Years 5 and 6 English · Key Stage 2 · Writing – composition

Years 5 and 6 proofreading and performing: a guide for parents

In Years 5 and 6, children are expected to proofread their own writing for spelling and punctuation errors, and to perform their own compositions aloud, using intonation, volume and movement so that the meaning is clear. These two jobs finish the writing process: proofreading catches the slips that distract a reader, and performing shows what the writing was meant to sound like.

Proofreading and performing writing, explained

Most teachers separate editing from proofreading. Editing is about making the writing better: stronger ideas, a more precise verb, a sentence moved to a better place. Proofreading comes last and is about accuracy: spelling and punctuation errors that would get in the reader’s way. Children are taught to do the editing first, because there is little point polishing a sentence that is about to be rewritten. The curriculum asks for proofreading for spelling and punctuation errors specifically, which keeps the job small enough to do well.

Proofreading is harder than it sounds, because a writer sees what they meant to write rather than what is on the page. So children are taught techniques rather than just told to “check it”. They read aloud quietly while pointing at each word, so that a missing word or a doubled word cannot be skipped. They make one pass for one kind of error at a time: first capital letters and full stops, then apostrophes and speech punctuation, then spelling. Some read the piece backwards, one sentence at a time, so that the story does not carry them along. They underline any word that looks wrong and check it in a dictionary or against the statutory word list for Years 5 and 6 in the curriculum, which includes words such as necessary, accommodate and definite.

At this age, children know a lot of punctuation, from apostrophes and inverted commas to commas, brackets and dashes, and proofreading is where they use it deliberately. Teachers also encourage each child to know their own usual slips. One pupil mixes up there and their, another forgets that a spoken sentence needs its punctuation inside the inverted commas, another writes of when they mean off. A short personal checklist of three or four items catches far more than a general instruction to look for mistakes. Waiting until the next day before proofreading also helps, because the writing looks less familiar.

The second half of the objective is performance. Children perform their own compositions, such as a poem, a scene from a play, a story opening or a short speech, so that the audience understands them. Intonation is the rise and fall of the voice. Volume is about being heard at the back of the room, and also about knowing when to drop to a whisper for effect. Movement means gesture, facial expression and posture. The key phrase in the curriculum is “so that meaning is clear”: movement and expression are there to make the words clearer, not to turn the performance into a show. Teachers model it, then children rehearse, often marking up their text with pause marks and underlining the words they want to stress.

Performing also feeds back into writing. A child who reads their own work aloud hears a clumsy rhythm, a missing word or a sentence that runs on, and then goes back and fixes it. Writing is assessed by the teacher at the end of Key Stage 2, from work children have produced independently across the year, and accurate spelling and punctuation is part of what is looked at. A child with a proofreading habit simply gives their ideas a better chance of being read as intended.

Words your child will hear

Proofread: To read through finished writing looking for spelling and punctuation mistakes and correct them.
Edit: To improve the content and style of writing, such as swapping a weak word for a stronger one or reordering ideas.
Homophone: A word that sounds the same as another but is spelled differently and means something else, such as beach and beech, or to and too.
Intonation: The rise and fall of the voice that shows meaning and feeling, for example a question rising at the end.
Pace: How fast or slowly something is read or spoken. Slowing down can build tension, and speeding up can show excitement.
Gesture: A movement of the hands, head or body used to help show meaning when performing.
Rehearse: To practise a performance several times before sharing it with an audience.

What the National Curriculum says

In Years 5 and 6, pupils should be taught to:

Proofread for spelling and punctuation errors
Perform their own compositions, using appropriate intonation, volume, and movement so that meaning is clear

Objectives from the National Curriculum in England, © Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Try it: proofreading a paragraph

Proofread this paragraph from a story about a beach trip. It has seven mistakes in spelling and punctuation. It says: Last saturday we went to the beech. It was freezing but the waves looked to tempting to ignore so we tooke our shoes of and ran in. My brother said, “Im not afraid of anything”, then a huge wave knocked him over.

First pass, capital letters and full stops. Read aloud slowly, pointing at each word. “Saturday” is a day of the week, so it needs a capital letter. That is mistake one.
Second pass, apostrophes and speech. “Im” is short for “I am”, so the apostrophe goes where the letter “a” has been left out: I’m. That is mistake two. The speech also needs its closing punctuation inside the inverted commas, with a full stop after the speech, and the next sentence then starts with a capital letter: “I’m not afraid of anything.” Then a huge wave knocked him over. That is mistake three.
Third pass, spelling by meaning. A beech is a tree, but this family is on the sand, so the word is “beach”. “To” should be “too” in “too tempting”, meaning more than enough. “Of” should be “off”, as in “took our shoes off”. These three words all look like real words, so only reading for sense finds them. That is mistakes four, five and six.
Fourth pass, spelling by sound. “Tooke” has an extra letter on the end. The word is “took”, with the double letter o and no e. That is mistake seven.
Read the whole paragraph aloud once more, as if for an audience, to check that nothing new has gone wrong. A comma before “but” and before “so” would also read well. That is a small editing choice rather than one of the seven errors, and the corrected version below includes both commas.

Last Saturday we went to the beach. It was freezing, but the waves looked too tempting to ignore, so we took our shoes off and ran in. My brother said, “I’m not afraid of anything.” Then a huge wave knocked him over.

Common mistakes and how to help

“I’ve read it through and it looks fine”

Writers read what they meant to write, so the brain fills in a missing word or corrects a wrong spelling without noticing. Reading silently and quickly makes this worse.

What helps: Read it aloud, quietly, with a finger or pencil under each word. Sentence-by-sentence backwards reading is also good at catching spelling.

Thinking proofreading and editing are the same job

Children often fix a spelling and feel they have finished, or they rewrite whole sentences and never check the spelling. Both are normal when the two jobs are not separated.

What helps: Suggest two separate passes: first “is this the best way to say it?”, then, in a different colour or on another day, “is every word and mark correct?”

Only checking the hard words

Many slips in Year 5 and 6 writing are in short, common words, such as of and off, were and where, or its and it’s, because they are written fast and without thought.

What helps: Make a personal list of the three or four slips your child makes most, and check for those first. The list changes as habits improve.

Believing a good performance means big actions and a loud voice

Children see performance as acting for its own sake and shout or flail without thinking about what the words mean.

What helps: Ask what a line means and how to show it. Try saying one line three ways, for example whispered, angry and sad, and talk about which one fits.

How to help at home

Plant three mistakes. Write a short note with three deliberate mistakes, such as a missing capital letter, an its that should be it’s and a took spelled tooke, and ask your child to find them. Then swap, and let them plant mistakes for you.
Proofread something real. Before a message, card or thank-you note goes to a relative, ask your child to read it aloud once to check it. Reading to a real reader gives the checking a purpose.
Keep a tiny checklist. Help your child write down their three most common slips on a card and put it where they do their writing. Cross one off when it has not appeared for a few weeks.
Perform from the other side of the room. Ask your child to read a favourite poem or a piece of their own writing to the family from across the room. Talk about which words they made louder, quieter, faster or slower, and why.
One line, three ways. Pick a line from a story, such as “I never said that,” and try it as a shy whisper, an angry shout and a joke. Notice how intonation and pace change what the line means.

Builds on

Years 3 and 4: Planning by learning from model texts
Years 3 and 4: Drafting sentences, paragraphs and stories
Years 3 and 4: Editing, proofreading and reading aloud

Leads on to

Key Stage 3: Writing for different purposes
Key Stage 3: Organising and rhetorical devices
Key Stage 3: Drafting, editing and proofreading