year 3 Story writing dilemma... advise please

[Julie999]

all parents... I have no idea what would be expected of a current year 3 child in terms of story writing. Would they be expected to write independently, or do more character definitions, and story maps.

How long would a story have be to for this age group? Half an A4 page a full A4 page? Please can someone enlighten me, I really haven't a clue!

Why do you need to know?

Sorry- that sounded rude- what I meant is, could you ask the teacher, or do you need for some other purpose?

Did try asking, but got very little info, as in "every child is different"... which of course I understand, but I guess I'm just trying to ascertain what would be a good level of story... etc and what would need work on...

clear as mud?

bump up....any replies greatly appreciated.

Well, what level is she working at now?

My dd left Y2 a level 3 and could write stories that were multiple pages long.

I have noticed that since she has joined juniors (she's Y4 now) , the quantity written has decreased but the quality has improved. She uses better vocabulary, punctuation and depending on her writing targets, she used devices such as extended noun phrases which has made her writing more interesting.

Her handwriting has gone from neat print to tidy cursive.

Does that help?

Crazy gracious, thanks for your reply... In timed writing, ie 45 mins, she is writing three quarters of an a4 page. I did ask the teacher if this was enough in length but got a non specifi answer. Kids at my dd's school aren't given levels like 2a, or 3b..... They don't sit exams at the end of year 2 or at least none that we are told about, so we are often in the dark. More comes to light in years 5 and 6 when they prepare for the 11+ but I'd rather monitor her progress from now, rather than being told there is an issue later on.... Wen it there isn't enough time to change things. Forgot to mention, good punctuation, paragraphs, speech marks.... I hater stories. Punctuation seems to slip when she's writing, I guess she is focused on the story....

.... Bad typing...in her stories, not I hater stories!!

My daughter could write quite independantly by this stage. Not very long stories, but good but unusual character definitions. I still remember one she did about Cinderella and invented a new character and the carriage turned into a turnip instead of a pumpkin!

She should ask her teacher though as only she knows what she is looking for.

My children could write independently at that stage.

At school they do Big Write which involves planning a piece of writing earlier in the week and actually putting pen to paper at the end of the week.

For timed writing assessments I would have thought that content is more important than quantity. If she can write a story with a beginning/middle/end with good punctuation and interesting words then she's probably doing fine. It's hard to say whether 3/4 page is adequate as we don't know how big her writing is - I would have thought that it's more important to have the beginning/middle/end on paper within the 45 minute time frame.

I'm not a teacher but in your shoes, I'd think that the best thing you can do is provide her with reading books with varied vocabulary to make her writing more interesting.

Parent's evening 2 months ago y3 DS was exactly on target for writing to my complete amazement. So that must be ... er, nearly 3c?
His best effort was about 4.5 pages of A5-lined paper writing, lots of details, mostly grammatically correct sentences. Mostly remembered capitals & full stops. The action followed on with some logic (you could see how present events followed previous events).

He was writing his own version of a myth so probably liberally borrowed from some other existing myth plot.

Otherwise, no story map or detailed characterisations. I would think of those as more like yr4-5 targets. hth.