Help children to be more independent when self-checking and evaluating their writing, by offering an EYFS success criteria grid with visual prompts of sentence writing steps. Children can mark their own work before asking a friend to peer review...

This blog post includes a video demonstration and a free print to download (including a cursive option) so that you can use this sentence writing success criteria grid within your setting, or at home with your child for home-learning. I introduced this to my own Reception class towards the end of the year in the Summer term, and have done the same for my own Reception aged child at home...

EYFS Writing | Success Criteria grid for Self Evaluation

Some of you may feel surprised to see a 'checklist' on my blog, especially as we are so play focused with a big push towards the child-led approach - but bear with me, because as formal as a printable may seem, this is actually a really great way of keeping the 'independence' within writing for children, giving them the skills to take on the role of 'Teacher' themselves. The approach to writing doesn't change, these grids can be used successfully with completely child-led, independent pieces of writing as well as more formal writing activities. 

This enables the child to self-evaluate their own work independently, before simply relying on an adult. The success criteria are not for a 'set activity' or an 'adult led' piece of work - they are some of the steps to successful sentence writing throughout the stages of the EYFS whilst working towards the Early Learning Goals. 

By making the success criteria more interactive and easily accessible, within continuous provision, you are increasing the chances of the child remembering and attempting to work towards their next steps.

NB: It is important to let each individual child know just what your expectations are in terms of which steps they currently need to remember, and remind them that some of the other steps are there for them to work towards in the future.

If you would prefer to watch a video talk through and demonstration of this writing success criteria grid in action, you can watch my YouTube video below:

(if you found this helpful, please give the video a thumbs up/like so that YouTube is more likely to show this to others who may benefit)

EYFS Writing goal for the end of Reception: children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible.

Obviously some of the success criteria below are not mentioned in the ELG, but it is good practise to teach these writing rules to children who are ready:

• Sound out the words - use phonic knowledge to sound out a word and write those sounds down on paper to form a phonetically plausible word.
• Lower case letters - do not use capital letters within writing unless it is the start of a sentence or a name. If your child uses cursive letters, then this can incorporate this expectation too - eg, use cursive letters within writing.
• Write on the line - a visual reminder to help children remember to write from left to right, on the line so that writing is easier to read and follow
• Capital letters at the start - At the start of writing and after a full stop
• finger spaces - they can use their own finger, or a finger space 'pointer' to place after each word before starting a new one.
• Full stop at the end - make sure this is at the end of a sentence that 'makes sense'. Have they finished giving the information before adding a full stop?
• Make your sentence longer - this is often with the use of conjunctions such as 'and', 'because', 'then' etc.
• Give more information - This can be a new sentence after the first sentence. For example, " I have a cat. My cat is red and fat."
• Can you read what you have written? - This is a really important one to check both immediately and also later on when they are less likely to be remembering what they wrote! 

Children can colour in the stars of the steps they feel they have completed successfully, before taking to a friend to peer review. Friends can then tick if they agree before the grid is taken to the teacher along with the work. Slips can be kept as evidence or photographed and used again if they are laminated.

Would you like to download this Success Criteria writing grid to print and use yourself?

First - pop your email below to join my mailing list: (box at the bottom of the post) 

Next - Click on the arrow at the top right of this image to open up the free download

 

Cursive option below: 

 

I hope you find this helpful! Please let me know if you need an alternative, or, if you would like to share your images of this grid in action you can join my facebook group or tag me on social media @arthurwears.

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