From the Deputy Principal

Beginning the Year as Writers

It's been a great start to the year and our children have really settled in well and are growing in confidence in their classroom and around the school.

One of the areas we love to see children showing confidence in is their writing.

At St Paul, we see our children as really capable writers and authors and we recognise that this looks different for each child.

Some children aren't writing letters yet, some children might not be using punctuation yet and some children might not be creating plots that make sense to other people yet.

But every single child in our school is an author who is writing stories and other texts at school.

We are committed to ensuring our children see themselves as capable authors and we encourage you to be encouraging your child to be authors at home too.

Here are some tips that we use at school which you can use at home as well to help encourage your child to be using their author skills at home.

1. Ask your child what they have been writing about at school and, if you can, come in and see their books or Writers Notebooks.
2. Encourage children to write about whatever they want. 
3. Don't correct children's writing, instead encourage them and celebrate what they have achieved. It is ok for children to use temporary spelling in their writing. 
   (We support children to grow and explicitly teach many skills but we support growth through conferencing not by writing corrections on children's writing.)
4. Let your child tell you what they have written. It might not all match what you can see on the page but it is real to them and this is them practicing their author skills.

We thank you for your support and hope that you see and hear all about your child being an author this year!