Year 5 and 6 Writing
Age-related expectations of what your child should
know by the end of Year 6
Explanations and ideas of how to help your child
Transcription - Handwriting
Write legibly, fluently and with increasing speed by:
Choosing which shape of a letter to use when given choices
and deciding whether or not to join specific letters.
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Choosing the writing implement that is best suited for a
task.
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Help your child to sit correctly at a table and to
hold a writing implement comfortably.
Help them to join letters in accordance with the
school’s agreed style.
Help your child to practise handwriting at an
increased pace for extended periods whilst
retaining accuracy and neatness.
Help them to realise that sometimes an unjoined
style is more appropriate when labelling a diagram or
writing an email address.
Ensure that your child has lots of different things
to write with e.g. a pencil for making notes and a pen
for formal writing.
Use different coloured pens for particular reasons,
e.g. the word ‘warning’ could be written in red.
Composition
Plan their writing by:
Identifying the audience for and purpose of the writing.
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Selecting the appropriate form and using other similar
writing.
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Noting and developing initial ideas, drawing on reading and
research where necessary.
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In writing narratives, considering how authors have
developed characters and settings in what pupils have
read, listened to or seen performed.
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Using other similar writing as models for their own
compositions.
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Help your child to identify the purposes for
particular pieces of writing. This will help them
make their writing appropriate for the audience.
For example, how would an information leaflet for
fellow pupils be different to one for adults.
Encourage your child to use a favourite poem as a
model for their own writing.
Look at how different things are written, why they
are written that way and who they are written for.
Eg a football programme, a guide to a place you visit,
leaflets and magazines
Encourage your child to think aloud when recording
ideas. Help them to record these ideas in different
ways. E.g. notes, pictures and spider diagrams.
Support them in using these ideas to enhance their
writing.
Help them to realise that they need to choose the
ideas that have impact on the reader.
Support your child to write in the style of a
particular author. How would Roald Dahl compare to
J.K Rowling?
Could your child create a new character for one of
their favourite stories?
Could your child take one of their favourite
characters and place them in a new exciting setting?
Draft and write by:
Selecting appropriate grammar and vocabulary,
understanding how such choices can change and enhance
meaning.
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Use a thesaurus with your child to build up banks of
synonyms. E.g. different words for happy.
Give you child different synonyms for the word
tired e.g. sleepy, exhausted, worn out and fatigued
and see how they affect a sentence.
When writing about a subject you could help your
child use specialist vocabulary so that it matches
the topic.
In narratives;
Describing settings, characters and atmosphere.
Prompt your child to use varied vocabulary choices
and sentence structures to describe settings and
characters.
 Your child could try to include:
Expanded noun phrases - Noun phrases are groups of
words that work together and contain a noun. e.g. “The
girl…” Expanded noun phrases give extra detail. e.g.
“The tall, young girl…”
Adverbial phrases - An adverb is a word that describes
a verb (an action or a doing word). He ate his breakfast
quickly. The word quickly is an adverb. It tells us how he
ate (the verb) his breakfast. Sometimes more than one
word can do the adverb's job. This is called an adverbial
phrase. He ate his lunch really quickly.
Relative clauses – try adding a relative clause to a
sentence.
A relative clause is a special type of subordinate clause
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that modifies a noun. It often does this by using a
relative pronoun such as who or that to refer back to
that noun, though the relative pronoun that is often
omitted. A relative clause may also be attached to a
clause. In that case, the pronoun refers back to the
whole clause, rather than referring back to a noun.
In the examples, the relative clauses are underlined,
and both the pronouns and the words they refer back to
are in bold.
That’s the boy who lives near school. [who refers back to
boy]
The prize that I won was a book. [that refers back to
prize] The prize I won was a book. [the pronoun that is
omitted] Tom broke the game, which annoyed Ali. [which
refers back to the whole clause]
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Integrating dialogue to convey character and advance the
action.
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Précising longer passages.
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Using a wide range of devices to build cohesion within and
across paragraphs.
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Using further organisational and presentational devices to
structure text and to guide the reader [for example,
headings, statements, underlining].
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Starting sentences in different ways makes writing
more interesting for the reader. Try starting
sentences with words that end in ‘ly’ and ‘ing’. For
example, Sitting on the mat, the cat purred happily.
Silently, the cat slept on the fluffy mat.
Integrating dialogue can help to develop a
character. Think about what they say, why they are
saying it and how they say it. Look in books to see
how authors do this.
Try to keep the dialogue meaningful so that it moves
the story on.
Help your child to include some non-standard English
when writing a dialogue for a character.
Help your child précis longer passages. Identify the
key points and rewrite them in their own words. You
could put the key points on a spider diagram first.
Challenge your child to rewrite their favourite book
in 100 words.
Support your child to create a range of sentences
about a particular topic. Help them to arrange them
in a logical sequence.
Help your child to start a sentence with a rhetorical
question which is answered within the paragraph. Do
you know the benefits of eating a healthy diet?
Encourage your child to link paragraphs together.
This can be done by repeating a key word or phrase
in the final sentence of one paragraph and the
opening sentence of the next.
Using language like: firstly, next, moreover,
furthermore will help your child to make links
between paragraphs.
Help them to open their writing with an introduction
and to summarise with a conclusion at the end.
Encourage your child to ask a question as a heading
or a sub-heading and then answer it.
Use bullet points to organise material.
Integrate diagrams, charts or graphs.
Link the closing paragraph to the opening paragraph.
Include a glossary.
Include a fact box.
Could they include references and a bibliography?
Evaluate and edit by:
Assessing the effectiveness of their own and others'
writing.
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Proposing changes to Vocabulary, Grammar & Punctuation
to enhance effects and clarify meaning.
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Get your child to check their writing to see if it has
impact and is suitable for the intended audience.
Can they tell what is good about their writing and
also suggest ways of how to improve it?
Help your child to find words or phrases in their
writing that they could improve. E.g. “You have used
Proof-reading for spelling and punctuation errors.
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Ensuring the consistent and correct use of tense
throughout a piece of writing.
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Ensuring correct subject and verb agreement when using
singular and plural, distinguishing between the language of
speech and writing and choosing the appropriate register.
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Performing their own compositions, using appropriate
intonation, volume, and movement so that meaning is clear.
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but to join those two clauses. Could you think of a
better way to join them?”
Use a thesaurus to find better words.
Challenge your child. “Could you write a sentence
with a colon in?”
Help your child to write in different tenses. Use the
past tense for a narrative, present tense in a nonchronological report and the future tense to
describe what they will do at the weekend.
Could they write a story in two tenses with the use
of ‘flashbacks’?
Encourage your child to write for different
audiences. A letter to a friend would have nonstandard colloquial language in whereas a letter to a
supermarket manager asking for donations to a
school raffle would be written in Standard English.
Help your child with correct verb/subject
agreement. Is ‘He walk to school’ correct?
Is ‘We was washing the car’ correct?
Celebrate your child’s finished pieces by asking
them to read it to a family member. Encourage them
to speak loudly and clearly and with expression.
Check that they are pausing for punctuation and
changing their voice for question and exclamation
marks. Perhaps they could alter the volume to
capture the audience attention. You could even film
them doing this and bring it into school for the
teacher to see.