stories

[bubbles123]

what would be expected for a passable story, e.g plot, grammer, punctuation and how long should it be in terms of A4 sides...any ideas please. are there any good books you could suggest please..!!

[Ladymuck]

Which school? The boys schools are typically not looking for stories as such.

[bubbles123]

the schools i have in mind are - tiffin girls, non such and wallingtons..thanks

[ToadMum]

DS2 got through to the second round of the '500 Word' competition a couple of years ago when he was in year 6; there are some tips on the website

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00rfvk1

Grammar is important, but spelling equally so - and one of the problems is not always recognising that one may have spelt something incorrectly. You could try asking your DD to type words into something like Word and use the spellchecker to highlight those which are incorrect and give the correct spelling (making sure that it is set to 'English' English, of course ). Or, of course, just correct her spelling yourself by hand, or get her to use a dictionary.

[SunlampVexesEel]

the schools i have in mind are - tiffin girls, non such and wallingtons..thanks

1 or 2 sides of A4

Structure, spelling, grammar, vocab far more important than length

[PurpleDuck]

the schools i have in mind are - tiffin girls, non such and wallingtons..thanks

1 or 2 sides of A4

Structure, spelling, grammar, vocab far more important than length

I agree that length is not the most important thing in a piece of creative writing, but it can depend on how long the creative writing exam session is. DS had either 45 or 50 mins in Wilson's to write his essay and apparently the boys in his room were told by an invigilator that they should aim for at least 2 sides, as 1 side wouldn't really cut it.

[yoyo123]

Vary ways of starting sentences.
Fronted adverbials, expanded noun phrases, subordinate conjunctions, subjunctive so and all the other stuff that DfE are so fond of.

[mumsdarling2]

I didn't think invigilators were allowed to give such suggestions!

Anyway I know for sure that DS did not write 2 sides and he qualified to put Wilson's on the CAF.

[PurpleDuck]

I was a bit surprised to hear that, too... Good luck to your DS - I hope he gets a place at Wilson's.