creative writing

[stuffinlaundryhamper]

How much creative writing is normal in Year 3?
My son has been back at school for three weeks but he has not been asked to write one self-directed or creative writing piece.
All the homework (he is at a non selective prep school) is work-sheet led and uninspirational: either handwriting, learning a poem and drawing a picture, or incredibly basic comprehension (he has been able to read fluently for a year and a half. I would say these were Y2 basic worksheets).
He has gone from loving English, to dreading it. He said in class they have to make sentence lists using adjectives and adverbs. List after list. He said it is boring.
They have not written one story.
Is this normal?
He is very strong in English. At his old school (we moved in March last year) he was sometimes graded 3b/3a on his written English pieces - and that was only half way through Y2. He loves writing.
I feel that the school is killing this.
Is it normal?
Help?

I realise this is early on in the year, but by this time into the term in his old school they would have started with a 'what did you do in the holiday piece', and I know that they are studying Egyptians as a project this term (I'm still friends with mums at the old school) and children are pretending to be Egyptians etc and getting imaginatively involved with the project and writing about it.

I think our school aims for a piece of extended creative writing every half term. Otherwise they are writing letters, lists, factual piece, poems etc.

DD in Y4, but guess it is similar. Think there's been one piece of longer writing each week so far (not always creative). But DD (who loves creative writing) has "adapted" the writing sentences using adverbs, adjectives etc task, into writing a longer piece of work which includes sentences as required! Her teacher doesn't seem to have objected. Does he have any other options to write? The keen writers at DD's school get encouraged to write pieces for the school newsletter.

Do you know parents of older children at the school? Might be worth working out if they are doing worksheets etc while the teacher does some initial assessment, or whether the school simply has a "traditional" approach to teaching.

sadly i think it's 'traditional'.
if it is traditional - what does that mean we should expect?

I don't think that they do completely creative writing. The subject is usually related to the current topic eg Romans and written in a style listed in the National Curriculum eg. Persuasive letter.

DD (also just started Y3) has written a poem, a retell of a short story that was read to them, a letter and an account of her holidays so far in class. It's just an ordinary primary school, not a prep.

At DS2's primary all the junior children do what is called "Big Writing" every week. The topic is sent home 2-3 days before to allow them to discuss ideas with parents (called talk homework). They then get 45 minutes to write their piece. It varies sometmes a story, a letter or newspaper article.It is often connected to either the current topic or a class reading book, so DS who is in year 5 had to write a diary entry for one of the characters in War Horse last week.

Dd is in y3 of a very sought after state primary and we have had the same. Bog standard boring comprehensions with multiple choice answers, tedious punctuation work sheets etc. lots of it but v boring. It's actually working well for dd who is excellent at English but has no imagination! But it's not what they should be doing IMHO. Will be raising this at parents evening.