🏁 Check your writing for missing words that you think you put in, but didn’t.
📲 💻You can use this link to a Google Form so you can test yourself.
🔆 If you already do this and never miss words out, you should go straight to the next menu on homophones.
said Alex incredulously.
🛠 If you need more of an explanation about why this matters, read on.
This last skill in this menu involves checking your work. The problem comes when what we think we’ve written doesn’t match what we’ve actually written. To check this it’s easiest if you re-read your work back to yourself in your head but try to do it in someone else’s voice- like a friend’s, parent’s or teacher’s, so you force yourself to read what is really there.
The problem comes when our brain ‘fills in the gaps’ for us, so if there are any words missing we put them in without realising. That’s why the trick of trying to read your work back in someone else’s voice can help, because you can force yourself to read every single word to see if your sentences actually make the sense you thought they did when you wrote them!
Missing some words out is a surprisingly common problem. That’s why some teachers tell you to ‘read what’s there, not what you think is there!’ To do this, you do have to read every word aloud to yourself until you get the hang of checking your writing properly.
🎯 See how quickly you can spot what this student has left out of their writing:
I went to the park to play football with my mate, but it was cold and he said didn’t want to play. So we went to my house and in. We played on Playstations and then the sun came out, so went outside again. We had a good of football and then my mate went home.
✅ I went to the park to play football with my mate, but it was cold and he said he didn’t want to play. So we went to my house and went in. We played on Playstations and then the sun came out, so we went outside again. We had a good game of football and then my mate went home.
🚦Time for one last thing?
If you’ve done the exercises for all the skills so far, you should have seen a big improvement in your accuracy. You should also have a regular look at the Homophones menu, and see if you can learn some of those every day.
Congratulations on getting to the end of the key skills menu. If you’ve passed all the tests, you should feel really proud of yourself!