Level 4a in writing?! I need genuine advise please.

[Ineedmorepatience]

Dd3 has SN's, I have real reason to be concerned about her writing level. I have a book from school at home, not a homework book a classwork book. I always thought she underperformed at home due to her difficulties but it looks like she does have the same problems at school.

School are always telling me how well she is doing and have just this week assessed her as a 4a in writing.

She regularly puts capital letters in the middle of sentences.
She regularly forgets that names need a capital.
Her letter vary in size throughout words and sentences.
The is one letter reversed in a paragraph of witing.
He writing often doesnt make sense eg. she doesnt read what she has written.
She never joins her writing.

It sounds as though I am being mean but there is a genuine reason for me to be concerned.

Hope someone can advise me

How old is she?

11

Some sentences are supposed to have capitals in their middles; it depends on the word. Why not invent a game around capitals?

My advice is stop worrying Been through this with ds2. He's in year 8 now and come on amazingly. Comp helped. Ds2 was forgetting full stops, not putting capitals etc.. but it seems to have clicked.

I take it she doesn't have dyslexia though?

They must have evidence that she's working at 4a too? Ask them to explain how they arrive at the level.

freak She has just been assessed so I am waiting for the written report but from tue feedback I got it seems like she probably does have elements of dyslexia.

She also has visual perception issues which I know is causing her some difficulty.

panda I will ask them.

collumn Sorry I meant random capitals.

I thought that's what you meant. But, unfortunately proper capitalisation is a minefield. People are naturally conservative but can choose to be Conservatives, etc. I'm assuming that your daughter has heard of all of the applications of capital letters and forgets sometimes (as do most adults.) Making a game of it is a gentle way of reinforcing repetition and remarking on mistakes while keeping it fun.

Thanks, I find it difficult to remark on mistakes as she is a perfectionist who has massively high expectations of herself and she becomes very upset if she thinks she has done something wrong.

I am sorry to drip feed but I didnt want to influence your opinions too much.

Dd3 has autism she is very bright but needs I believe more support than she is getting.

I think she is being pushed too high through the NC levels and want her Teachers to recognise that she is still making many basic errors that she needs help with!!

Maybe I am being unreasonable

Can she type and does she do a better job when typing?

DS1 (yr6 10 yo) has been diagnosed with dysgraphia and dyslexia. He forgets capitals and has some issues with letter formation. The EP recommended that he learns to touch type and moves on to using a laptop.

In theory the content of her writing might be at a level that despite the errors in writing it down the level is correct.

4a isn't too bad for her age tbh.

Freaky I think it is too high!

chaz She does her homework on the laptop and is learning to type.

I am going to buy her a touch typing program after christmas.

I thought about the content being good enough to push her levels up but based on what I have seen tonigt, I dont think that is the case!

Just a cheeky bump for the evening people

Without seeing a number of examples of her work it isn't really possible to say whether 4A is accurate or not I'm afraid but "He writing often doesnt make sense eg. she doesnt read what she has written." would concern me.

If the content is good enough, use if punctuation, sentence structure, word choice, writing style, style matching its purpose etc then it may be possible to reach 4a even with the problems you describe because of course there are lots of aspects to writing. If she was doing the odd capital b (often seems to be b and d they randomly capitalise) mid sentence but everything else was strong enough, a piece could still be levelled a high 4.

Does she paragraph, use a range of punctuation, use a variety of sentence openers, use words for impact? Do you feel engaged when you read her pieces? Would she be able to sit and wrote in the style if a newspaper report and switch styles to write a short story?

When you say doesn't make sense is it the odd sentence- perhaps when she loses focus? Or is it the entire piece?

I think your concerns are genuine. To 'be' a 4a then sentences should be demarcated accurately throughout the text including question marks, there should be structure to her writing (a sense of beginning, middle and end), she should be using paragraphs.

This website has the descriptions of each level (1-8) for writing.

Even at level 2 a student is expected to "usually" demarcate sentences correctly with full stops and capital letters and start to use question and exclamation marks.

Levelling is always an average but it sounds too high to me.

I would love to be able to show it to you.

There is one paragraph, written during a guided reading lesson. The paragraph has 7 lines with one full stop and one comma in the first 2 lines, every phrase starts with he there are about 4 extra large letters that are not capitals but that start words, there is one b reversed. She has used the word surrounded which is great word.

I dont know what to think to be honest. She is highly intelligent but is clearly struggling in some areas. I dont feel like I am being listened to.

I dont want them to push her any higher until she has a firm grasp of basic punctuation but when ever I say something I just get told. She is doing really well.

I cant afford not to worry because she is moving to secondary in September

Hard to say without seeing the writing, but for 4a I would expect the vast majority of her work to make sense, with the odd sentence that isn't quite right. I'd also expect to see a range of different genres used independently, good basic punctuation and some attempt at higher-level punctuation- semi-colons, brackets etc. Varied sentence structure, ambitious vocabulary and an engaging style.

If this doesn't sound like what you're seeing, I would make an appointment to see the teacher- ask them to explain how they assessed her.

I meant to say, she was supposed to be recounting the main events of the story. It had been an ongoing piece of work and the paragraph was the only thing written under that date.

I do understand that work done during a lesson will not be the same as that done during assessment week but surely there should be some correlation!

Thanks for the link blue I will have a look

To be honest the 7 lines with one full stop doesn't indicate a level 4a writer.

Thankyou mamma. I have had a good relationship with the school up until this year but I have asked them before to check her levels and to see if they can plug any gaps that she has. This may have been done but I have had no feedback.

I need a meeting ASAP.

Do you have any teacher friends? Ask them to level a few pieces for you just so you have an idea in your mind. Don't think it'd be a good idea to tell the school this straight away but I think then you could start a good discussion about ' can you tell me what she's doing to make her a level 4a writer' etc...ask them what her next step targets are to take her into a level 5.

My hunch is she's not a level 4 let alone a high 4 but really hard to say without seeing her samples.

No problem patience.

Do pursue it through. From a purely selfish view (I'm a secondary English teacher) when I get students labelled as 4a (or higher) who clearly aren't working at that level in year 7 it's infuriating and terrifying (it all knocks on to GCSE grades that teachers and schools are judged by). And I work in a special school!

Like us at ks2 when we get 'level 3' writers who don't use a full stop in a page of writing but then are expected to be level 5 at year 6...

could it have been given a level for just certain AFs? as that could impact it. for example pupils often get higher levels in AF 1&2 compared to others that are more about grammar and paragraphing etc.