Writing a recount in order
English · Key Stage 1 · The School
Order words hold it together
A recount retells something that happened, in the order it happened. FIRST we walked to the park. NEXT we fed the ducks. THEN it started raining. FINALLY we ran home. Those four words are scaffolding — plan with them, and the writing has a spine before you write a word.
Stay in the past
It already happened, so the verbs are past tense: walked, fed, ran, was. The commonest slip is sliding into the present halfway ("then we ran home and mum IS cross"). Read your work back listening only for tense — one pass, one job. That focused re-reading is what proofreading actually is.
One improvement, made properly
Do not try to fix everything. Choose ONE: a stronger verb, a missing full stop, or a sentence split in two. Fix it well and read the whole thing again. Writers improve by making one deliberate change at a time, not by rewriting everything in a panic.
Here is a recount with a slip in it: "First we walked to the park. Then we fed the ducks. Suddenly a dog RUNS at us and I DROP my bread. Finally we went home." Read it back listening ONLY to the verbs: walked, fed, runs, drop, went. Two are in the present. Fix them — ran, dropped — and the whole thing settles. That single listening pass catches the commonest error in the genre.