The writing standards of our youngest writers.
Our youngest group of writers – the primary ones – have finally settled in nicely into their new primary school environment, two months into the term. One quick look at their writing skills and we are convinced that each new generation of kids can write better than the previous one. This is very much attributed to the parents’ increased level of education in general and their constant pursuit of educational excellence for their kids – inevitably pushing writing standards to a higher level than before. To give you a general idea of these standards, we are going to share with you 3 pieces of writing from our primary one students. They were asked to write about “My first day in school’:
Student A
Current read: Billy Goats Gruff
My first day in school
My first day in school was scary. I went to the school hall with my mum. There were many teachers. So fierece. One girl was crying. One boy carried same water bottle as me. Star Wars water bottle. The princple stand on the stage and told us to sit down. Her voice so loud. I also want to cry.
Comment: Now you may say that this is not a good piece. It is true … but this piece actually comes from a low-ability student. For a low-ability kid to write like this, we think it is pretty good. In fact this piece shows an increase in the standard of writing of kids in this group compared to what we have seen in previous years. Most words were correctly spelled in the above piece, we can understand what the child is saying, the punctuations are in place and there are attempts at grammatical accuracy in several places- one notch up from the scripts in the past.
Student B
Current read: Adventure Box: Spy in a muddle
My first day in school
When I entered the hall, I could see many students and teachers. The hall was very big and noisy. It was a bigger hall than the one in my kindergarten. There were smartly-dressed prefects carrying signboards. There were pictures of two important people on the left and right side of the stage. I think they are photographs of the President and his wife.
Comment: Pretty smooth sentences with no grammatical mistake. Words are all correctly spelled. The sentence structures are very much like those found in Adventure Box. The student is in the middle-ability group.
Student C
Current read: Dragon Dawn
My first day in school
The hall was filled with a sea of nameless faces. My palms grew cold and clammy as I approached my class. I was extremely nervous. I greeted my form teacher with a slight quiver in my voice. Thankfully she returned my greeting with a warm, pleasant smile. My class is 1 Magnolia. I love magnolias!
Comment: This student is from the high-ability group. Her vocab is far superior than the average student and we can already tell what her writing is going to be like when she is in primary six.
Reading clearly influences writing. You can see from the 3 scripts above. But what we want to share with you here is the fact that primary one students, from the 3 ability groups, are able to write better these days than previously. We will share mores scripts with you as more roll in this year. Very soon you will get a very good picture of what our kids these days are capable of, when they put pen to paper.
