WRITING IN YEAR 2

In Year 2, pupils should be taught to:

Develop positive attitudes towards and stamina for writing by:

  • writing narratives about personal experiences and those of others (real and fictional)
  • writing about real events
  • writing poetry
  • writing for different purposes.

Consider what they are going to write before beginning by:

  • planning or saying out loud what they are going to write about
  • writing down ideas and/or key words, including new vocabulary
  • encapsulating what they want to say, sentence by sentence
  • make simple additions, revisions and corrections to their own writing by:
  • evaluating their writing with the teacher and other pupils
  • re-reading to check that their writing makes sense and that verbs to indicate time are used correctly and consistently, including verbs in the continuous form
  • proof-reading to check for errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation [for example, ends of sentences punctuated correctly]
  • read aloud what they have written with appropriate intonation to make the meaning clear.
  • learning how to use both familiar and new punctuation correctly including full stops, capital letters, exclamation marks, question marks, commas for lists and apostrophes for contracted forms and the possessive (singular).

Learn how to use:

  • sentences with different forms: statement, question, exclamation, command
  • expanded noun phrases to describe and specify [for example, the blue butterfly]
  • the present and past tenses correctly and consistently including the progressive form
  • subordination (using when, if, that, or because) and co-ordination (using or, and, or but).

For handwriting, pupils should be taught to:

  • form lower-case letters of the correct size relative to one another
  • start using some of the diagonal and horizontal strokes needed to join letters and understand which letters, when adjacent to one another, are best left unjoined
  • write capital letters and digits of the correct size, orientation and relationship to one another and to lower case letters
  • use spacing between words that reflects the size of the letters.