Cherrywood Community Primary School
How can I support my child with Writing?
By the end of Year R, the children are expected to be writing simple sentences by themselves. So what does the journey throughout the year look like?
Children need to be confident in these three areas to be successful writers:
Supporting your child to spell/sound out words
This is Fred the frog from our phonics program, RWI.
Fred only speaks in sounds, he can't use words.
We teach the children how to sound out words using their "Fred fingers"
Please see below a clip of the children learning to write some 3 letter words using their "Fred fingers"
Using our “Fred fingers” to spell 3 letter words
Supporting motor skills
It is so important for children to develop their gross and fine motor skills. Building up strength in their arm and hand muscles will help them hold a pencil correctly and have more control when drawing and writing.
How can I support my child's gross motor skills?
- Trips to the park
- Riding a bike/scooter
- Space to freely run & jump
- Balancing across beams/planks
How can I support my child's fine motor skills?
- Playdough/putty
- Threading with beads and string/thread
- Practising cutting with scissors
- Using tweezers or pegs
Forming letters
It is so important that children form letters in the correct orientation and start at the right place, even if this means their letters are a bit messy at first! This will ensure that when the children start joining letters later on in their school life, they will be able to do it easily.
Letter rhymes we use to help with letter formation
Supporting Communication and Language
It is really important to develop children's language skills, because language is at the heart of all other learning. In school, we 'test' the children's language ability using a fun computer program called "Language link" in their first few weeks at school and those children who are identified as below age appropriate have extra support throughout the school year.
Mrs Cornwell, our Speech and Language Learning Support Assistant, takes children who need a bit of extra help either 1:1 or in groups, depending on the level of support they need. Day to day in the classroom, we focus on language by reading many stories to the children each day, acting them out, providing role play areas and having lots of photographs of the children around the classroom.
How you can support your child's language development in three easy steps:
- Modelling back correctly (if they say "I want a nana" you could model back "You want a banana?")
- Repeating their sentence but adding new words (If they say "I saw bus" you could model back "I saw a big red bus")
- Changing their words to introduce them to more exciting choices (If they say "That elephant is so big" you could model back "I know isn't he enormous?")
What will really help my child's language development?
- Reading lots of stories, discussing characters and main events
- Playing with and talking to your child as much as possible
- Spending less time on an iPad or in front of a screen
- Dictating their play as they are playing
- Introducing your child to new words
- Exciting experiences that they can talk about e.g. visiting a zoo, aquarium, farm