By Margaret Vaughn, Bong Gee Jang, Vera Sotirovska & Gemma Cooper-Novack
Classrooms are inherently complex environments where writer-teachers must navigate multiple demands and responsibilities. These include adhering to institutional directives and teaching in a way that respects students’ diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds [LINK], and creating opportunities for students to develop essential skills such as writing proficiency and motivation [LINK]. Beyond these tasks, a crucial aspect of writing instruction is fostering student agency – empowering students to apply new-found writerly knowledge independently, and to take ownership of their compositions.
The role of writer-teachers in fostering agency
Teachers play a vital role in planning class writing projects that promote agency. When students act on their sense of agency, they take initiative, use and apply their learning, and influence the instructional process. Agency is therefore a fundamental element of effective writing teaching. As such, writer-teachers must engage in deep reflection about their instructional strategies to cultivate classroom environments where students feel empowered and can actively use and apply new writerly-knowledge.
Insights and implications for fostering agency in the writing classroom
From the comprehensive review, several key insights emerge about how to encourage teachers to reflect, understand, and plan for agency in the writing classroom Here’s a synthesis of the recommendations based on the review’s findings:
Foster agency through instructional practices, dialogue, and materials:
Instructional practices: Teachers should integrate practices that allow for student choice. This could include establishing publishing goals for class writing projects together [LINK], having Ideas Parties so children can choose what they would like to write about within the parameters of the project [LINK], make contributions to the success criteria for the project after reading as writers together [LINK] and give children access to time and support for pursuing their own personal writing projects at school and at home [LINK].
Dialogue: Facilitate open and invitational dialogue during pupil-conferencing that promotes critical thinking and collaborative engagement. Encouraging students to voice their thoughts and interact with their peers and writer-teacher can help them exercise agency more effectively [LINK].
Link agency to writing achievement: Focus on fostering agency as a means to enhance children’s writing engagement, attention and focus, which will invariably but indirectly support improved writing outcomes [LINK].
Implications for school leaders and teacher educators:
Professional development: Structure professional development to focus on strategies for cultivating students’ self-awareness, persistence, intentionality, and choice-making [LINK, LINK, LINK]. Providing teachers with practical tools and resources can enhance their ability to foster agency in their students [LINK].
Supportive environments: Create school contexts that support agency [LINK] by addressing barriers such as restrictive writing schemes or ill-informed external pressures.
Conclusion
There is a growing recognition of the need for agency-centered writing teaching [LINK, LINK, LINK]. By fostering environments where students can exercise agency, teachers can help them become more engaged, independent, and successful writers.
Unlock the magic of writing narrative in the EYFS with How To Teach Narrative Writing In The Early Years. This innovative guide by writer-teachers Felicity Ferguson and Ross Young is designed to transform how young children create and share their stories in the early years writing classroom.
Based on extensive research and practical experience, this book offers a fresh perspective on teaching fiction and personal narrative. It emphasises the importance of infusing personal voice, humour, and artistry into their stories, making them engaging and memorable for both writers and readers. Within these pages, Ferguson & Young also present The Writing For Pleasure approach, a methodology proven to inspire the youngest of writers and enhance their writing skills.
Inside, you will find:
A detailed progression for teaching narrative writing.
Step-by-step guides for planning and teaching narrative writing projects.
Insights into using mentor texts to inspire and guide your young writers.
Practical advice on delivering effective writing lessons, including idea generation, planning, drafting, revising, proof-reading and publishing.
Strategies to support multilingual learners and children with special educational needs.
Methods for assessing writing in a way that celebrates growth and creativity.
The authors, drawing on their own challenging journey to becoming effective writing teachers, share their story and research findings, providing a compelling argument for a new way of teaching writing that prioritises both rigour and pleasure.
Equip your young writers with the tools and confidence they need to express themselves and share their knowledge with the world. How To Teach Narrative Writing In The Early Years is your essential guide to fostering a lifelong love of writing in every child.
Hi Ross and Phil. We love your website! Do you have any advice on how we can teach nonfiction writing in the EYFS? We really want to inspire our children and give them lots of confidence. Thanks so much.
Yes! Here are some strategies that should hopefully inspire your youngest of writers and develop their writerly knowledge and confidence.
Help children to choose their own writing topics: Invite children to write about their own ideas, capitalising on their ‘funds of knowledge and identity’ to increase their motivation and engagement [LINK].
Use mentor texts: Mentor texts are texts that can teach children about great writing. Mentor texts can be commercially produced books or even texts written by writer-teachers or other children from previous years. Introduce children to different types of non-fiction, such as traditional, browseable, literary, ‘doing’, narrative and faction [LINK]. Help children identify the craft moves the writers have used so that they can use them in their own writing too [LINK].
Encourage a social environment for writing: Let children share their ideas with each other through activities like Ideas Parties to stimulate their thinking and build a sense of community. Encourage talking before, during and after writing to rehearse ideas and hear the reactions of their readers [LINK].
Make drawing an important part of the writing process: Recognise that drawing is a crucial way for children to plan their writing. Encourage drawing and colouring before asking children to write about those drawings [LINK]
Teach mini-lessons: Mini lessons are short, direct instruction. Introduce children to one specific strategy or craft move at a time. These can be based on successful aspects of mentor texts, for example, how to use labels in an information book. They could also focus on overcoming specific challenges in writing. For example, a ‘New thing? New page!‘ mini-lesson would demonstrate how to structure non-fiction writing while a ‘Make a drawing – tell your drawing – write your sentence‘ mini-lesson would help children connect their ideas to written sentences. To find out more, see our eBook: How To Teach Non-Fiction In The EYFS.
Help children to re-see and check their writing: Reassure children that writers like to make changes to their writing. Show them how you’ll often add details to your writing and drawings to improve them. You can produce developmentally appropriate checklists to help them check their writing with you too.
End with a publishing party: Having a specific audience and purpose for their writing is so motivating for the youngest of writers. Help children to consider who they are writing for and how they will share their finished writing.
What’s important is that we build a Writing For Pleasure environment in the EYFS. This means making writing time a positive and social experience for children, allowing them to choose topics that interest them most. This approach not only leads to better outcomes but also cultivates a greater love for writing too.
Join us at HfL’s annual English conference ‘Powerful Pedagogy: Say it, Read it, Write it’ – a dynamic day of learning designed specifically for primary school teachers and leaders. This enriching event will allow you to explore innovative teaching strategies and effective pedagogy to support all learners in reading, writing, and spoken language.
Join us online for a day of learning on the 6th of February 2025.
Getting writing right: Evidence-based recommendations for teaching writing
This talk draws on over fifty years of research reviews, including meta-analyses and case studies, conducted by The Writing for Pleasure Centre. It identifies 14 evidence-based principles that have been consistently associated with high-performing writing instruction. These principles, which form the core of the “Writing for Pleasure” pedagogy, include strategies such as building a community of writers, setting clear writing goals, and teaching the writing process. With a solid research foundation, these practices are shown to raise writing standards and accelerate progress for all learners. This session will explore how teachers can implement these principles to foster effective writing instruction in their classrooms.
Learning Outcomes
An understanding of pedagogical approaches to speaking and listening, reading and writing that will enhance pupil engagement and learning.
An informed understanding of current research and good practice.
Effective ways to support all learners no matter their age, stage, background or current attainment.
Strategies for developing a holistic and cohesive approach to English teaching in school.
On the 8th of October 2024, Ofsted published itsStrong foundations in the first years of school report. It purports to examine how schools secure the foundational knowledge and skills that every child needs by the end of KS1.
The mission of The Writing For Pleasure Centre is to help all young people become passionate and successful writers. As a think tank for exploring what world-class writing teaching is and could be, a crucial part of our work is analysing emerging guidance reports such as the one provided by Ofsted. It is therefore important that we issue a review of what this document has to say.
We will review Ofsted’s report againstThe Science Of Early Literacy, The Science Of Writing and what we presently know about the fourteen principles of world-class writing teaching (Young & Ferguson 2024). Our review will highlight both the good things shared by Ofsted and also their oversights, and we will provide further exemplification and suggested reading where we think we can add value.
1. Writing fluency
“Schools introduce complex writing tasks too early. They do not give children enough teaching and practice for them to become fluent in foundational knowledge and skills, such as in handwriting and composing simple sentences.”
✅ Ofsted raise a valid concern about the balance between foundational skills and more complex writing projects in early education. Introducing complex class writing projects too early can overwhelm children who have not yet established essential skills like handwriting, encoding (spelling) and sentence construction. When these skills are not solidified, children can struggle, leading to frustration and disengagement.
Schools could benefit from adopting a more structured, gradual progression, ensuring that students establish these skills before moving on to more complex writing projects. To do this, schools could focus on developing children’s writing fluency as quickly as possible, and there is a good amount of research on this (Young & Ferguson 2021a, 2022, 2023, 2024; Cabel et al. 2023).
❌ However, it’s wrong for Ofsted to suggest that these transcriptional skills should be taught in isolation, away from the craft of authoring. Nor does this foundational knowledge need to be somehow completely mastered before children can be given ‘the right to write stories’. Such a perspective not only goes against research recommendations but is also developmentally unsound. To pursue this recommendation would be an instructional mistake (Young & Ferguson 2022, 2024).
For example, if we were to follow Ofsted’s recommendations, Wyatt (from an economically underserved area of Leeds) wouldn’t have been able to make this picturebook on his first week of Nursery. His Nursery uses the Writing For Pleasure approach to teach writing (Young & Ferguson 2022). This means children learn something about writing every single day and they are invited to write every single day too.
Isn’t that a brilliant story? I should explain that Wyatt is already learning a number of things about writing. He is learning that a book should have a picture and some emergent writing on every page. He has also learnt that when you are ‘telling’ your book – you should ‘tickle your writing’. This involves moving your finger across your emergent writing so you can tell people what it says. This is how I know what Wyatt’s book says. He was able to ‘read’ it to me – and I privately wrote down what his writing said in my notebook.
Ofsted would do well to read the research on developing children’s transcription and compositional skills simultaneously [LINK].
The research on developing children’s transcription and compositional skills [LINK]
No more: They don’t know what a sentence is! [LINK]
2. Oral language development
“In order to write, children need to be able to compose orally (that is, to say out loud what they want to write)”
✅ Ofsted are right. We want children to develop their oral language and listening comprehension skills. Indeed, an ability and opportunity to ‘tell’ their writing could have the largest direct effect on the quality of young children’s writing (Kim & Schatschneider 2017). Again, we see how daily writing benefits Wyatt as he has learnt very early to say out loud what it is he has written down using his emergent writing.
Indeed, engaging in daily and meaningful talk while writing is one of the best ways to develop children’s language. This is one reason why a developmentally appropriate writing process, one which involves plenty of talking and sharing, is so important in the early years of writing.
A recommended recursive writing process for the EYFS (Young & Ferguson 2024)
There are a variety of different talking strategies children use as they craft texts. Children talk with one another before they write, as they write and after they write. These interactions occur in different ways and can include:
Idea explaining – Children share what they plan to write about during the session with others.
Idea sharing – Children work in pairs or small ‘clusters’ to co-construct their own texts together.
Idea spreading – One pupil mentions an idea to their group. Children then leapfrog on the idea and create their own texts in response too.
Supplementary ideas – Children hear about a child’s idea, like it, and incorporate it into the text they are already writing.
Communal text rehearsal – Children say out loud what they are about to write – others listen in, comment, offer support or give feedback.
Personal text rehearsal – Children talk to themselves about what they are about to write down. This may include encoding individual words aloud. Other children might listen in, comment, offer support or give feedback.
Text checking – Children tell or read back what they’ve written so far and others listen in, comment, offer support or give feedback.
Performance – Children share their texts with each other as an act of celebration and publication.
Encouraging children to talk and collaborate together during writing time is an evidence-based research recommendation, and the opportunity to talk as they write improves children’s final written outcomes. Children who talk as they write go on to write richer and more sophisticated texts. This may be because talk gives children more working memory for writing or because talk between children assists them in deciding what to say and how to encode it.
It’s important for Ofsted to recognise that oral language development in the context of the writing classroom goes beyond simply asking children to ‘rehearse a sentence’ before they write it, though this is one of a number of essential strategies for early writers to internalise (Young et al. 2021). Instead, children’s development as talkers relies on ‘a conversational context’. Children’s language develops when they are given the cognitive responsibility to use it. Ultimately, children must be the ones to construct their own speech and writing, otherwise, as the evidence shows, they learn little. The acquisition of language is a dynamic and creative process, not the passive reciting and copying of someone else’s model.
Ofsted’s review rightly acknowledges the profound role spoken language plays in the development of children’s encoding and spelling abilities. Thoughts and ideas have to be encoded into oral language (whether publicly by speaking them aloud, or privately in the mind) before being transcribed into written texts. This is aided by children’s ability to use their listening comprehension skills (Kim 2022). Unfortunately, Ofsted doesn’t show a clear enough understanding of what is meant by developing children’s oral language. We therefore hope that these definitions are useful.
In poorly designed early years classrooms, you’ll see children given many opportunities to practise dictation, reciting and encoding. However, there is a big difference between dictation, reciting and encoding and developing children’s oral language for writing. Unfortunately, ineffective early years classrooms do not typically have a clear programme of study which helps develop children’s oral language alongside composing their own texts (Young & Ferguson 2021b, 2021c; Kim et al. 2021).
“Teaching handwriting only in phonics sessions, as some schools do, is part of the problem. It means that children do not learn the basics of letter formation that establish the foundations for speedy and fluent handwriting later on.”
✅There are many benefits to teaching about letter formation in your phonics sessions, but additional explicit letter formation and handwriting instruction is important too. This need not take very long but should be regular. To read more about the research and best practice for teaching handwriting, see our provision checklist [LINK].
❌ What’s troubling is the complete absence of any discussion around emergent writing, essential to children’s early writing development (Cabel et al. 2023).
The job of teachers in the early years of children’s writing development is to nurture a generation of children who will feel themselves to be writers, and who will write happily without the constant need to ask anxiously ‘Is this right?’ or ‘I don’t know how to write it – can you do it?’
That’s why it’s a good idea at the beginning of the year to teach a lesson on the subject of ‘kid writing’. Even before mastering letter/sound correspondence or becoming a formal reader, a student (for example Wyatt) can scribble or approximate every single word they know. Therefore, all children can write if we set up the expectation that they should use a mixture of kid writing (using their approximations to make and use marks) and ‘adult writing’, using their ever developing knowledge of letter/sound correspondence and their sound and word mat resources. Kid writing is obviously a very temporary scaffold but an important one, because it ensures all the children in your class can access daily writing regardless of their ability or experience.
Here is what I typically say when delivering this particular lesson:
When I was your age, only three, four or five, I hadn’t learnt how to do all my ‘adult writing’ yet, so, while I was learning, I used my own writing too – we can call it ‘kid writing’. Let me show you what kid writing can look like.
At this point, I show the class some of the writing I’ve collected from children at different stages of development so they can see for themselves what kid writing can look like:
As you can see, while these children were learning more about adult writing, they used ‘kid writing’ too. You can use this writing in your books. If you want to use some adult writing that you already know, go for it!By the way, my teacher taught me more and more about adult writing every day and now I can write like an adult. I’m going to teach you how to write like adults this year too!
This lesson is based on what is appropriate in terms of child development and reflects the stages of emergent writing. You can find out more by looking at the diagram below and by following the accompanying link.
Of course, an added benefit to all this is children learning to use and apply their developing spelling (encoding) skills, something that Ofsted also highlights as important. We would certainly agree with Ofsted here. This is something we often pick up on when working with colleagues in the EYFS and KS1. Indeed, it feels like the time is now right for Ofsted to move its focus on how phonics can help children with their early reading to focusing on how it can have a transformative impact on children’s early writing development. It takes a lot of cognitive energy for children to take the phonemes of their speech and present them as graphemes of written language; otherwise called encoding. In the context of writing, phonics instruction should also focus on how to encode and produce ‘sound spellings’ (also known as informed spellings, approximated spellings and phonetic spellings) and be orientated towards how this instruction will be relevant and useful to the class as writers during their daily writing time (Young & Ferguson 2022). We know that when children receive phonics instruction that also encourages them to produce ‘sound spellings’ when they are writing, they outperform those not in receipt of such instruction on a whole variety of writing and reading measures (Rowe 2018).
Invented spelling in kindergarten as a predictor for future reading and spelling success [LINK]
Using encoding instruction to improve the reading and spelling performances of elementary students at risk of literacy difficulties: A best-evidence synthesis [LINK]
4. Working-class children have got no experiences worth hearing about
“For children with fewer opportunities and experiences in their home lives, there is little to tell. ”
❌ The classism here is quite breathtaking. We couldn’t quite believe it. Is there any lower educational expectation than believing that a child has nothing to say? The reality is children don’t have fewer experiences than others: they simply have different experiences. We can’t give children rich lives, but we can give them the lens to appreciate the richness that is already there [LINK]. All children have funds-of-knowledge, funds-of-identity and funds-of-language they can profitably draw on to make and share meaning with (sympathetic) others. Ofsted would do well to read the research used to develop our Writing Realities framework [LINK]. This deficit thinking is not helpful to anyone – least of all children from economically underserved areas.
What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives – E.M. Forster
Why write about the world outside?
British poetry has a long tradition of connection with landscape and nature. We cannot separate ourselves from the natural world, and young people are increasingly concerned about it. What we can do is bring into sharper focus for both children and ourselves the joyful, healing, subtle, delicate or terrifying aesthetics of nature. Children can share their experiences of nature with others, and this is the most important aspect of the project. When writing a nature poem, we’re aiming to share a particular experience, and we have to resist the temptation to write generally about it. It’s about choosing a diamond moment. We are lucky enough to have many experiences with nature, in urban jungles, streets, allotments, gardens, weather, woods, parks, beaches, rivers, seas, peaks, hills and playgrounds. Many of these experiences will be enjoyable; some may not!
This poetry project gives children the opportunity to write an impression, to capture a moment, to use poetry as a symbol and to make something familiar seem unfamiliar. Perhaps the children could even produce a literary magazine showcasing the power and fragility of nature.
This study investigated how children demonstrate agency in writing projects across three elementary classrooms within a single US school. The researchers uncovered significant insights into the relationship between curriculum design and student agency.
The findings illustrate that a writing curriculum that supports choice and the expression of students’ voices enabled them to integrate their funds-of-knowledge, funds-of-identity and out-of-school experiences within their writing [LINK]. This approach facilitated rich, meaningful writing experiences where students could reflect their personal voices and identities.
However, misunderstandings around the science of writing and phonics instruction have impacted writing curricula and student agency. The prevailing trend towards presentational-skills writing instruction has lead to reduced opportunities for student choice and self-expression [LINK and LINK]. This flawed pedagogical approach has constrained students’ ability to engage deeply with their writing and has limited their opportunities for a creative and agency-driven writing apprenticeship.
To counteract these limitations, teachers can (and must) proactively reform their writing curricula and instruction to better support student agency [LINK and LINK]. This includes offering choices in content, process, and product, which can enhance motivation and engagement. As highlighted by the study, allowing students to create their own writing and negotiate their identities within the writing classroom can empower them to become more engaged and adaptive participants in the writing process.
In essence, fostering student agency in writing requires an instructional approach that values and integrates students’ voices, experiences, and perspectives. By doing so, educators can nurture a more dynamic and responsive educational environment that supports students’ development as creative and autonomous writers.
***
Key studies and perspectives illustrate how classroom environments and instructional practices can either support or hinder students’ agency. For example, McCarthey’s research shows that students express agency by engaging with or resisting classroom norms, while Hamel’s study emphasises the role of teacher support in fostering a writing classroom where students feel empowered to share and publish their compositions.
The researchers also touch on the role of genre in writing instruction, suggesting that while teaching about text forms can help students understand different text types, overly rigid approaches to genre teaching can stifle creativity and agency. Instead, integrating genre instruction with opportunities for student choice, as seen in the Writing For Pleasure approach and Rylak et al.’s study, can enhance students’ engagement and agency in writing.
***
Findings from the research showed how the writing curriculum in different classroom settings shaped students’ writing practices, their interactions with their peers, and how they expressed agency through their writing. The study focused on three different classrooms and examined how students navigated and negotiated their writing experiences.
K/1st grade classroom:
Writing environment: A dynamic and colourful space where students had multiple opportunities to write, often in a collaborative and fluid manner. The curriculum was open, allowing students choices in topics, genres, and collaboration. This flexibility encouraged creativity, such as combining pictures and text and collaborating with peers [LINK].
Student agency: Students showed enthusiasm for writing, expressing creativity and independence in their choice of topics and writing styles. Collaboration was encouraged, and students actively engaged in sharing their work with peers, which allowed them to incorporate feedback and ideas into their writing [LINK].
2nd/3rd grade classroom:
Writing projects: Students worked on personal narrative writing where they could discuss life experiences [LINK]. While genre instruction was crucial, the study suggests allowing students to make choices within genres to maintained children’s engagement and relevance.
Student agency: The life experiences project allowed students to explore their identities and express themselves creatively. The students’ writing showed a blend of classroom literacy and personal experiences.
4th/5th grade classroom:
Writing projects: Students engaged in opinion writing [LINK] and a poetry project. While the opinion writing was more structured, the poetry project allowed for greater personal expression and creativity [LINK]. Again, while genre instruction was crucial, the study suggests allowing students to make choices within these taught genres to maintain children’s engagement and relevance.
Student agency: The poetry project was particularly enjoyed by students as it allowed them to explore their identities and express themselves in a less constrained manner.
Conclusion
This study emphasises the importance of fostering student agency in writing instruction by creating supportive, flexible, and culturally responsive learning environments [LINK]. Teachers should focus on building classroom communities where students are supported to choose their writing topics in an open, friendly, and safe atmosphere. This kind of environment encourages regular peer feedback and interaction, whether in pairs, small groups, or as a whole class. Allowing students to make choices, particularly within the parameters of a specific genre, aligns with best practices and significantly promotes their sense of agency [LINK].
In addition, the research highlights the value of culturally responsive practices in enhancing student engagement and agency in writing. Recognising and valuing students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds can make a meaningful impact on their writing experiences [LINK]. As multilingualism becomes increasingly prevalent, it is important for classrooms to explicitly incorporate and value children’s funds-of-language and writing in multiple languages [LINK]. This approach not only fosters inclusivity but also respects and leverages students’ full linguistic repertoires, enhancing their overall learning experience.
Furthermore, a school’s writing curriculum should connect to students’ lived experiences and real-world contexts [LINK]. This connection allows students to act on their intentions and interests, helping them develop their writerly identities and empowering them to express their creative ideas. Such an approach encourages students to engage deeply with their writing and see its relevance beyond the classroom.
In conclusion, the researchers argue against the use of highly structured writing schemes that limit students’ creative expression. Instead, it advocates for curricula that prioritise student-driven writing projects, enabling students to create extended texts, explore various genres, and write for real audiences [LINK]. The critique of curricula which misunderstands ‘the science of writing‘ highlights the limitations of approaches that focus narrowly on writing responses to reading and provide few opportunities for extended writing. These flawed curriculums are considered detrimental to the development of students’ writerly identities and agency [LINK and LINK].
The study ultimately advocates for open, stimulating writing classrooms that offer students choice and opportunities for critical engagement with texts. Such classrooms can serve as models for others, especially in an era where prescriptive educational mandates are becoming more common. The overall message is a call for instructional practices that prioritise student agency, cultural responsiveness, and real-life relevance in writing education, moving away from rigid, scripted writing schemes towards more inclusive, effective and affecting approaches [LINK].
In this paper, Nadia Behizadeh discusses two different approaches to teaching writing. On one end of the spectrum is authentic writing instruction, where students use writing to think deeply, create new ideas, express themselves, and influence others. At the other end is formulaic writing instruction, where the focus is just on following conventions of grammar, punctuation, and mechanics [LINK and LINK].
A major concern in UK and US schools is that writing instruction tends to lean towards the formulaic side, often using pre-designed writing schemes that don’t take into account students’ backgrounds, cultures, or interests [LINK]. This issue is particularly problematic for students of colour and for pupils in economically underserved areas, making it a matter of social justice [LINK].
While there are many reasons for formulaic instruction, teachers have the power to make writing instruction more authentic. However, striving for more authentic writing can be challenging, especially in schools that don’t understand or appreciate evidence-based writing teaching.
Definition of authenticity
Behizadeh discusses the idea of ‘authenticity’ in writing instruction, explaining that many teachers believe that making writing projects real and relevant to students’ lives can increase their engagement and success [LINK]. Here’s a simplified breakdown:
Authentic learning means that what pupils do in school is meaningful and connected to the real world. For a writing task to be authentic, it should have real-world relevance and be valued outside of school.
Authenticity isn’t either/or – class projects can be made more or less authentic. Traditionally, it’s been teachers who have decided what is ‘authentic,’ but there’s a shift towards letting children see the relevance of class writing projects in their own terms [LINK].
Authentic writing is when students feel they have the ability to connect a class writing project to their life, experiences, culture, interests, and goals [LINK].
It’s about starting with what students know and helping them connect to new topics and genres in a way that feels relevant to them [LINK].
Examples and research
A study on meaningful writing found that personal connection doesn’t mean students always write about themselves. For example, a student found writing about hockey fan culture meaningful even though she wasn’t into hockey, because it helped her think about her own culture [LINK].
Students value having some choice in what they write about, focusing on expressing themselves over just following rules, writing for real audiences, and sharing their compositions with others [LINK].
Four key factors for authentic writing
Structured choice for writing topics: Helping students choose writing topics that relate to their lives with some guidance from teachers or peers [LINK].
Expression over conventions: Teaching grammar and mechanics within the context of expressing something important, rather than as separate rules [LINK and LINK].
Writing for impact: Encouraging pupils to write for real purposes and audiences, and providing ways for them to publish their manuscripts [LINK].
Sharing writing: Creating a safe environment for students to share their writing, building a community, and giving opportunities to share with various audiences [LINK and LINK].
Balancing authenticity and other needs
While aiming for authenticity, teachers should still keep in mind other factors, like preparing students’ writing for moderation and standardised tests.
Here’s a simplified summary of the findings from the study on authentic writing instruction:
Facilitating choice of a valued writing topic
The teacher and the researcher used essential questions and prompts to help students brainstorm meaningful topics for their writing [LINK].
Activities included small group discussions, quick-writes, and an Ideas Party where students shared their ideas.
Students read and critiqued mentor texts to see how authors use various techniques to make their writing meaningful and successful [LINK].
These activities aimed to help students find topics they cared about and engage in expressive writing.
Successes:
High student engagement with rich conversations and enthusiasm.
Students appreciated generating their own writing ideas.
Challenges:
Some students had already decided on their topics and didn’t feel influenced by the prewriting activities.
Some students chose topics they didn’t find very meaningful.
Striving for expression and adherence to conventions
The teacher taught lessons on grammar and structure to support meaning-making [LINK and LINK].
Mentor texts helped students generate ideas and see different narrative structures [LINK].
The workshop environment and peer reviews were helpful for students [LINK].
Teaching planning techniques helped pupils organise their ideas [LINK].
Challenges:
The planning techniques may have limited creativity, especially for students already familiar with narrative structures.
Knowing their audience would have helped make the writing process more authentic for students [LINK].
Here’s a summary of the findings regarding opportunities for impact and increasing authenticity in writing instruction:
Creating Opportunities for Impact
Presentation Options:
Students were given various ways to present their work, including public presentations and publishing.
A “presentation menu” was introduced in the third week, after students had drafted and revised their narratives.
Despite these options, few students chose public presentations or online posting, with more interest shown by students in Gifted and Accelerated classes.
Only a small number of students submitted their work for publication.
Successes:
Those who chose public presentations felt proud and learned more about each other.
Presentation options were appreciated, enhancing the writing experience for some.
Challenges:
Most students did not feel that the presentation options significantly increased authenticity.
Timing of introducing presentation options might have mitigated their effectiveness since the audience was identified late in the process.
Publishing a book in the school library did not provide a clearly valued audience.
Creating a stronger sense of an actual audience
Student reactions and feedback:
Students indicated that choice of topic, process freedom, personal expression, and conveying important messages were the most meaningful aspects of the project.
Some students felt more authenticity in narrative writing, while others preferred writing explanation essays.
Students’ suggestions for increasing authenticity included different genres and more time.
Audience issues:
Students may not have felt a strong sense of an actual audience [LINK].
Too often scheme-based writing tasks focus on imagined audiences rather than real ones [LINK].
Authentic writing experiences should include real impacts, real reactions and real conversations with the audience [LINK].
By focusing on real-world projects and actual audiences, students can find greater meaning and purpose in their writing, ultimately strengthening their skills and sense of empowerment as writers.
Unlock the magic of writing non-fiction in the EYFS with How To Teach Non-Fiction Writing In The Early Years. This innovative guide by writer-teachers Felicity Ferguson and Ross Young is designed to transform how young children create and share their knowledge in the early years writing classroom.
Based on extensive research and practical experience, this book offers a fresh perspective on teaching non-fiction. It emphasises the importance of infusing personal voice, humour, and artistry into informational texts, making them engaging and memorable for both writers and readers. Within these pages, Ferguson & Young also present The Writing For Pleasure approach, a methodology proven to inspire the youngest of writers and enhance their writing skills.
Inside, you will find:
A detailed progression for teaching non-fiction writing.
Step-by-step guides for planning and teaching non-fiction writing projects.
Insights into using mentor texts to inspire and guide your young writers.
Practical advice on delivering effective writing lessons, including idea generation, planning, drafting, revising, proof-reading and publishing.
Strategies to support multilingual learners and children with special educational needs.
Methods for assessing writing in a way that celebrates growth and creativity.
The authors, drawing on their own challenging journey to becoming effective writing teachers, share their story and research findings, providing a compelling argument for a new way of teaching writing that prioritises both rigour and pleasure.
Equip your young writers with the tools and confidence they need to express themselves and share their knowledge with the world. How To Teach Non-Fiction Writing In The Early Years is your essential guide to fostering a lifelong love of writing in every child.
Poetry: the best words in the best order – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Why write poems about the senses?
All poetry is in some way sensory, and much narrative text is sensory too. Writers use the senses to express a feeling that is very personal. The feelings may be quite specific but are often also universal in that others will recognise them and relate to them. Writers might draw on their senses as they reflect on objects that bring back hidden memories. They might use their senses to bring nostalgic moments to mind. The senses can also be used to evoke a mood, to deliberately show things, or to explore experiences in different ways.
This poetry project will give children opportunities to practise using sensory description; showing, not telling; observing and expanding on small yet significant details; making comparisons; and painting with words for the pleasure of the artistry.
As this writing project is similar to a writing exercise, it will help children to see the benefits of techniques that writers often practise and use. Children will absorb these techniques as part of their repertoires and will be able to draw on them again in all kinds of future writing.
