Composition Planning – How should Primary 3 students plan their compositions?

Planning out a composition is the first and sometimes, the most important part of every good composition. I tell my students to see the composition planning stage as a way to strategise and structure their compositions. We time our students 5 minutes to plan their compositions before ideas are shared and discussed in class.

Watching students furiously scribble on their story mountains their thoughts and ideas for their stories is somewhat satisfying to me. It shows me that my students are excited about what they plan to write and have ideas in mind.

If planning a composition is one of the most important stages of composition writing, why is it neglected so often?

Some schools focus on planning in every composition written in school, while others don’t. Some schools do not have sufficient composition writing every term and even if students learn how to plan a composition, they don’t have the opportunities to practise what they have learnt.

This is why at TF, we dedicate 5 minutes for our P3 and P4 students to plan weekly during the composition writing part of the lesson. In Term 1, students were required to plan out certain parts of their stories. For example, we provide them with the ideas for the Introduction and Rising Action/Problem and they need to plan out the Climax, Falling Action/Solution, and Ending.

As we move into Term 2, we began to prepare our P3 and P4 students for their school term tests. Students will have to plan out all their paragraphs on their own using Story Mountain. While we provide them with the helping phrases and discuss possible plots using the picture, we want them to learn how to plan out their compositions to tackle planning when they are given tests at school.

If your P3 and P4 child writes compositions at home with you, have them plan out their stories first using the Story Mountain below. Limit the planning time to 5 minutes. They need to understand the limited time they have for composition writing during examinations. In the beginning, your child may take longer than 5 minutes but with regular practice, he or she will be able to plan within that time frame.

During the Planning stage for our P3 students, we encourage them to think about Characterisation and Setting. If a title or theme is given, we will remind them to think about the theme as well during their planning.

During the Planning stage for our P4 students, we encourage them to think about Theme and Characterisation. Theme development and the creation of interesting but realistic characters become more important in P4.

I hope this post encourages all P3 and P4 students to take just 5 minutes to plan out their compositions!

Story Mountain