Milestone Two

At Larch Tuition, our second milestone is all about nurturing young writers to create purposeful, cohesive, and expressive pieces of writing. Students embark on this stage by thoroughly planning their compositions. They engage in thoughtful discussions, exploring texts similar to the ones they intend to write, with the goal of understanding and learning from the structure, vocabulary, and grammar used. The importance of oral composition and rehearsal is emphasised as they progressively build a rich and diverse vocabulary, crafting sentences that vary in structure and length. Within the context of storytelling, students learn to create evocative settings, well-defined characters, and compelling plot lines, developing events and ideas using appropriate vocabulary.

Students become adept at evaluating and editing their own work, ensuring that their writing is effective and impactful. They learn to select the appropriate tense for various writing tasks and organise their compositions into logical and coherent structures, with paragraphs connected seamlessly. Conjunctions and pronouns are used skilfully to link sentences, paragraphs, or sections. Headings and subheadings aid in presentation, making the content reader-friendly.

We support our students to make precise choices when it comes to nouns and pronouns, ensuring clarity and cohesion while avoiding repetition. They explore a variety of sentence types, from statements and questions to exclamations and commands, and also understand the nuances of sentence length and structure, encompassing simple and compound sentences. Conjunctions, such as "when," "before," "after," "while," "so," and "because," are introduced to express time, place, and cause effectively.

Our students master the use of inverted commas to punctuate direct speech, with a focus on accurate placement. They demonstrate proficiency in using full stops, capital letters, exclamation marks, and question marks with accuracy. The use of compound sentences with coordinating conjunctions becomes a natural part of their writing. They grasp the art of using prepositions, understanding when to use "a" and "an" appropriately. The proofreading process is vital, helping students identify and rectify spelling and punctuation errors, along with proposing changes to enhance grammar and vocabulary consistency.