“Hi Ross and Phil. We recently received some training where it was recommended that in the EYFS we should only focus on teaching handwriting to ‘mastery’. We shouldn’t look to teach composition until children have mastered handwriting. This doesn’t feel right to us. Can you help?”
The myth
Children should master handwriting before anything else. Teachers should focus exclusively on developing speed and automaticity in letter formation and composition should wait until transcription is secured. Until a child can form letters quickly and correctly, the argument goes, they aren’t really ready to be a writer yet [LINK and LINK].
Why the myth persists
This myth survives because it does actually have a genuine finding at its core.
As our own Writing Development Map shows, handwriting fluency is reliably associated with the quality and quantity of children’s writing
Children who find letter formation effortful spend more of their limited working memory on these lower-level, mechanical processes, leaving fewer cognitive resources for the higher-order work of composition.
Where the myth goes wrong is in the next step: treating a correlation between handwriting fluency and writing quality as a prescription for sequencing: handwriting first, fast and only, then composing. Showing that handwriting contributes to writing quality is not the same as saying it must be mastered in isolation before composition can begin!🤦🏻♂️
What the research actually shows
Writing development is interactive, not hierarchical. Again, as our Writing Development Map shows, transcription, text generation and executive control operate simultaneously during writing, not as a sequence of discrete stages a writer must complete in order. Berninger & Winn (2006) make a similar case: handwriting, spelling and text generation develop reciprocally, each shaping the other as a child grows as a writer. More recent models, including Kim’s (2022) model of writing continues this understanding. Transcription and composition are interacting components of one developing system, not separate stages.
New empirical evidence sharpens this point considerably. Kreutz et al. (2026) identified what they call a ‘double dissociation’ between transcription skills and text quality. In plain terms: around 12% of students produced high-quality texts despite having deficient handwriting fluency or spelling. 12% of pupils showed the reverse, producing poor-quality texts despite having perfectly good transcription skills.
Composition supports transcription development
Genuine, purposeful writing gives children repeated opportunities to retrieve and apply their letter formation and spelling knowledge in context. A whole variety of studies have found meaningful links running in both directions between transcriptional fluency and composing (LINK). Treating handwriting as something to be perfected in isolation, before children are allowed to compose, removes one of the best contexts that helps handwriting develop in the first place.
If working memory capacity is the concern, exclusion isn’t the answer, scaffolding is.
McCutchen’s (1996) capacity theory of writing is often cited (wrongly) to argue that children’s limited working memory can’t cope with transcription and composition at once. But this research points towards scaffolding, not exclusion. For example, inviting children to use ‘kid writing’ as a temporary scaffold while they continue to develop their transcriptional skills (in earnest).
This scaffold exists precisely because researchers have taken the capacity problem seriously and concluded that supporting children’s access to composition, not postponing it, is the right response.
Young children are already composers
Long before their handwriting is fluent, young children are capable of real composition. Through their own independent attempts, they engage in authentic meaning-making well ahead of transcriptional mastery (LINK).
Research evidence into emergent writing is unambiguous on this point. Classroom research shows the youngest of writers can naturally weave together drawing, talking and writing as they make meaning. Composing is already well underway before they even start formal schooling (LINK).
For example, Rowe’s (2018) review of early writing research shows that children’s compositional intent (their drive to communicate something specific) is observable far earlier than their transcriptional control and that early-years pedagogy has historically undersold what young children are capable of!
Delaying composition until handwriting is automatic risks denying children, for months or even years, the chance to develop as authors with something to say.
The cost of getting it wrong
Sequencing instruction this way teaches children something about what kind of writer they’re allowed to be (LINK).
Writing motivation depends on children experiencing genuine autonomy and competence in what they’re doing. A child whose early writing instruction consists only of copying letters is being told, in effect, that composing (having something to say and getting to say it) isn’t yet their job. As a result, children can often feel as though they are being asked to prepare for something that never actually comes…
Graham’s (2018) writer(s)-within-community model goes further, framing writing development as something that happens through genuine participation in writing communities. Children become writers by doing the social, communicative work of writing, not by rehearsing its mechanics in isolation. Strip composition out of the early curriculum for long enough and you risk manufacturing precisely the kind of disengagement the National Literacy Trust’s 2026 report describes in its profiles of ambivalent and averse writers: children who come to the experience writing as a technical chore rather than something they do for their own purposes.
What should schools do?
Fortunately, the research doesn’t force a choice between handwriting and composition. Effective practice attends to both, simultaneously, from the start:
- Teach handwriting explicitly and systematically from Reception onwards [LINK].
- Prioritise accurate, increasingly automatic letter formation.
- Teach encoding/spelling lessons not just handwriting lessons [LINK].
- Provide daily, genuine opportunities for composition from the earliest years [LINK].
- Use emergent writing, kid writing and informed spelling as temporary scaffolds to support children whose transcription is still being developed (in earnest) [LINK].
- Gradually increase compositional demands as transcription becomes more automatic, rather than withholding it completely [LINK].
The bottom line
Research strongly supports the explicit teaching of handwriting. Research strongly supports the teaching of composition from a child’s earliest encounters with writing. What the research does not support is teaching handwriting first, fast and only.
Handwriting and composition develop reciprocally: children become more fluent handwriters partly through composing, and they become more capable composers as their handwriting develops.
Teaching children to write means teaching them to be writers not scribers…
References and further reading
- Berninger, V. W., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., Graham, S., & Richards, T. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35(1), 39–56.
- Berninger, V. W., Abbott, R. D., Jones, J., Wolf, B. J., Gould, L., Anderson-Youngstrom, M., Shimada, S., & Apel, K. (2006). Early development of language by hand: Composing, reading, listening, and speaking connections, three letter-writing modes, and fast mapping in spelling. Developmental Neuropsychology, 29(1), 61–92.
- Berninger, V. W., Vaughan, K., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., Rogan, L. W., Brooks, A., Reed, E., & Graham, S. (1997). Treatment of handwriting problems in beginning writers: Transfer from handwriting to composition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89(4), 652–666.
- Berninger, V. W., & Winn, W. D. (2006). Implications of advancements in brain research and technology for writing development, writing instruction, and educational evolution. In C. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of Writing Research (pp. 96–114). Guilford Press.
- Bissex, G. L. (1980). GNYS AT WRK: A child learns to write and read. Harvard University Press.
- Bonafede, A., & Clark, C. (2026). Why children and young people do or do not engage with writing in their free time: Towards a multidimensional model of writing engagement. National Literacy Trust.
- Cabell, S. Q., Neuman, S. B., & Terry, N. P. (2023). Handbook on the science of early literacy. Guilford Press
- Clay, M. M. (1975). What Did I Write? Heinemann.
- Clay, M. (1987). Writing Begins at Home: Preparing Children for Writing before They Go to School. Heinemann.
- Clay, M. M. (2010). How very young children explore writing. Heinemann.
- Dyson, A. H. (1989). Multiple Worlds of Child Writers. Teachers College Press.
- Dyson, A. H. (1993). Social Worlds of Children Learning to Write in an Urban Primary School. Teachers College Press.
- Feldgus, E. G., Cardonick, I., & Gentry, J. R. (2017). Kid Writing: A Systematic Approach to Phonics, Journals, and Writing Workshop. Wright Group/McGraw-Hill.
- Graham, S. (2018). A revised writer(s)-within-community model of writing. Educational Psychologist, 53(4), 258–279.
- Graham, S., Harris, K. R., & Fink, B. (2000). Is handwriting causally related to learning to write? Treatment of handwriting problems in beginning writers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92(4), 620–633.
- Håland, A., Hoem, T. F., & McTigue, E. M. (2019). Writing in first grade: The quantity and quality of practices in Norwegian classrooms. Early childhood education journal, 47(1), 63-74.
- Hayes, J. R. (1996). A new framework for understanding cognition and affect in writing. In C. M. Levy & S. Ransdell (Eds.), The Science of Writing: Theories, Methods, Individual Differences, and Applications (pp. 1–27). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Kim, Y. S. G., & Graham, S. (2022). Expanding the Direct and Indirect Effects Model of Writing (DIEW): Reading–writing relations, and dynamic relations as a function of measurement/dimensions of written composition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(2), 215.
- Kreutz, R. M., Philippek, J., Hennes, A. K., & Schabmann, A. (2026). Good text quality despite deficient transcription skills: An analysis of double dissociation. Journal of Writing Research.
- Mackenzie, N. M., & Scull, J. (2024). Understanding and supporting young writers from birth to 8. Taylor & Francis.
- McCutchen, D. (1996). A capacity theory of writing: Working memory in composition. Educational Psychology Review, 8(3), 299–325.
- Medwell, J., & Wray, D. (2007). Handwriting: What do we know and what do we need to know? Literacy, 41(1), 10–16.
- Medwell, J., Strand, S., & Wray, D. (2007). The role of handwriting in composing for Y2 children. Literacy, 41(1), 18–36.
- Medwell, J., Strand, S., & Wray, D. (2009). The links between handwriting and composing for Y6 children. Cambridge Journal of Education, 39(3), 329–344.
- Quinn, M. F., & Rohloff, R. (2025). Understanding young children’s composition across three key components: Transcription, connection, and discourse. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 39(1), 42-60.
- Quinn, M. F., Zhang, X. Y., Rohloff, R., & Ridley, J. (2026). Understanding preschool writing: task adherence as a window into composing development. Reading and Writing, 1-23.
- Ray, K. W., & Glover, M. (2008). Already Ready: Nurturing Writers in Preschool and Kindergarten. Heinemann.
- Rowe, D. W. (2018). The unrealized promise of emergent writing: Reimagining the way forward for early writing instruction. Language Arts, 95(4), 229–241.
- Santangelo, T., & Graham, S. (2016). A comprehensive meta-analysis of handwriting instruction. Educational Psychology Review, 28, 225–265.
- Schickedanz, J. A. (1990). Adam’s righting revolutions: One child’s literacy development from infancy through grade one. Heinemann Educational Publishers.