Good Shepherd School

  • Write and publish work using a computer

  • Talk to your child about your/their writing

  • Listen to children talk about their written activities

  • Talk about famous books, what makes them good? How does the type of language help to interest the reader?

  • Play a variety of word games, e.g. scrabble, crosswords and association

  • Ask your child to read over their writing to find and correct mistakes

  • Practise sounding out letters and words to help with spelling

  • Practise writing words at home

  • Notice captial letters and full stops when reading books

  • Use a word card to find words to practise writing quickly

  • Practise writing words on a whiteboard, or make words with plastic letters

  • Play word games like ‘I Spy’ and write the answers by listening to the sounds

  • Play matching games where sentences joined together correctly make sense

  • Write stories and make cards for the family using correct punctuation

  • Ask your child to write about pictures they draw or get them to tell you the story so that you can write it for them

  • Listen to the sounds in unknown words and write them down

  • Practise writing the Good Shepherd words on a whiteboard

  • Write lists - ‘Things I need for the shop’, ‘Games to play when I am bored’

  • Encourage your child to use a variety of precise words and phrases to add information, by looking up the origin and meaning of words in a dictionary

  • Write about interesting events that you have been to and share with family members

  • Encourage your child to underline spelling attempts to check at a later time

  • Get your child to make accurate attempts at unknown words by saying the word out loud and writing down every sound they can hear

  • Write about topics that really interest your child and write in styles they enjoy, e.g. comic strips, lists, poetry

  • Encourage your child to read back over their written work, one sentence at a time and see if any changes could be made

  • Encourage your child to experiment with punctuation when writing

  • When reading together, look for interesting vocabulary to use in writing and different ways to start sentences

  • Begin to use dictionary skills and talk about alphabetical order

  • Ask questions about their writing so they can expand on their ideas

  • Get your child to practise their letter formation, sitting letters on the line and the size of letters

  • Read over written work and help your child to add interesting words to hook the reader, use a thesaurus to find ‘wow’ words

  • Learn weekly spelling words (including high frequency words and GSS words)

  • When learning to write sentences, encourage your child to put a fullstop after each idea

  • ITC LINKS