Parents evening worries- dd 8

[hoping2016]

Can anyone provide me with some perspective on these comments from parents evening:

DD 8

Her teacher said she should have better 'flow ' to her stories by now and really should only be adding extra touches to a good structure. I asked if this was a problem and she said might be a problem for year 5 when the expectations go up again. Teacher also says she has an 'imagination block' and asked if she reads - she has always enjoyed reading and still does.

Can anyone provide me with an idea of what a 8.5yr old should be able to write please? She doesn't enjoy writing and never has .... I just worry if this will be a problem for GCSE English....i know I'm probably overthinking but concerned nevertheless!

P.s. dd is year 4

In some children they require extra support to write stories. I teach some yr 4,5 and 6 and this is common. I approach it by using story mountains or similar - lots on Pinterest. I also look at vocabulary for different kinds of stories - my pupils also get a little note book to record interesting words/ new words to refer to when writing. We use a book called Descriptosahrus and Mrs Wordsmith Word Sauce. I teach them a variety of different story types - ghost, adventure, time travel etc. We plan them together and I write my own alongside. We then compare and ‘improive’/ edit them alongside each other - choosing better words/ sentence structure. This results in them being able to understand basic structure of a story genre and build their stories more easily. I hope that makes sense.

Story writing is the least of your worries for GCSE English.

What are her general motor skills like? Any other quirks?

Sorry not a teacher here of primary; but myself and dd play a game together called Rory’s Story Cubes.
You basically roll dice and create a story from the words listed, and I imagine it will be a fun way to help your dd if she struggles to put ideas together.
We now don’t need dice as I just pull random words that she can use to create into a story. With practice she can now create lovely stories herself. We usually do this while driving just to pass time in a fun way.

Also recommend story dice.

Thank you that's all really helpful! I'll these out.

Also recommend story dice.

Quite cheap in Tiger if you've got one near you as well.

Can she tell you a story orally? So if you ask her to make up a short story about, say, a fairy who goes on holiday would she be able to do this? Can she give a good recount of something that has happened, e.g. a birthday party or special event at school?
Just wondering if the difficulty is with constructing the story or with writing it down.

She can give a recount but not with a great amount of detail. I'm not sure about verbal story I will try this though as you're right it might help narrow down where the difficulty is.

What helped most for my ds with similar imagination block was "free writing".

Simply give a topic and write about it without stopping, for 1 min.(We did it for 3 mins with ds.)
Just concentrate on writing, no worries about anything else, like spelling/grammar/structure.
Seen the significant results from after only about a month. Also the structure of creative writing has improved massively.

does she describe things? that pads out the detail side of things. take her on a walk somewhere and ask her to tell you what she sees, hears, feels, senses, smells etc. then she can write those things down, they she can write them in a little report about what she did. it might help her realise how to give the detail?

How about giving her some basic sentences and telling her they’re a bit boring and asking her to make them better? My DD loved improving things I’d written and it got her thinking about adjectives and adverbs and just developing and idea into something bigger. Might help?