Daisy arrived to the session settled and ready, taking out her English book without prompting. The task set was a personal diary entry recounting the events of her day, with a focus on using descriptive language and the first person. She read the prompt twice and asked one clarifying question whether the entry needed to be “true or made up” which suggested she was thinking carefully about purpose and audience before beginning.

Once Sam confirmed she could choose, Daisy opted to write about her real day. She spent the first few minutes planning quietly, jotting a short list of moments she wanted to include: a maths test, lunch with friends, and a netball trial after school. This planning stage showed developing organisational skills, though she initially listed events without considering which were most interesting to a reader. As she wrote, Daisy showed good control of the diary form. She opened with “Dear Diary,” dated the entry, and maintained a consistent first person voice throughout. Her writing was strongest when describing feelings rather than facts; her line about being “so nervous my hands went cold” before the netball trial demonstrated an emerging ability to use sensory detail and show rather than tell. When Sam praised this, Daisy returned to an earlier sentence and added similar detail independently, indicating she could apply feedback within the task.

Areas for development became clear in her use of punctuation. Several sentences ran together with commas where full stops were needed, and she occasionally lost tense consistency, slipping from past to present. When Sam pointed to one example, Daisy corrected it confidently, suggesting the issue is one of proofreading habit rather than understanding. Throughout the session Daisy stayed focused, responded positively to questioning, and showed willingness to revise her work. Her engagement was high, and she expressed genuine pride when rereading her finished entry aloud.

Charlie Walker