What age do you think wrote these?

[Longingdreamer]

Examples of writing for 3 different children. I'm curious as to your opinions.

Year 2/low ability Year 3. There are no speech marks and poor spelling. I’m a primary school teacher but could be totally wrong.

Well first of all i think who ever the kids are they have done really really well.
On the age i cant say im in my 30s and im no better.
Top of my head 8-10.
All kids writing is different all we can do is praise them for their efforts not judge them.

I’d say year three too.

The first one is a play based on Varjak Paw so I would guess year 3 based on the book and ability to set out a playscript including brackets for stage directions.

I'd go for Year 2 or lower ability Year 3

Year 2

Interesting, are we saying year 2 for the first example? What about the other 2? (3 separate children)

1 is a play
2 is a story about a bird
3 is a fictitious diary entry

The middle one looks like my year 3 DS, but he's behind in writing, so probably more typical of a younger child.

1. 8 or 9
2. 5 or 6
3. 6 or 7

The first one is a bit small to be able to tell. Possibly a 7-8 year old?

The second two look to have been written by 6 to 7 year olds.

1: year 3 because it’s joined and script but probably not achieving expected progress as vocab and punctuation need a lot of work.

2: year 1 - simple sentences but letters formed fairly well random capital letters although not at the start of sentences. Some knowledge of full stops.

3: maybe year 2.

9
5
6/7

Based only on what others have said about the subject, I would say year 3 for the first, and the end of Reception or possibly Year 1 for the other two.

I would say yr3 or a bit older for the first one.
Yr1 for the middle one and yr2 for the last one.

Interesting. You are spot on for the first 2. For the last, dc has just finished year 5. Clearly they are significantly behind. I need to try to start on closing the gap over the summer holidays. It's tough as they have autism and ADHD with strong PDA traits.

The child who wrote 1 is in year 3 and was graded as 'greater depth' but I do have doubts as to the quality of the education provided as school. I am also considering tutoring for them.

Oh ok. I worked as a TA for 13 years but primarily in the infant school.
Yeah, the yr5 piece is behind but I wouldn’t go crazy over the summer trying to ‘catch them up’. What have the school said?

Also, the first one, the child hasn’t been taught cursive writing properly. It’s well set out though for yr3

The school acknowledge she is 1-2 years behind. Looking at her writing I think she is further behind, especially considering how younger siblings have overtaken/nearly overtaken.

Ah ok - is this writing you’ve got them to do at home? You get their books soon as it’s the end of the year. Often it’s quicker and easier to assess a piece of narrative writing - so a story or an event in a story they’re retelling or creating.
The one piece of work you’ve shown isn’t greater depth for year 3 but maybe they are producing that level in school.

I’m a primary teacher and also have a reception and y2 children of my own.

I would try to make sure you don’t make the y5 child disengage with writing over the summer though. Make it fun - what targets has the teacher said to focus on?

Thank you, yes writing at home, which they love doing. They don't see it as a chore. I do now have the school books so I can compare.

How is their reading?
for the first and third example I think you could focus on reading high quality texts so their language choices improve. The y5 child writing is very simple and talk like (although I accept it’s a diary entry so less formal).

Check out colourful semantics and building sentences (this will also help with knowing when to demarcate sentences.) It’s also great for ND children!