2 maths and has never got it... maths and science is our thing, I have no idea how to encourage writing but don't want him to be disheartened that he's not achieving or even have him switch off from it at such an early stage

break through - came home and declared he like poetry specifically Edward Lear. Activity suggestions?