“I’m a parent looking to help my son brush up on his studies before he starts Year 3 in September, he is a little behind on his Year 2 work. I would like help explaining punctuation to him and silent letters. He lacks in confidence to put a sentence together.”
Children have so much to think about when writing – How do I spell this? Do I have a capital letter? Does my sentence make sense? Do I have a full stop? Does my story flow? Is my writing neat?
Writing
Within the first 5 minutes of writing they have no doubt second guessed themselves and their ideas 20+ times. It is important to focus on one thing at a time. If you are wanting to develop writing – tell your child not to worry so much about spelling and sentence structure but the ideas of the story.
Using a Story Board Template will help children get their ideas on paper. Drawing a picture and writing a simple sentence to explain what happens at the start of a story, what happens in the middle (the problem) and what happens at the end (how the problem is fixed) will encourage children to plan their story out before writing it. Encouraging children to write about their own interests also helps them get started – if they like dogs perhaps they can write a story about a dog or a procedure about how to wash a dog? If they likes fairies can they write a story about fairies in the garden?
If children get stuck you can use our story ideas resource. It is important to encourage children to talk about their writing as they go.
teaching resource
Story Ideas Sentence Starter Pack
Use this story ideas kit to help your students choose a topic to write about.
Sentence Structure and Punctuation
If you want to focus on sentence structure and punctuation and making sure their sentences make sense, using sentence starters like the below resources are a good way to encourage some simple sentence writing:
teaching resource
Super Sentence Starter Sack
Choose a sentence starter from the Super Sentence Sack to start your students off and writing.
A little tip is to get your child to say the sentence in their head first then repeat it to you – record what they say on a recording device like your phone. Then, when they go to write their sentence, they will not need to remember the words. Instead, then can focus on the spelling and use of capital letters and full stops.
Our new punctuation worksheet pack is simple and easy for you to print out at home, and work through with your child. It covers full stops, exclamation marks, question marks, speech marks, apostrophes and commas.
Spelling
If you want to focus on spelling, in particular silent letters, we have a few resources that can help with this. The first is a silent letters worksheet pack that covers the main silent letter combinations seen in the English language. There is also a silent letters match up card game that is a fun way for children to rote learn the different combinations.
teaching resource
Silent Letters Worksheet Pack
A set of five worksheets to consolidate students' understanding of silent letters.
Another resource that may be useful is the sound families posters. You could do a number of things with these posters. Print them out and stick them on the fridge or in your child’s bedroom. Get your child to come up with other words that may sit in each of the sound families. Use big sticks of chalk and draw pictures of the different words on some concrete outside. Make it fun!
I know there is a lot of information here. I hope it has helped a little.
If you have a helpful idea or question, please do not hesitate to contact us in the comments below or via email at, [email protected].
The main point is that when it comes to writing, spelling, sentence structure and punctuation there is a lot for children to learn.
Focus on one thing at a time, and over time it will all come together.
Comments