If you’re a teacher - how old do you think the writer of these sentences is?

[Pompleandprim]

This isnt meant to be any form of humble brag, my reason for posting is that my child attends a SEN school so I don’t know if the teachers expectations are different because of this.

Without any emphasis on handwriting or spelling, if a child was coming up with these sentences in their creative writing, how old would you assume they are?

”His eyes were as black as the night’s sky”

”His hat was as blue as the ocean as it reaches off to the shore”

“Nose the shape of a plumbers plunger”

I teach year 2 and we have covered similes. How much of an achievement it is depends on the level of modelling the child was given. Most year 2s can follow a scaffold to write several sentences with the simile sentence structure, especially if a word bank is provided and the teacher models using these resources to write the sentences during that lesson. Applying it independently into their own narrative writing in a way which isn't contrived and actually matches the context, adding to the overall effect of description is a greater depth skill for year 2.

That’s really helpful, thank you! The teacher has given me a copy of the work and has put that he completed it with little support.

(Ignore her own spelling errors - it’s a deliberate attempt at modelling to him that spelling isn’t hugely important so long as it can be understood, because his inability to spell is a huge barrier to him actually putting pen to paper due to his self esteem).

Teaching in a fairly average school, I'd be pleased but not particularly surprised if a middle or high ability child used such phrases.

I would say Y2

Honestly this summer term of year 1 we've had homework about weather where it was things like the hailstones were as hard as rocks. The puddles were as deep as a swimming pool!
So I think they do start getting introduced half way through ks1, it's still great for a 7 year old, especially the plunger one.

I’ll also add - and this is also not a humble brag because it’s a blatant full on brag - that they recently completed maths and English assessments and he scored 86% on a Year 3 reading comprehension test!

The plumbers plunger gave me a proper laugh. Well done that child!

About year 3 or 4, after having a lesson on similies.

Sentences 1 and 3 - generally from year 2, as similes is looked at around then.

Sentence 2 has a little more detail, could be inspiration from the class text or another book though too.

About age 5:6

5:6

😂 5/6 Jesus this phone

I’m so glad you got there in the end 😂😂

Sorry, totally useless comment there as missed the key information. Middle ability Y3 child.

I have a younger ds who is autistic and has a speech delay amongst other things, interested to know if you have done anything at home to help with literacy?

Most creative writing by children like this is the result of heavily scaffolded and prompted work or is taken from books studied in class especially in younger primary school children. E.g. sentence starter given such as his eyes were as black as.. who can think of something else that is black? Yes the night. Oh that's a great simile etc etc.

People on here saying a year 2 or 3 child writes like this are really ignoring the input. Without input children don't write like this until much later.

Is it not about starting a sentence using colour and then child thinks what is black, blue etc from info or knowledge they have? So they might have talked about what is black, what's blue etc with the TA. Then they might do the same with aspects of a face, so what resembles, ears, nose, eyes etc? It's a writing and thinking exercise. Which of course is fine.

Honestly all I’ve done is make reading a really normal part of our day. I’ve always read aloud to him and still do, can’t imagine stopping for a very long time! He didn’t want to learn to read, hated phonics and could t grasp them in EYFS so I just bought him really basic comics (Dog Man, Bumble and Snug etc) and he taught himself to read by sight. We read poems aloud together because I think it might help him articulate better and seems to be working.

A nice use of language but without knowing anything about spelling and the whole sentence structure, also in relationship to the asked question to answer ..... there's not much more to say

Interesting what you say about phonics, it really doesn't seem to work for my ds either. I never think about comics but I'll look them up, I guess the words with pictures would really help with sight reading. Thanks for the reply and the story I love hearing about SEN kids achievements 😀

Hmm I just disagree with this I'm afraid. Children who read a lot do write like this in LKS2. Not all by a long way, but it's certainly not vanishingly unusual.

We must teach very different catchments.

This is clearly an imaginative child with a flair for descriptive writing. Prompted orally, such a child could come up with these sentences at a wide range of ages while other children could never come up with them at all. Just thinking about who would be likely to hand with in like this, you could see this work at school in a gifted 8 year old or, off the back of a lesson where the actual content was more or less offered up, in a very average child in the early years of secondary school.

Teacher DD says year 2.

But it looks like the teacher’s handwriting? Unless I’ve missed something which I may well have done, apologies. Of course very good to come up with it.
I’d question a teacher modelling poor spelling intentionally as well…..if the student does notice it makes them feel patronised and if they didn’t it teaches them incorrectly.