Year 6 Writing Examples

In this page, you will find some examples of what is expected of Year 6 writers who are meeting all the age-related requirements. SCROLL DOWN to find out what to expect from your children and some of the reasons why this is expected at Year 6. All the examples below are from "extended writing" sessions, which are generally over two lessons and are completed independently having spent previous lessons building up and practising writing skills.

Why is this writing at the age-related expectation (ARE) for the end of Year 6?

• Almost entirely grammatically correct, allowing for occasional punctuation and spelling errors.

• Capitals, full stops, commas, apostrophes and question marks are all mostly accurate.

• Uses the full range of punctuation to include evidence of dashes, brackets, hyphens, semi-colons and colons.

• Writing structure, formality and purpose should be clearly met. For example, the tone and layout of a newspaper should be clearly different to a narrative or a set of instructions.

• Handwriting should be neat, joined and legible.

• Correct tense throughout.

• A range of multi-clause sentences, including some thought into when you would use shorter or longer sentences. This is why children learn about grammar skills, such as: fronted adverbials, relative clauses, subordinate clauses, rhetorical questions and so on.

• A range of devices to create flow in the writing.

• Evidence that they have checked, improved and/or corrected their writing and spelling.

Below is what writing should look like halfway through the year. It is not yet meeting all the criteria as set out above but it is very close.

Below is what "greater depth" writing may look like halfway through the year. Note the additional flair to the sentences, improved spelling and more consistent, challenging punctuation.