Year Two Writing Composition
Knowledge, skills and Routines and resources
understanding
Pupils should be taught to: Reading and listening to whole books helps pupils to increase
their vocabulary and grammatical knowledge.
develop positive attitudes towards
Listen for connectives during read-aloud stories; big books; e-
and stamina for writing by:
stories.
writing narratives about Draw out high quality vocabulary from shared texts.
personal experiences and those Read a range of whole texts including picture books, class
of others (real and imagined) texts, big books, narrative poems.
writing about real events Write from real life experience; describe real things.
writing poetry Provide an enticing, well-stocked reading environment or
writing for different purposes. area.
Explore use of working walls; writing journals or logs; access
to dictionary and thesauruses; key vocabulary and word banks.
Consider what they are going to write Develop speaking and listening e.g. through oral retelling of
about before beginning by: known stories, inserting simple connectives, perhaps using
hand gestures.
planning or saying out loud
Pupils should understand, through being shown, the skills and
what they are going to write processes essential to writing: that is, thinking aloud as they
about collect ideas, drafting and re-reading to check the meaning is
writing down ideas and/or key clear.
words
Drama and role-play can contribute to quality of writing by
encapsulating what they want encouraging pupils to develop and order their ideas through
to say, sentence by sentence. playing roles and improvising scenes in various settings.
Provide dressing up boxes; hats and props; make links to other
curriculum subjects e.g. role-play connected to History topic.
Make simple additions and corrections
to their own writing by: Model all processes such as how to re-read to check for
meaning; how to re-read to check appropriate use of
evaluating their writing with tense.
others Regularly proof read sentences during shared writing, to
re-reading to check sense model how to edit and improve.
re-reading to check tense of
verbs
proof-reading to check for
errors of spelling, grammar and
punctuation.
Read aloud what they have written
with appropriate intonation to make
the meaning clear
Year Two Writing Composition
Pupils should be taught to: Focus on correct construction of simple sentences,
inserting a capital letter and full stop appropriately
develop their understanding of and sometimes independently.
grammar and punctuation by: Use a string of capital letters for effect, e.g. SUDDENLY
Introduce the apostrophe for a contracted form e.g. don’t,
learning how to use familiar
can’t, haven’t; also to mark singular possession in nouns e.g.
and new punctuation correctly,
the girl’s name.
including full stops, capital
letters, exclamation marks, Practical activity: show and talk about ‘Joanna’s coat’ or
question marks, commas for ‘Daniel’s pencil’ to understand the meaning of possession, and
lists and apostrophes for to count the number of owners.
contracted forms and the Activity: write all the letters of the uncontracted word on
possessive (singular). squared paper (e.g. would not). Show how the contracted
form (wouldn’t) uses fewer squares. Practise with other words
e.g. cannot – can’t, did not – didn’t.
Use capital letters for proper nouns e.g. Mrs Green, London;
Emma.
Draw the link between describing words and adjectives; show
that an adjective adds information about the noun e.g. a red
van; plain flour (noun phrase).
Model use of CL and FS during shared writing; have high
expectations of correct use.
Play sentence games including: jumbled sentences; finish my
sentence; beginnings and endings; rainbow sentences.
Role-play commands. Play Simon Says. Point out the verb.
Find and highlight direct speech. Use speech bubbles to
indicate spoken words. Model.
Learn how to use: Consistently use present and past tense of verbs when
speaking and writing e.g. catch caught; go went; see
sentences with different forms: saw. Also use continuous forms of verbs to mark actions
statement, question, in progress e.g. Sarah is skipping, Mum was shopping.
exclamation and command Play games and activities which reinforce tenses, e.g. I skip, I
expanded nouns phrases to skipped, I will skip.
describe and specify [e.g. the I go, I went, I will go.
blue butterfly]
Include games which practise continuous forms of verbs e.g. I
am going, I was going, I will be going.
the present and past tenses Use simple gender forms correctly e.g. his her; she he; him
correctly and consistently her.
including the progressive form Identify where direct speech occurs in a text, and notice
speech marks. Begin to use speech marks in own writing.
In speech and writing, develop coordinating conjunctions:
subordination (using when, if,
and, or, but, and subordinating conjunctions
that, or because) and co-
such as: when, if, that, because.
ordination (using or, and, or
Teach explicitly correct subject/verb agreement e.g. we did,
but)
they were etc. Model correct usage.
appropriate grammar for Year
2 in English Appendix 2 Try human sentences using pupils and large cards; drag and
Some features of written drop the conjunction into a whiteboard sentence.
Standard English. Clearly label classroom display to show proper nouns in
Use and understand the grammatical context.
terminology in English Appendix 2 Play games to describe things e.g. The Vicar’s Cat is an…
when discussing their writing. amiable cat, bossy cat, cute cat etc.
Have fun with Animal Alliterations e.g. an amazing ant, a
Year Two Writing Composition
beautiful butterfly.
Use drama and role-play to identify and practise use of formal
and informal registers. Role play Standard English by speaking
and acting as a ‘duchess’ or ‘king’; adults model this process.
