Check that children can already:

• Explain reasons for events in stories with reference to characters' actions and motives.
• Work collaboratively in a group, taking turns and reaching agreement.
• Identify story elements: characters, setting, and key events.
• Plan a story by making notes under the headings Opening, Something happens, Events to sort it out, Ending.
• Write simple and compound sentences.
• Use temporal connectives.
• Use the third person and past tense consistently in narrative writing.