Last 3 weeks before Inde exams, tips on improving writing?

[loveyouradvice]

My daughter's decided she wants to focus on her writing in the last 3 weeks (ie once we've taken Xmas out!)... probably a wise choice since this seems the most erratic.

She has a fab creative imagination but her stories seem to score 4B with her teacher, 5B with her tutor.....Hmm! Bit of a shock and not able to get clearer answers.

She needs to brush up on her punctuation, use more connectives (why???), vary the sentence length, add some ellipses/colons etc.

Does anyone have top tips for simple exercises beyond writing full stories? (which we're doing)

I'm thinking at the mo of 10 min writing exercise a day, where I give her a starter sentence (eg It was snowing when I got home) and she just writes, choosing a couple of things to ensure she includes (eg active description or apostrophes).... Want to make it fun if possible to keep her enthusiasm up, which has been a bit dented by form teacher....

All ideas very welcome - and love to know if anyone has tried the above and found it helpful???

[estelle]

Hi

I think this is the most difficult part of the exam under pressure-or maybe both of mine are not so good at story writing! Anyway, our top tips are to think of the five senses when writing an imaginative piece-so include something relating to taste, touch etc etc. and always put in a metaphor, simile, personification, alliteration and speech! You could also try writing opening paragraphs or endings for a given title. It's a pity it comes to this kind of drill for creative writing, but both mine got through fine!

Good luck!

[loveyouradvice]

Huge thanks .. and it is isnt it?

I was just getting really excited she had developed such a strong voice, using her powerful imagination to create some fabulous stories with great vocabulary.... and hadnt worried too much about punctuation, etc and now realise I need to!

She's keen so think she will probably pick up super fast - just hope I can coach her in the right areas!! Anyone know good sites for highlighting what we should look at - child-friendly or parent friendly???

[Daogroupie]

These things can be picked up very fast, my students go from being overwhelmed at the targets in one group lesson to using them with ease in the next. They have no problem remembering them because they see the other students using them again and again. I can't see how your tutor and form teacher can be a whole sats level apart when it comes to assessing her creative writing. How does your tutor explain this? There are very clear differences between a student writing a 4b and a 5b passage. If she is not using puncuation properly then she is not using Level 5 punctuation so cannot be given a Level 5 mark on a passage that does not include Level 5 punctuation. In terms of having fun my students seem to revel in working with targets and trying to beat them each time. Parents comment that they have never seen them have so much fun in a lesson. Probably does not work with all students but have not met one yet who does not get involved and start shouting out with the rest of them. It is great that she wants to focused on the writing. I am biased but it is where most marks get lost. DG

[judy6]

Look at some newspaper articles to get an idea of which parts of speech are used to good effect by the professionals. [Edited by moderator]. Keep practising.

[loveyouradvice]

Daogroupie, rather wishing you were my daughter's tutor! I'm now beginning to tease it out and suspect that she is somewhere between the two levels - ie she seems to have the vocabulary, story structure (usually) and spelling of level 5 but is inconsistent around paragraph and punctuation use, and doesnt always use complex sentences.

Her writing is very alive, full of a strong personal voice but she will often forget to add in sufficent detail and get carried away with the action.