What age child do you think did this writing?

[hibbledibble]

I'm concerned daughter is behind, but haven't had any communication from school, despite asking. I'll attach photos to show examples of her writing.

1. What age would you expect this from?
2. Any suggestions to improve?

Thank you.

That would be considered as working towards expectations for her age and year group. I’m very surprised a uk school hasn’t flagged that up as a concern.
You do need to speak to school and find out what they intend to do to support her.
I agree with improving her fine motor skills rather than just making it about writing.

4-5

@TotorosCatBus

My dd was considered ahead but struggled writing on paper that wasn't lined. She was not able to write straight on plain or squared paper until she was more like end of y2.

I would guess Reception /Y1

I'm nearly 40 and struggle with nonnlined paper!

That would be considered as working towards expectations for her age and year group. I’m very surprised a uk school hasn’t flagged that up as a concern.
You do need to speak to school and find out what they intend to do to support her.
I agree with improving her fine motor skills rather than just making it about writing.

The school is UK based. Not great at communicating. It's good to have validation here for my concerns. I don't know if they are overwhelmed currently due to so many children being behind after lockdown, and also a very socially mixed demographic.

I've not known what I can expect from the school, but hopefully they can offer something. I would hope that getting children who are behind on learning up to standard would be a priority.

I agree with pp about building up motor skills/strength.

Have found it difficult with DS we go back and forth with his writing it doesn’t help one minute they got to write this way neatly next it about quickly writing regardless if mean scruffy. No consistency. Payback for being smug how easy I taught DD plus she leftie like me.

Just way hold and feeling comfortable with pencil makes difference. Again pp gave good suggestions to strengthen motor skills. Colouring is mine & DS only time pen time paper is chilled out and he learnt quickly how to keep in lines. Painting or using chalks even on pavement, we used put paper on top of leaves and trace over them with crayons - there’s no pressure on either you it’s freestyle and getting used to flow and forming shapes.

I would estimate 4/5 too. I once did a reading assessment on the entire intake for year 1 (2005/6) - 180 children and the range of starting abilities with regard to recognising lower case letters of the alphabet (presented in random order) was huge - I recall that 6 identified all 26 letters and 6 could not identify any - so my point is that there is a very wide range of starting abilities and that may reflect on what they have been exposed to at home and during reception and pre-school care. The same will be true for handwriting - it takes time, practice and teaching to learn how to form the letters correctly - they definitely need lots of practice to help develop the fine motor control skills to control the shape, size, spacing and positioning on the line of their letters. Handwriting does become fairly important as teachers in primary need to be able to read what has been written - it can be a great source of pride to be complemented on your nice handwriting. There are books and worksheets you can use that show where to first place the pencil and the path it should take to draw a particular letter shape - they will trace over feint dashes.

My good friend of nearly 10 years is an American who works as a teaching assistant in Finnish primary schools - children receive no formal instruction in writing, reading or numeracy until they are seven which is when they start at primary school - Finnish daycare prior to primary, places the emphasis on creative play and conversation. This is in stark contrast to the way our primary edication has been evolving - with the introduction of cursive writing (adding the flicks to letters but not necessarily joining them) - I think parents here too often see education as a competitive race - personally I think the emphasis is better placed on talk, conversation, vocabulary building - encouraging a sense of curiosity about everything they encounter in everyday life - look at the words that you could use to describe cutlery - cold hard shiny metal, pointy or pointed prongs or tines of a fork, the smooth curved surface of a spoon (even use the words concave or convex - young kids can acquire language at a phenomenal rate if they are exposed to it) , straight, flat, sharp or serrated knives, - having the ability and self confidence to use words to describe things is a great strength when you actually need to start writing.

If too much emphasis is placed simply on the quality of their handwriting (or spelling) it can be a real disincentive for them to actually write and that is such a shame imho.

larkstar Thank you, that it really interesting. I do one to one time with her each evening where we do games, reading together, diary, talk about day etc. It's difficult as I don't want her to fall behind.. from this thread it sounds like she is already behind, and the emphasis in the UK is on written work at this age. I worry that is she is already behind at this age, then the gap in attainment between her and her peers will continue. She is very articulate, so speech and vocabulary isn't an issue, but reading and writing is.

I don't know if she'll cooperate, but the best handwriting practice books I've found are CGP's daily practice books. The idea is you do a little bit each day and it builds up gradually from them tracing, to starting from dots, to writing independently, and then practicing on words using all the letters you've used so far. My DD will happily do letter writing practice in 'her' book, even though she won't do anything else.

You could work on letter formation in other mediums. Rice or flour in a tray and use a finger, chopstick, toy car etc to form the shapes of the letters and numbers. Finger painting. Does she have a little whiteboard or magnetic drawing board at home? Bribery is also magical at this age. “If you write this very neatly, I’ll draw this/you can help bake that/whatever”. Good luck!

A final question, based on the gap between her attainment, and what is expected, would it be worth exploring getting an assessment for dyslexia or similar?

I would not say dyslexia. The handwriting and spelling are average for American children at the beginning of first grade, so age 6, with one year of formal education under their belts.

Fwiw, dyslexia may or may not exist...
www.theguardian.com/news/2020/sep/17/battle-over-dyslexia-warwickshire-staffordshire

She needs to develop her comfort level with expressing herself in writing. This means finding fun ways to practice letters and spellings, and also finding ways to develop her hand-eye co-ordination.

There are lots of ideas online along the lines of what Emmelina suggests.

If too much emphasis is placed simply on the quality of their handwriting (or spelling) it can be a real disincentive for them to actually write and that is such a shame imho.

This really rings true in my experience. We moved schools in the middle of y2 when my son’s handwriting was not dissimilar to your dd’s. He is now thriving in a school who are supporting the handwriting with 1-to-1 but also ignoring it when the focus of the class is actually something else. His teacher has discovered that he is actually meeting a lot of the objectives for his written work when presentation is taken out of the picture. This in turn has improved his confidence, causing him to write more and the extra writing has improved his handwriting.

I think there are reasons some kids struggle to read. Probably many different reasons. I know short term/long term memory is an issue. Attention. Our language is illogical.
Teaching dc2 who is quite rigid thinking with not very good memory, we have issues with her wanting to sound out the sight words.
Just the fact that siblings are different suggests it's genes and personality.

Y1 because it's similar to my sons work. He has missed most of the last year of school though so I've no idea whether that's had an effect.

@hibbledibble

A final question, based on the gap between her attainment, and what is expected, would it be worth exploring getting an assessment for dyslexia or similar?

Senco here. If a Y1 teacher brought this to me for a child in her class, I would be slightly concerned too. However, she is too young to be screened for dyslexia. I only screen children at the start of Year 3 if there’s a concern.

Things to think about:
Can she write (graphemes) initial sounds (phonemes) if you say things like ‘what does cow begin with?’ Etc. If not consistent, then work on those graphemes she doesn’t write correctly. Practice letter formation of them at the same time to embed learning.

When she draws a picture ask her to write a sentence telling you what it’s about. Don’t give her any input, just watch what she does. When she’s finished, ask her what she’s written. Is there a big difference between what she says she’s written and what she’s actually written?

Practice fine motor skills - there are lots of workbooks you can buy that do this - things like tracing over lines, zig zags etc.

Have you got parents evening coming up? If so, address your concerns to the teacher and see what they say.

@mathanxiety

I would not say dyslexia. The handwriting and spelling are average for American children at the beginning of first grade, so age 6, with one year of formal education under their belts.

Fwiw, dyslexia may or may not exist...
www.theguardian.com/news/2020/sep/17/battle-over-dyslexia-warwickshire-staffordshire

She needs to develop her comfort level with expressing herself in writing. This means finding fun ways to practice letters and spellings, and also finding ways to develop her hand-eye co-ordination.

There are lots of ideas online along the lines of what Emmelina suggests.

It’s irrelevant if dyslexia ‘exists’ or not. It’s what you do to address any weaknesses a child may have. It is absolutely true that some people have things like poor working memory, poor hand eye coordination, poor spatial awareness, poor visual acuity etc etc. These are all apparent to a greater or lesser degree in people who have been diagnosed with dyslexia. Dyslexia is a label given to people who have a number of impairments in literacy skills.

@hibbledibble

You could try write from the start (it’s available on amazon)

Either get your dd to do it in pencil and then rub out to re use or photocopy the sheets and do it like that, that way you can use it over and over again as it’s about £25.

7.5 year old Ds has autism / learning disability and has problems with fine motor / poor writing etc so we used this set.

Or alternatively print some free sheets off twinkl, they do some similar things on there! And get your dd to do those.

But mainly it’s lots of opportunity to practise and building the strength up in her hands / wrists by doing lots of fine motor activities.

May I just say (former KS2 primary teacher here) that I think it's wonderful that you're doing this journal with her, and that she's interested and motivated enough to sit and fill it in every night. Well done you and well done her. It's going to help enormously.

My summer-born son is in Reception, and I'd say he's at about the same stage as your daughter in writing now. He's slightly below expecations in writing at the moment, but the teacher says he will be meeting them by the sumer holidays, so I would say that if your daughter is at a similar stage but a year ahead then she probably does need a little bit of intervention at school. I wouldn't be panicking or anything - kids all develop at different ages and there is PLENTY of time for her to catch up - but all the same, if there's a bit of a gap identified then it's best to start supporting her to catch up as soon as possible.

Have the school not said anything to you in parents' evenings about whether or not your daughter is meeting age-related expectations? What did her report say at the end of last year?

If her vocabulary is good and she's very articulate (this is the same for my son too!) then that's fantastic because once her writing skills catch up with her speaking skills, there will be no stopping her!

Keep building in writing opportunities - you are doing such a good job that already, and if she's keen then that's great. I recently got my son a little exercise book like a school one, with the pages half lined and half blank (you can get them on Amazon) and have told him it's his 'special story writing book'. He has written two mini stories in there already - mostly decodable! Maybe she might like something like that? Or get her a really special book with a glittery cover from The Works or something - anything that's going to inspire her to write.

Other than that, it's asking her to write birthday cards to her friends and to family, sending little notes to grandparents or to cousins or friends in the post (little kids love posting stuff, don't they?!), helping you write the shopping list each week - purposeful writing tasks where the writing is doing a job that they can see the point of.

She'll be fine! But you're right to contact school about it. They need to be clear with you whether she is or isn't meeting expectations, and if she isn't, they should be putting plans in place to help.

Looks like the handwriting of a Reception child or the start of Year 1. You could try printing off some letter formation sheets. It seems like she has an issue with holding a pencil, so fine motor skills rather than dyslexia.

Year 1. The words have obviously been sounded out by her and she's made some attempt to use the correct combination of letters, at least phonetically.

feather thank you for the words of encouragement. There hasn't been a lot of communication from school, and what I have received has been generally that she is nearly meeting expectations. Comparing her work to examples of her elder sibling at the same age, they are miles apart, which has made me question this. Her work also resembles more the 'emerging writing' examples the reception teacher showed us, than what I would expect from a year 1 child. I guess it's possible that she is miraculously writing a lot better at school, but I think it unlikely.

It’s irrelevant if dyslexia ‘exists’ or not. It’s what you do to address any weaknesses a child may have. It is absolutely true that some people have things like poor working memory, poor hand eye coordination, poor spatial awareness, poor visual acuity etc etc. These are all apparent to a greater or lesser degree in people who have been diagnosed with dyslexia. Dyslexia is a label given to people who have a number of impairments in literacy skills.

Yes, that's one of the points made in the article I posted.

Where the existence of dyslexia comes in is in the efficacy of the remedy that involves learning of high frequency words.

Here's an OT approach to teaching letter writing according to patterns involving start point, types of strokes, and direction.

www.theottoolbox.com/letter-formation/

@hibbledibble
You need to pay attention to the start point of each letter as this fosters fluent movement of the pencil and enhances the perception of pattern in letter formation (e.g. c, a, d, g, q...). When she learns cursive she will need to have mastered correct pencil movement from the correct start point or it will entail a complete re-learning of letter formation.

I see there is some awareness of start point and direction of stroke in your DD's written work, but it's not consistent. AI see a nice lower case D, and a few Ns that have no straight line element on the left. Her S formations are not consistent either - they are fluent on one page and modified Cs on another.

Are you in England, OP? I ask because in Wales the teaching is different and expectations are different and you are going to get a lot of England based responses here that might alarm you. Y1 is quite formal in England.