Room 13

Writing Surface Features Ladder

Yes Folks, another ladder!

I'm pretty happy with the way you're working your way up the Basic Facts ladder, so knowing how much you like to improve your skills I've decided to do the same for Surface Features in Writing.

Most of what is contained in the levels comes straight out of the Writing Matrix (from the Ministry). Most New Zealand adults are at Level Four, so if you make it to that stage, know you're doing really well. Our Riverdale School expectations are that students will achieve Level Three by the time you move on to Intermediate.


The first thing is to work out where to start, then you can start climbing. The important thing when climbing a ladder is to focus on the step you're on and then your next (learning) step.

Level 4
35. Commonly Misspelled words list
34. Uses brackets correctly
33. Uses colons correctly
32. Uses semi-colons correctly
31. Uses ellipses correctly
30. Spellrite List 7

Level 3
29. Paragraphing
28. Spellrite List 6
27. Correct use of apostrophes
26. Spellrite List 5

Level 2
25. Writes sentences correctly with fullstops in the right places
24. Writes direct speech correctly
23. Use tense consistently
22. Have subject-verb agreement
21. Write titles correctly
20. could of / have, would of / have, should of / have
19. to / two / too
18. their / there
17. your / you’re
16. who’s / whose
15. we’re / where / were
14. Spellrite List 4
13. I / I’m / I’ll / I’ve
12. Writing numbers correctly
11. Capital letters for proper nouns
10. Capital letters for beginnings of sentences
9. Spellrite List 3
8. ‘Me and John’ v ‘John and me’ or John and I
7. Uses question marks correctly
6. Correct use of ‘done’, ‘did’ and ‘have done’

Level 1iii
5. ‘a’ or ‘an’
4. Spellrite List 2
3. Write simple sentences correctly
2. Writes capital letters and full stops for beginnings and ends of sentences
1. Spellrite List 1