How does writing improve between year 3 and year 5?
Today we’ve released the results of our year 5 Sharing Standards project to participating schools. In total, 7,237 pupils from 137 schools across the country completed the project, and 1,574 teachers took part in the judging. We now have results from both year 3 and year 5, allowing us to compare the two year groups. A few days ago we published a blog showing that on average, pupils improve on our writing scale by 32 points between year 3 and year 5: from 490 to 522.
That’s all very well, but what does this progress look like?
Here are two scripts which illustrate this difference. One is a median year 3 script, which achieved a scaled score of 490. The second script is a median year 5 script, which achieved a scaled score of 522.
Previously, I’ve analysed the difference between scripts by looking at vocabulary and sentence structure. This time, I’d also like to add in a short discussion of text structure.
Vocabulary
I don’t think there is a huge vocabulary gulf between the two scripts. The vocabulary in the second script is fairly straightforward, but it is appropriate to the task. The vocabulary in the first script could perhaps benefit from a bit more sophistication and originality, and also from less repetition about the ‘special’ time machine and asteroid.
Sentence structure
There’s a bigger difference in the way sentences are constructed in these two pieces. The first piece has a few run-on sentences, and the structures are quite basic. There are fewer errors in the second piece, and some more complex structures — for example, lists of both words and clauses.
Text structure
I think this is the biggest difference between the two pieces. In the first piece, events just seem to happen one after the other, with the classic ‘and then this and then that and then this’ structure you often see with young children. It’s also quite hard to work out exactly what the relationship is between the various events, who ‘We’ are, where this is all taking place, etc. By contrast, there is more coherence and overall structure to the second piece. The pupil has organised the material in more of a logical pattern. The paragraphs aren’t demarcated perfectly, but each paragraph does have its own theme.
So how do we get pupils to improve?
An analysis like the one above is just the first step. I’ve tried to describe the differences between the scripts, but we also need to explain how such differences come about — and, therefore, how we can help pupils to improve their writing. The risk of presenting scripts by pupils at different ages is that it leads us to assume that pupils will automatically improve just by getting older. Of course maturation will make some difference, but the activities pupils do in class will make a difference too! We don’t just want to see comparative judgement used to measure writing. We want it to help improve writing, and we think that analyses like the one above are the first step in that process. We’ll blog more about this in the future, but for now, over to you — how can we help pupils improve the quality of their writing? What in-class activities will make the difference?
