A child who knows 50 ways to say “happy” writes differently from one who knows 3.

Every writing assessment your child will face — from Year 2 stories to SATs extended writing to GCSE English — rewards precise, varied vocabulary. “The man walked down the road” is correct. “The weary traveller trudged along the deserted lane” is vivid. The difference isn’t grammar — it’s word choice. And word choice depends entirely on which words your child knows well enough to use confidently. A child doesn’t use a word they’ve only seen once. They use words they’ve practised — words they can spell, understand, and have used in sentences before.

You don’t need to wait until your child is writing essays to start building their writing vocabulary. In Year 2, simply knowing the correct spelling of “beautiful” instead of writing “nice” is a vocabulary win. By Year 3, connecting “happy” to “cheerful” and “miserable” gives them a range. By Year 4, using “tremendous” instead of “very big” shows depth. By Year 5, writing “the atmosphere was oppressive” instead of “it felt bad” is the kind of language that gets top marks. Each year builds on the last. The child writing with precision in Year 5 started building that vocabulary in Year 2.