Improving Written Work at Key Stage 3
English Department
Improving your written work at key stage 3
Have you ever tried really hard at a piece of writing: your handwriting’s lovely, you’ve done your best with spelling and punctuation, but your English teacher still doesn’t think your work would get the level you want for Key Stage 3 teacher assessment?
Frustrating, isn’t it?
What should you do?
The first thing to do is to read the comments your teacher has written on your work. Then, talk to your teacher – be prepared to spend a little time, outside lessons if necessary, while they explain what you could do to improve it.
The National Curriculum Level descriptions are very general. You can see them below. They are written to describe your achievement across a range of work and not just one particular piece. This is one reason we don’t put a level on one individual piece of work. Another reason is that educational research has found that if you put a number and a comment on a piece of work, most students only look at the number! We feel it is the comment that will tell you how to improve your work and that is much more important.
English teachers are used to working with the levels and can show you points about your work which you need to change or develop in order to get the overall standard of your work to the next level. There are also features of particular types (genres) of writing that you can improve.
In order to explain how we might assess different types of writing, the English Department is going to produce a series of examples which will be available to you on the student centre and the website. If you have a parent, older sister or brother, cousin or friend who could help you go through the work in this pack, that might be easier and more fun.
You will be doing work like this in your English lessons and spending a bit of time on this at home could improve your work a lot.
General points
How do English teachers assess your work?
When
Improving your written work at key stage 3
Have you ever tried really hard at a piece of writing: your handwriting’s lovely, you’ve done your best with spelling and punctuation, but your English teacher still doesn’t think your work would get the level you want for Key Stage 3 teacher assessment?
Frustrating, isn’t it?
What should you do?
The first thing to do is to read the comments your teacher has written on your work. Then, talk to your teacher – be prepared to spend a little time, outside lessons if necessary, while they explain what you could do to improve it.
The National Curriculum Level descriptions are very general. You can see them below. They are written to describe your achievement across a range of work and not just one particular piece. This is one reason we don’t put a level on one individual piece of work. Another reason is that educational research has found that if you put a number and a comment on a piece of work, most students only look at the number! We feel it is the comment that will tell you how to improve your work and that is much more important.
English teachers are used to working with the levels and can show you points about your work which you need to change or develop in order to get the overall standard of your work to the next level. There are also features of particular types (genres) of writing that you can improve.
In order to explain how we might assess different types of writing, the English Department is going to produce a series of examples which will be available to you on the student centre and the website. If you have a parent, older sister or brother, cousin or friend who could help you go through the work in this pack, that might be easier and more fun.
You will be doing work like this in your English lessons and spending a bit of time on this at home could improve your work a lot.
General points
How do English teachers assess your work?
When