Writing Autumn 1

Cave Baby

A hairy mammoth takes a cheeky little baby on a thrilling ride through a moonlit landscape populated by a sabre-toothed tiger, a leaping hare, a laughing hyena and even, just maybe, by a big brown bear . . . But where are they going? And what has it to do with the baby's scribblings on the cave wall?

Main Outcome: Narrative re-telling

Astrogirl

Astrid loves space and she wants to be an astronaut! She has lots of fun with her Papa finding out what it takes to become one: from doing experiments and eating dried food, to getting used to near-zero gravity.

Main Outcome: Fact File about being an Astronaut

Vocabulary, Grammar & Punctuation

• Suffixes that can be added to verbs where no change is needed in the spelling of root words (e.g. helping, helped, helper)

• How words can combine to make sentences

• Joining words and joining clauses using and

• Sequencing sentences to form short narratives

• Separation of words with spaces

• Introduction to capital letters, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks to demarcate sentences

• Expanded noun phrases for description and specification [for example, the blue butterfly, plain flour, the man in the moon]

• Use of capital letters, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks to demarcate sentences

• Commas to separate items in a list

• Apostrophes to mark where letters are missing in spelling and to mark singular possession in nouns [for example, the girl’s name]

• Capital letters for names and the personal pronoun

Writing (Composition)

• Saying out loud what they are going to write about

• Composing a sentence orally before writing it

• Sequencing sentences to form short narratives

• Re-reading what they have written to check that it makes sense

• Discuss what they have written with the teacher or other pupils