She writes pages of stories at home, then freezes at 'write a paragraph on your favourite festival'

cobalt_balcony_260511 Jun 2026

Class 4 ICSE has a separate composition book this year, and the first homework was a paragraph on a festival. My daughter, who fills notebooks with stories about a detective cat, sat for forty minutes and produced three lines. She said she didn't know 'what they want'. I suspect the trouble is that a set composition has a shape the teacher expects, and nobody has shown her the shape. But that is my assumption. For those whose children went through this: did the school teach the format, or did you end up teaching it at home? And did it affect the free writing?

2 comments

rustic_jamun_167111 Jun 2026
I have twin boys who went through exactly this, in opposite directions. One writes to the template and got full marks all through primary. The other wrote whatever he liked and kept losing marks for 'not covering the points'. In class 5 his teacher gave him the list of points and told him he could be as creative as he liked inside them. That fixed it without killing the stories.
citrus_kite_859911 Jun 2026
At my grandson's school they fill a 'web' before writing: the festival in the middle, then when it falls, what we eat, what we wear, what I like. He fills the web in five minutes and the paragraph follows from it. It is very mechanical, and I was doubtful, but it does give a nervous child somewhere to start. You could draw one with her at home.
- cobalt_balcony_260511 Jun 2026
  That sounds very workable. How long did it take before he could do the web without help? I'm trying to judge whether this is a few weeks of practice or a whole term.
- cobalt_balcony_260511 Jun 2026
  One more thing I should have asked: does his teacher mark the web as well, or only the paragraph? If it's only the paragraph, I could let her drop the web once she has the habit.