Key Stage 2 (KS2)
7 to 12 years

Fine tuning the reading and writing of our maturing students

introduction

Key Stage 2 allows us to hone our children’s ability to read and write. Our aim is for our
students to complete our course on par with, if not exceeding, the level of their peers in the UK in just a
fraction of the time. We want to equip our pupils with an excellent command of the spoken and written word by the time they leave.

In Key Stage 2, children are taught to communicate their ideas, organising them coherently for a reader. Emphasis is placed on audience awareness, purpose and context of a text. We try to expose children to an increasingly wider vocabulary. Children are also taught how to plan, revise and evaluate their writing. Alongside the written objectives, we encourage children to read frequently and we aim to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment.

Introduction

Our KS2 classes write effectively for a range of purposes and audiences, selecting appropriate language.

We try to make instruction meaningful integrating writing with a purpose, for instance, letter writing,

Creative Writing Competitions, Amazon book reviews, and letter writing are all methods of writing with a purpose. During creative writing, we learn to describe settings, characters and atmosphere.

We integrate dialogue to convey character and advance the action. This is one area of language that the Swiss system lacks and we take pride in offering this tricky skill to our students, allowing them the opportunity to be creative and show case their language ability.

Pupils are taught to use a range of cohesive devices to make their writing flow, including conjunctions, adverbials of time and place, pronouns and synonyms.

These creative writing opportunities  are not usually offered in the Swiss system.  Children rarely write independently until they are more middle school (Cycle d’Orientation) ages.