N:\2013-14\Teacherweb\Level 1 Big writing Objectives Help for parents.docx
Big Writing Level 1
How You Can Help Your Child
Much of this assessment depends on your child’s ability to talk through what they want to write
down. Many of these suggestions involve talking which is a very important pre-requisite. Help
your child to develop and extend their vocabulary both in Arabic and in English. If they can ‘talk
it’ they will very soon be able to ‘write it’.
1. Your child can write his own ideas so that others can read and understand them.
Help your child to have the ideas by making up verbal stories. Support them by structuring their
ideas into coherent phrases and sentences that make sense in English. You can talk about
anything – what your child is having for tea, what they are watching on TV, what you see from the
car window. It often helps if you talk about something that your child can see, rather than making
it all up. Children also like to feature in the stories.
Can you make up a story involving these three pictures?
Or these three?
2. Your child can write his own name starting with a capital letter.
Practise writing their own name using a capital letter for the beginning and lower case letters for
the rest. Capital letters need to be as tall as the lower case letters b,d,f,h etc.
See 8 below for letter formation.
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3. Your child can write at least 50% of words in the correct order for meaning.
See 1 above, ensuring that the stories and information that your child talks about are
grammatically correct in English. Encourage your child to have
a go at writing things down and check that they are writing
down something for each word that they say. Not all words
will have all the letters in them.
4. Your child can spell at least 50% of CVC and/or monosyllabic
words correctly.
Go through the phonic sounds that are sent home by the class teacher and use the information
on the website to check that you and your child are also using the correct pronunciation of the
letter sounds. The vowel sounds are always the hardest and the difference between the
pronunciation of ‘i’, ( as in igloo) ‘e’ (as in egg) and ‘o’ (as in orange) is only slight.
Say short words that are made up of a consonant, then a vowel and then another consonant
such as van, met, nip, mug etc such as pet, and ask your child to tell you what sounds they can
hear in the words. Ask them what the beginning sound is. Ask them what the end sound is. Ask
what the middle sound is.
High frequency words can be learned by writing them on post it notes and sticking them on cars
to race around the bedroom or putting them on pieces of furniture around the house. Don’t
overload your child and only learn 3 new words each time as well as consolidating some they
already know. When they are confident at reading them, practise writing them in a tray
containing sand, salt, rice or shaving foam to make the activity
fun.
5. Your child can use his basic phonics to try to write words he
doesn’t know by sight.
Extend the phonics sounding out activity in 4 above to include
longer words. Ask your child what sounds they hear in the word.
Encourage your child to put up a finger for each sound they hear
and then count how many sounds there are in the word. This is a
good game to play in the car as you and your child can call what
they see and say the sounds. This is a stage of development that needs lots of verbal practise.
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6. Your child can start to write explanations, simple stories, lists, news and labels.
Encourage your child to help you write things – Happy Birthday in cards, add items on the end of
shopping lists, notes for Grandparents, labels for toy boxes etc.
7. Your child can try to put full stops into his writing.
When reading books, look at the full stops. Discuss what they are
and why they are there. Show them full stops in your books,
newspapers, magazines, on the computer etc.
8. Your child can write at least 80% of letter shapes correctly.
Group the letters into those with the same pattern eg. c, o, a, d, g, and practise writing those
together. Always say the pattern as you write it. Make it fun by writing in sand/salt/rice on a tray
or put shaving foam in the side of the shower/bath and write in that. Have you ever tried using a
water pistol to write in the garden or by the side of a pool.