What does the writing level actually measure? Does/should handwriting have a lot of weight?

[PassTheTwiglets]

DD in Y4 just got a 3a in writing but that does this actually mean? Is it content? Or handwriting (surely can't be just handwriting). Her teacher has often told me how the content of what she writes is fantastic and she is way ahead of her peers with the content. But her actual handwriting is absolutely appalling and her work is dreadfully messy. So it would seem that her level is brought down by her bad presentation, is that right? Do they take things like punctuation, capitals etc. into account? 'Cos she's very careless with those too.

It just seems a bit unfair to mark the content of writing based on the handwriting itself - you don't get marked down a level in maths because your numbers aren't written neatly! Not that her levels in Y4 matter at all but they matter in Y6.

It's the content and the grammar and the punctuation and the spelling and the handwriting and the genre.

Handwriting only counts for a tiny part of the mark.

What Indigo said. DD2 is a leftie and has pretty bad handwriting, however, what she writes is consistently great

Handwriting doesn't make a great deal of difference from what I understand. DS1 in Y1 has beautiful handwriting and already uses pen at school etc but is making the slowest progress in his actual writing level due to not expanding enough with regards to content, he was a 2c last term and has not progressed even a sub-level this term. His teacher said he needs to use more variety etc, his other subjects have progressed much more.

I guess it must be the punctuation that's marking her down then. I was a bit when her teacher said to me at the start of the year "I was so surprised to see how good the content of her writing is - I thought it would be really bad because of how bad her handwriting is".

Thats a bit rude! Yes DSs teacher mentioned the punctuation etc today in the context of using it to add in extra descriptive details etc if that makes sense.

It is really confusing as I look at DSs writing and think its really good, in fact for his age the content is probably ok but I think there are a lot of things they have to achieve to move up the levels so I am probably looking at the wrong things. ALso he may be closer to that 2b than he was last term I guess.

This could be the case with your DD. Is a 3a not about right for Y4?

It's average for Y4, yes, but the teacher keeps telling me how above average the content of her work is, hence me wondering why the average mark. But then again the same teacher said DD needed extra help as she was behind in maths and that she was worried about her maths - but she's come out with a perfectly average level!

Handwriting will only be a couple of marks but the punctuation, grammar and capitalisation will count for a lot. Lots of my class can use wow words effectively and accurately, but their sentence structure, grammar and punctuation means their levels are not nearly as high as they could be.

What an ignorant thing for the teacher to say.

I don't think the actual handwriting makes a difference in SAT levels, my son has had a scribe for his year 5 and 6 SATs. He did have to instruct the scribe to put down every bit of punctuation. Punctuation is one of his weak points, he could not remember to do capital letters for years and years. He was fine doing work sheets where you have to correct, or add, punctuation but not adding them when he was writing.

I was told that punctuation and grammar are the two most important aspects, then spelling, then handwriting. So being poor at handwriting will bring the mark down a bit.

I think handwriting is only about 3 marks out of the total, which I think is 100, and to lose all of them you'd have to be pretty illegible as well as not joining up letters at all.

Content, vocabulary, spelling, grammar and punctuation are all much more important and so they should be. Your teacher's comment was very unprofessional - my DD1 has really appalling writing when working at speed (legible and joined, but just horrible) but she has come out with a L6 in writing in Yr6 because she is very very strong on everything else. I've worked very hard with DD1 to teach her to proofread as she goes along, to check for stupid errors (their/there/they're kind of stuff), and to read her work 'out loud' in her head to work out where commas are needed. It's really brought her on. The rest is all her - her imagination, her great vocabulary, her good spelling. I'll bet that with a little support from you, your DD could put a real shine on her writing, things like capital letters and punctuation are easy gains with a bit of work.

I completely ignore the handwriting.