5 year old's writing - normal or behind

[Oysterbabe]

My DD is in reception, starting year 1 in September. With this bloody pandemic I feel so out of touch with her schooling, I have no idea if she's where she should be. I think I've spoken with her teacher 3 times. I was wondering what is normal in terms of writing at this stage. I feel like her reading is coming on really well and she's quite confident. Her handwriting seems pretty good, it's small and fairly neat and she can join some letters. She's learned a lot of keywords but is still writing most words phonetically. For example, they were asked to write a letter to their new teacher to tell him about themselves. This is what she wrote
To Misst Smif
I have a bruther and I like plaieng with him.
I'm good at climing
I am 5
I like eting chokloot
Love from Name

Do you think that's in the range of normal ability for a late reception aged child?

Hello, ex eyfs teacher here! She has used a full stop and her spelling is mainly phonetically correct well within normal I would say. In reception the range is huge from kids who can only write their name to kids who can write a well punctuated paragraph.

I think that's spot on: the end of year writing goal for EYFS =

Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible.

Xpost with pp!

That’s totally fine for starting year 1 super spelling! She’s used and to join her sentence and has attempted the digraph ai in playing - which is age appropriate in Reception. I wouldn’t worry at all.

Thank you, that's reassuring to hear she's on the right track. Hopefully I will get chance to chat with her teacher before the end of term!

This is spot on for reception. She is spelling some common words correctly, using digraphs to represent different sounds, and polysullabic words. If her school uses letters and sounds she would have been first taught ai, and not yet moved on to phase 5 where they learn the alternate ay so "plai" is how most reception children will spell it.

She will learn alternate sounds and rules etc in year 1.

No advice but my eldest also used 'chokloot' when he was in Year 1 so this really tickled me 😂😂

My kid wrote like this at that age too. Think it was choklit though (also tickled me). Is exceedingly good in English now (end of primary)! Don’t worry, they all start somewhere :-)

I’m a TA in Y2. We had our new Y1’s up today and that is better than a majority of them were doing and they are a year older.

I would say she is ahead - she is looking good!