Are you a teacher looking for effective ways to help your students master sentence construction and punctuation? Do you hear yourself thinking, “They don’t know what a sentence is!” or “They don’t know what end punctuation is!”? The Writing For Pleasure Centre offers a solution designed specifically for young writers of all needs and abilities.
Sentence-Building Mini-Projects, developed by experienced writer-teachers Ross Young and Felicity Ferguson, are more than just exercises – they are a playful, purposeful, and powerful way for you and your pupils to explore writing. Grounded in extensive research and classroom practice, this programme provides direct instruction at the sentence-level through structured yet engaging projects.
The core of the programme involves short book-making projects. These projects offer a unique advantage by allowing children to focus on crafting manageable pieces of text within the broader process of creating real writing. They are not rote exercises or worksheets. Instead, they closely mirror real writing by asking students to revise and enhance sentences they have composed themselves. The projects are also infinitely repeatable, providing practice whenever needed.
What makes these projects so effective?
Functional understanding: Children learn the function of different pieces of punctuation and sentence types, rather than just memorising terms. For example, they learn how end punctuation signals the end of a thought and how a sentence should be read, or how coordinating conjunctions let them add more information.
Practical application: The projects promote a better understanding of capitalisation and punctuation through practical application, making grammar instruction far more meaningful.
Experimentation and discovery: Each project invites children to experiment, take risks, and discover new ways of shaping their ideas.
Incremental skill building: Projects are sequenced carefully, helping young writers build their sentence-level skills incrementally, moving from simple sentences towards a full repertoire of understanding. This means there are projects suitable for various age ranges, from the EYFS through to Year 6.
Focus on meaning and audience: Students are helped to consider how sentence structure impacts their readers and gain a greater appreciation for constructing unique writing styles. They learn to make each word count towards the meaning they wish to convey.
Drawing integration: Drawing is an important part of the process. By developing content through pictures, the projects reduce cognitive load, allowing young writers, especially those with difficulties, to focus on expression. Drawing also helps children see how their sentence-level decisions impact the meaning of their illustrations, making grammatical patterns visible and instruction more useful and exciting.
Building confidence and fluency: As young writers gain control over sentence construction and punctuation, they gain confidence and begin to write with greater originality and style. This also enhances their reading fluency and comprehension by familiarising them with complex sentence patterns.
Supports revision skills: The projects help children transform their sentences for meaning, not just make superficial changes.
The mini-projects cover a wide range of sentence-level concepts, including:
Understanding what a sentence is
Using end punctuation
Adding information with coordinating conjunctions
Using adjectives and adverbs
Understanding apostrophes for possession
Using commas and semi-colons for lists
Applying capital letters
Using prepositional phrases
Adding extra information with subordinating conjunctions
Choosing precise nouns and verbs
Punctuating direct speech with speech marks and speaker tags
Understanding the usefulness of pronouns
Exploring modal verbs
Adding ‘bonus’ information with relative clauses and parenthesis
Understanding the passive voice
Using the subjunctive mood
Preventing ambiguity with hyphens
Connecting related sentences with semi-colons
Using colons for ‘drumrolls’ and explanations
Constructing complex multi-clause sentences
Understanding tense
Writing in different perspectives (1st, 2nd, 3rd person)
By integrating these projects into your teaching, you can provide your students with the tools and understanding they need to become more proficient, confident, and expressive writers. Each project includes planning guidance, exemplar texts, and subject knowledge to help you seamlessly integrate sentence-level teaching into your existing curriculum.
Explore The Writing For Pleasure Centre’s Sentence-Building Mini-Projects and help your students write happily and fluently!
At The Writing For Pleasure Centre, we offer a supportive and empowering model of writing instruction which we believe is unmatched by other commercial programmes. Our approach gives teachers:
Expertly-crafted scripted lessons and units
Additional lessons so that teachers can build their own custom units based on their students’ most pressing writerly needs
eBooks to help develop teachers’ independence
Personalised email support through our CPD programme
Our goal is, as always, to help teachers become successful, confident and independent writer-teachers.
Units that model excellence
Each unit has been crafted by an experienced writer-teacher who knows how to embed the principles of effective writing instruction. Our units:
Provide immediate structure, resources and clarity for busy teachers
Supply rich model texts and sequenced lessons
Include grammar and sentence-level lessons
Reduce teachers’ planning time while developing the quality of their instruction
Built-in flexibility: Plan with confidence
Each unit includes a suite of additional lessons so teachers can:
Adapt the units quickly to reflect their pupils’ most pressing and immediate writerly needs
Build their own units with expert scaffolding
Be responsive to classroom dynamics while maintaining fidelity to the principles of best practice school-wide.
This means every unit can be treated as a starting point, not just a script – allowing teachers who wish to teach responsively the joy and satisfaction of doing so.
Literature that builds independence
Our embedded CPD articles help teachers:
Understand the pedagogy behind great writing teaching
Grow their subject, pedagogical and curriculum knowledge
Eventually plan their very own writing units from scratch with total confidence
Unlike other commercial providers, we don’t want teachers to feel they have to rely on our scripted units forever. We want them to become independent curriculum designers who get to teach writing with expertise and pleasure.
CPD that connects and supports
A truly unique feature of our programme is our CPD with personalised feedback. When schools join our professional development offer, they can:
Email us their unit plans
Receive quick, supportive feedback, ideas, and encouragement on a personal level
Gain reassurance and insight from experienced mentors
This kind of close, ongoing support helps teachers refine their practice, grow in confidence, and feel part of a wider writing community.
In summary
Our updated units provide:
Expertly written example units and scripted lessons
Rich model texts and sequenced lessons
Grammar and sentence-level lessons
Additional lessons so teachers can adapt and build their own units
Literature so teachers can learn to plan their own units independently if they want to
CPD with personalised and ongoing support and feedback
We believe teachers ultimately deserve real in-depth support – not just scripts.
We believe children deserve to write with purpose, pleasure, and pride.
Let’s create classrooms and schools where everyone writes with joy and satisfaction!
What now?
If you’re already a member, simply log in. We have updated all the planning links in the Class Writing Project section of the members’ area. Go check them out and get downloading!
Teachers and schools can purchase any of our EYFS-KS2 writing units from our website for £5.95 [LINK].
Teachers can purchase an individual licence to our website for £28.50 a year. This gives them access to all our eBooks, unit plans and resources [LINK].
Schools can purchase a whole-school licence to our website for £400 a year. This gives everyone access to our eBooks, programme of study, assessment guidance, CPD materials, units plans and resources. If you’re a smaller school, get in touch as we may be able to provide you with a discount [LINK].
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If you want to get in touch, you can use our contact formor email us: hello@writing4pleasure.com
Great writing instruction thrives on both structure and responsiveness. At The Writing For Pleasure Centre, we believe that children flourish as writers when their teachers are supported to be confident, successful and reflective writer-teachers. That’s why our approach offers more than just our pre-planned units and scripted lessons. We provide expertly designed units but we also give teachers the tools and knowledge they need to eventually plan their own.
Unlike many other commercial schemes, our goal isn’t to make teachers dependent on our materials. Instead, we eventually want to empower them to design their own writing units for their classes. However, we want to ensure that their units are grounded in the principles of effective writing teaching and are responsive to the unique needs of their pupils at that time.
Expertly written units and lessons that model excellence
We refuse to naively ignore the pressures, demands and time-constraints faced by teachers. We are also very much aware of the fact that teachers rarely receive adequate training on how to teach writing while on their initial teacher education courses. We know that pre-service and early career teachers are often left frustrated and disappointed. This is why we offer scripted writing units and lessons.
Our units serve as powerful models of practice. They’ve been crafted by experienced writing teachers and researchers who understand what excellent writing instruction looks like at each stage of a child’s development. For busy teachers, or those new to teaching writing, our scripted units offer clarity, confidence, and high-quality instruction without the burden or anxiety of planning a writing unit on your own from scratch. They’re an ideal starting point for delivering coherent and consistent writing projects across a whole school.
A unique feature: Additional lessons for teacher-led planning
What sets our units apart from other commercial providers is that every writing unit we provide includes a wealth of additional lesson ideas which teachers can draw on to ‘build their own unit’ if they choose to. These lessons are like Lego bricks. Teachers can easily decide to include them or move them around. This is a deliberate and powerful design choice. We recognise that teachers know their pupils best – not us – and that they may want to tailor our units around a particular aspect of writing.
Rather than locking teachers into a fixed sequence, we offer them the flexibility to be responsive to what they think their class actually needs instruction in most! Our additional lessons allow teachers to remix, expand, and otherwise shape our units in ways that suit their classroom context – while still maintaining high standards and whole-school fidelity to evidence-informed practice.
A unique feature: Email support
A truly unique feature of our CPD training is our offer to teachers to email us their unit plans so that they can receive quick assistance, feedback and encouragement. Teachers are able to gain reassurance and insight from experienced mentors. This kind of personal and ongoing support helps teachers refine their practice, grow in confidence, and feel part of a wider writing teaching community. They don’t have to plan alone.
A unique feature: Literature that builds independence
Our third unique offering is our collection of eBooks and research summaries which support teachers in understanding the principles behind effective pedagogy so they can develop the confidence to plan their own units from scratch. This is always our long-term aim: that teachers engage deeply with pedagogy, see how our scripted units reflect best-practice in action, and then use that knowledge to become independent curriculum designers.
This isn’t about just handing over scripts to teachers and being done with it. It’s about their professional growth. Teachers are not technicians – they are thinkers, writers, and professionals. Our eBooks are designed to help them embrace that role fully.
Conclusion: From holding your hand to self-sufficiency
By offering high-quality scripted units, and also the tools for self-directed planning, we believe we provide something unique: support without dependency. We meet teachers where they are – whether they want to follow a fully scripted unit, adapt one using our additional lessons, or create their own from the start. We walk with them on their journey towards greater confidence and professional autonomy.
This is how we help develop not only better writing outcomes for children, but also more empowered, knowledgeable, and fulfilled teachers of writing.
What now?
Teachers and schools can purchase any of our EYFS-KS2 writing units from our website at a unit price of £5.95 [LINK].
Teachers can purchase an individual licence to our website for £28.50 a year. This gives them access to all our eBooks, unit plans and resources [LINK].
Schools can purchase a whole-school licence to our website for £400 a year. This gives everyone access to our eBooks, programme of study, assessment guidance, CPD materials, units plans and resources. If you’re a smaller school, contact us, as we may be able to provide you with a discount [LINK].
If you want to get in touch, you can use our contact formor email us: hello@writing4pleasure.com
Unlock the magic of writing non-fiction with How To Teach Non-Fiction Writing In Key Stage One. 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 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 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 Key Stage One is your essential guide to fostering a lifelong love of writing in every child.
Early writing development & the book-making approach
Children start their writing journey earlier than is generally supposed. By the age of two, children begin to understand that writing gives them a voice to share their thoughts, ideas, stories, opinions and messages with the world around them.
Our Writing Map illustrates how early writers develop both their compositional processes, such as idea generation, and the transcription skills needed to ‘translate’ those ideas into readable and enjoyable writing for others. The Writing Map also recognises how early writing experiences serve children’s oral language, reading and writing development because of the interconnected nature of these skills, and shows that, as children receive more instruction in phonics, handwriting, and encoding, the key components of writing success become increasingly linked.
Children start their writing journey using their emergent writing practices. These are the early marks and scribbles they make (see below). It’s clear, therefore, that young children learn about composition before learning about formal transcription. We can take advantage of this when children are in preschool or Nursery by adopting the book-making approach to writing.
With the introduction of letter formation instruction, phonics, and encoding strategies, children in Reception naturally transition away from these early practices and begin producing conventional ‘adult’ writing. By the end of KS1, most children write using common spelling rules and varied sentence structures to create very short yet meaningful pieces.
Our book-making approach
Our “book-making approach” is a teaching method where children write short books, combining drawing, oral language and writing to express their ideas. Through book-making, children quickly learn important things about writing that are strong predictors for future writing success. For example:
Writing moves from left to right and top to bottom in English
The marks we make on paper have meaning and can be ‘read’ or ‘told’
Know how to form letters correctly
Understand letter-sound associations and can encode words quickly and happily
Generate ideas and communicate those ideas by writing complete sentences
Even before children enter Nursery, many have started their writing journey. For example, 67% of three year olds already know to write linearly with over half knowing to write from left to right (LINK). Children recognise that when they make marks, those marks carry meaning and that what one thinks and says can be drawn and written down. We also know that children write for lots of different purposes and so write in different genres.
Our book-making approach helps children develop their ability to generate and organise writing ideas by first drawing, then writing single words, and finally forming sentences about their drawings. Even before they can write conventionally, children in pre-school and Nursery begin to associate their marks with the rhythm or length of sentences. For example, see four-year-old Wyatt’s book about a dinosaur. He uses two marks to represent his two sentences: He is big. He is scary. Isn’t that wonderful?
Here’s another example. Four-year-old Jenny has made a book about Elsa from Frozen. However, when her friend pointed out that her writing doesn’t match her picture (she reads her writing as saying: Elsa was sad), she proceeds to cross out her old writing and writes: Elsa was happy in her emergent writing. Isn’t that interesting?
Letter formation & handwriting development
Fluent handwriting is a strong predictor of future writing success because it allows children to focus on idea generation, as well as sentence and text organisation, rather than the mechanics of transcribing. As shared earlier, an extensive body of research shows how children’s early handwriting progresses from marks and scribbles on a page during Nursery to conventional forms by the time they enter KS1. To support children’s book-making, schools must have strong handwriting provision and deliver short but regular handwriting instruction. For more, see our Handwriting Provision Checklist.
Phonics, encoding & spelling development
As children receive phonics lessons, they learn about the alphabetic principle (connecting letters to sounds) and begin using encoding strategies (breaking words into phonetic components) to write what’s called informed spellings. Learning to write informed spellings is an essential process. As children engage in writing informed spelling, they are mastering their skills in orally segmenting words and transcribing the letters that represent the sounds they can hear.
When children first start on this spelling journey, they may only write the initial or most salient sounds (e.g., “D” to represent dinosaur or “U ct lef” to represent You can’t leave). They may also use a combination of conventional letters and emergent writing. However, with encoding instruction, and more opportunities to make books, they begin to write word endings and long vowel sounds (e.g. cake and choose).
Children’s informed spelling skills are important because, as you can imagine, they are strongly associated with later writing and reading success (LINK and LINK). Indeed, children who learn to write informed spelling outperform children who don’t receive such an early apprenticeship in spelling. Over time, children gradually acquire spelling rules and progress towards writing more and more words conventionally. To support children’s book-making, schools must have strong phonics and spelling provision and deliver explicit phonics and spelling instruction. For more, see our Spelling Provision Checklist.
However, while clear patterns of progression in early writing development have been well documented, as all teachers know, there can be significant variation in this skill among EYFS-KS1 children! This is what makes our book-making such an inclusive approach. From their very first day of preschool or Nursery, all children can participate in book-making lessons by mark-making. While some specific children in Reception and KS1 may still need to rely on mark-making and informed-spellings at times, almost all will write conventional sentences that are readable to others. Most importantly, all children can engage in book-making because it meets them where they are at developmentally. No one needs to receive a different pedagogy. No one needs to be left out. Instead, it might be the case that some children require additional instruction and practice. See our Identifying And Addressing Children’s Writing Needs toolkit for more on this.
Developing children’s writer identities and taking advantage of their intrinsic writing motivation
Young children come to school excited to learn to write with around 75-80% already believing that they are writers who can write successful stories (LINK). Children don’t tend to enter school with negative feelings or beliefs about writing (LINK). However, as children get older, we know this motivation drops dramatically. EYFS-KS1 teachers can take advantage of this early intrinsic motivation by providing children with book-making opportunities. Research shows that young children find meaningful writing opportunities more engaging than transcription-focused practice. While they do come to appreciate the importance of transcription instruction, this only happens if they get to use and apply these skills in meaningful activities like book-making (LINK).
We know that the best EYFS-KS1 classrooms develop children’s early writing by providing them with:
A high-quality Writing Centre where they can access various writing materials and use them during continuous provision and at home
Letter formation, phonics, encoding and spelling instruction
Teacher-directed class writing projects which cover the foundational purposes for writing (e.g. to entertain and to teach people)
High-quality direct instruction, scaffolds, modelling and verbal feedback
The least effective EYFS-KS1 classrooms are those with limited expectations, belief, and knowledge about children’s early writing development. These classrooms may delay writing instruction until children show an interest or else wait until they are producing conventional transcription – both of which are an instructional mistake (LINK).
Oral language development
Book-making is a fantastic way to develop children’s oral language and prewriting rehearsal skills. Nursery and Reception teachers can say: Tell me what your writing says or Read me your writing and in the process capture valuable insights into the quality of children’s compositional development. Research has shown that teachers who do this have preschool children whose writing is more aligned with the conventions of different writing genres, purposes and audiences (LINKandLINK).
The beauty of this approach is that children in the EYFS don’t have their compositional development delayed unnecessarily by their lack of transcription skills. In fact, children’s compositional development is so strong that when they begin developing their formal transcriptional skills in Reception, they naturally start refining their ideas into manageable sentences that they know they can transcribe successfully (LINK). This focus on oral language as part of the book-making process is essential as research has noted that children’s future writing skills can be partially predicted by their oral language development. This is particularly true for children with language delays or for English language learners. Indeed, the book-making approach is perfect for English-language learners for this reason (see LINK for more details on this).
Drawing and writing
Drawing is also a profound scaffold for early writers as it allows them to plan and organise their ideas prior to translating and transcribing them into a sentence or sentences. It just happens to be perfect for fine motor-skill development too! Research shows that children who are encouraged to draw what it is they want to write before they transcribe it to paper produce writing of a greater complexity and quality than they would by writing alone (LINK). This is because drawing is amazing at reinforcing the connections between (1) ideas generated, (2) oral rehearsal of those ideas, and (3) successful transcription of those ideas to paper (LINK). As you can see below, it naturally supports children’s production strategies for writing:
During book-making time, exceptional teachers of writing will model developmentally appropriate writing strategies and engage children in conversations about their drawings and ideas. They will then shift their focus towards transcription-based writing skills, such as letter formation or informed spelling. For example, they’ll undertake Underwriting with pupils (LINK for more details). Evidence clearly points towards the need for children to receive this kind of high-quality interaction when writing (LINK, LINK and LINK).
Explicit instruction has also been identified as a key factor in children’s early writing development. For example, teachers should begin book-making time by modelling the aspect of the writing process they want the children to do for themselves that day. Ideally, this would be done through the principles of SRSD instruction which is one of the most validated and effective things a teacher of writing can do in their classroom to improve children’s confidence and the quality of their writing (LINK for more on this).
Developing children’s writing fluency at the sentence-level
Our book-making approach aims to enhance children’s transcriptional fluency and sentence-level fluency (for more on developing children’s writing fluency see this LINK).
Essentially, to support children’s writing fluency, teachers should scaffold learning and gradually extend children’s writing abilities by encouraging them to work at a level where they can achieve success. School leaders and writing coordinators therefore need to think carefully about how they build up to extended class writing projects over time (LINK for more details on this). Here’s an example:
For example, for some pupils, all they should be asked to do is write a single word or simple sentence about their drawing while others can be asked to write multiple sentences. The links between book-making and teaching at the sentence level are profound. For more information, readers may wish to use our ‘What is a sentence?’ and ‘What is end punctuation’ book-making intervention projects which accompany our book-making method (LINK for more).
Moving forward
Unfortunately, Nursery, Reception, and KS1 teachers too often fail to model writing strategies that support children’s early writing development best (LINK and LINK). There is clearly a need for EYFS-KS1 teachers to access quality resources, planning and professional development opportunities. If you think you could benefit from such CPD, please get in touch with us here. We’d be delighted to come and write with you and your pupils!
To find out more about how you can introduce the book-making approach into your EYFS-KS1 classrooms, download any of the publications below. These can be found in the resources area of our website.
Alternatively, all of our publications and unit plans are FREE to our members. Membership is £28.50 a year. To become a member, follow this link.
Unlock the magic of writing narrative with How To Teach Narrative Writing In Key Stage One. 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 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 Key Stage One is your essential guide to fostering a lifelong love of writing in every child.
Our Writing Map highlights the role of oral language in children’s writing development. For example, children’s oral language and writing are strongly interconnected, with oral language skills influencing children’s abilities to generate ideas and translate those ideas into cohesive phrases and sentences.
Implications for schools
Oral language significantly influences the quality of children’s writing, with effects growing stronger as children get older. Therefore, schools should encourage children to talk before writing, during writing and after writing [see LINK for more details].
Incorporate discussion of children’s drawings to develop the youngest of writer’s expressive language skills. For example, by using the: make a drawing -> tell your drawing -> write your sentence strategy.
Have a clear plan for how you plan to offer increasingly complex writing projects to students. These projects should reinforce connections between oral and written expression [see our article Building Up To Extended Writing Projects for more on this].
Develop children’s writing fluency through handwriting instruction, class writing projects, and opportunities for them to pursue personal writing projects away from the demands of school writing [see our article on Developing Writing Fluency for more details].
Encourage children to (re)consider their word choices/vocabularyat the revision and proof-reading stage of class writing projects [see our eBook How To Teach Writing for more details].
Recognise that students with developmental language disorders may struggle with writing. Use explicit writing interventions, like our Writing Club intervention to support both oral and written communication. In addition, provide extra scaffolding, such as sentence starters, graphic organisers and our book-making approach for children who might benefit most [see our eBook Supporting Children With SEND To Be Great Writers for more details].
Our Writing Map shows how transcription and oral language skills contribute significantly to children’s early writing development.
This study also found a strong connection between young children’s transcription skills and the quality of their writing. The ability to transcribe effectively plays a key role in children translating their spoken language onto paper.
While strong oral language skills are linked to better writing, being able to happily and quickly transcribe these “oral tellings” is a much bigger factor in determining how well young children can write. This is one reason why our ‘book-making approach‘ in EYFS and KS1 is such an effective writing process for the youngest of writers. For example, children are regularly required to utilise the following strategy:
Surprisingly, children with particularly good transcription skills but poor oral language skills still tend to produce higher-quality compositions than those with moderate skills in both areas. This is typically because children with strong oral language will attempt more complex compositions than their present transcriptional abilities can cope with. This can lead some people (and some assessments) to assume that the writing is of a lower quality. The study suggests writing assessments are not always sensitive enough to take into account these sorts of young writers.
With this in mind, teachers and SENCOs should consider the individual strengths and weaknesses of a pupil when assessing their writing development and recommend scaffolds and interventions that will actually address children’s specific writing needs. To help, SENCOs and teachers may find our free Identifying And Addressing Children’s Writing Needs tool useful.
Implications for schools:
Teachers should be aware of the significant role transcription skills play in early writing development [see our transcription provision checklist for more – LINK]
EYFS and KS1 teachers should sensitively wean children off their emergent writing practices by teaching them key encoding strategies [see LINK for more].
Schools should have a clear plan for how they build up to extended writing projects [LINK for an example].
Assessing writing in a way that recognises both transcription and content quality is crucial for providing accurate feedback and guiding writing improvement [see our Identifying Children’s Writing Needs tool for more on this].
Transcription instruction can have diminishing returns for children whose transcriptional skills are already high. This is particularly true for older students.
Why do some pupils find it more difficult to learn to write than their peers?
Learning to write is one of the most cognitively demanding yet personally fulfilling and socially rewarding things children undertake while they are at school. Some children find it more difficult than others. The reasons behind this are complex (see our article: Visualising The Science Of Writing: The Writing Map Explained for more details).
Pupils can also struggle more than others to develop writing skills due to persistent absence, undiagnosed medical issues, and factors beyond the classroom that impact their ability to learn. Crucially, inadequate instruction is another common reason why pupils struggle (see our article: The Writing Map & Evidence-Informed Writing Teaching for more on this). We must ensure classroom teaching is effective, not least because this reduces the number of pupils needing support through intervention, allowing us to focus more attention on those who need it most. What are some of the most effective things a teacher of writing can do for all their pupils, but particularly for those who find writing especially challenging?
Plan your writing units so children move through all of the writing process slowly and systematically (the writing process typically includes: establish a publishing goal, reading as writers, planning, drafting, revising, proof-reading, publishing or performing).
Study mentor texts which realistically match the type of writing you’re expecting the children to produce for themselves.
Spend time generating, discussing, drawing, and planning your ideas before starting the draft.
Explicitly model the one craft move you want the children to use in their own writing that day (a craft move can be a grammatical, sentence-level, literary or a rhetorical device or technique. Alternatively, it can be a writerly process like how to use a graphic organiser or how to proof-read your writing for capital letters).
Set a small and very manageable process goal for that day’s writing time. This process goal should match what you just modelled to the class.
Make sure you’re putting aside time (outside of writing lessons) for explicit handwriting and spelling sessions.
Make sure that any assistant teachers are writing alongside the pupils they are working with. They should model how they are applying what the teacher taught that day to their own writing.
Children should be receiving live verbal feedback during writing time. This feedback should be looking to move the child’s writing forward.
All of the above are evidence-informed writing practices for children in general education. They just happen to be evidence-informed writing practices for children who attend special needs schools too. For more, see our publication: Supporting Children With SEND To Be Great Writers.
How can we best support pupils experiencing difficulties in learning to write?
Support for struggling writers begins with identifying their barriers to writing development. Primarily, this involves teachers informally assessing pupils as an ongoing part of handwriting, spelling, and writing instruction and providing timely help. This might mean:
In-the-moment scaffolding
Additional group instruction
Extra time in the school week to help pupils keep up with the class
Interventions designed to help pupils catch up
It’s important to emphasise that the pace at which a class progresses is an arbitrary measure that may not reflect the individual learning needs of all students. While the challenge of teaching large groups means that we aim to help as many students as possible, we must remember that some students will learn at significantly different speeds compared to their peers. Providing additional support to those who struggle with writing is essential, but we must ensure that this does not prevent students from engaging with other important areas of the curriculum in our efforts to help them ‘catch up.’ This is particularly relevant in the early stages of education, where a child’s development in areas such as spoken language, physical skills, and social-emotional growth should take precedence. As a general rule, interventions should focus on increasing the time struggling students dedicate to writing, but extending this time beyond a certain point may result in diminishing benefits or even have negative impacts on their overall school experience. At any one time, a pupil might have barriers that relate to multiple aspects of writing. For example, a pupil might struggle with letter formation, spelling, sentence construction, or the ability to generate and organise ideas. In this situation, it can be hard to know what support to prioritise. The short answer to this question is that we should target the most foundational aspect of a struggling pupil’s writing development, something that will be described in more detail below.
How can we identify which pupils require support and which writing barriers to target?
There is a wide range of assessments that might be used to identify pupils’ writing barriers. In the hands of a special educational needs and disabilities coordinator (SENDCO), these assessments can be employed to identify bespoke support for the minority of pupils who require it. However, beyond this, what is required is a systematic approach to assessment that can be employed with all pupils. One way to achieve this is to use a combination of:
Handwriting assessments (including evaluating fine motor control and letter formation)
Encoding/spelling assessments
Composition assessments
In Reception and KS1, assessment and intervention should focus on pupils’ letter formation and handwriting development – something undertaken as a consistent part of classroom instruction – and their spoken language development – something informally observed by teachers with additional help from the school’s SENDCO where required. In Year Three and beyond, the approach to assessment should involve regular checks on children’s handwriting and spelling alongside writing assessments.
How does a handwriting assessment work?
Handwriting assessments work by giving pupils structured tasks to complete, such as copying sentences, writing dictated words or sentences, or spending some time working on a personal writing project. These tasks allow teachers to observe letter formation, spacing, and overall legibility. Fine motor control may also be assessed through activities that require precise pencil control, such as tracing or pattern copying. If difficulties are observed, additional support will include providing a pencil grip (or an adjustment), and additional handwriting instruction and practice. For more, see our Handwriting Provision Checklist.
How does a spelling assessment work?
A spelling assessment typically involves pupils writing words from memory, either in isolation or within sentences. Ideally, these words should include a mix of high-frequency words and phonically regular words to assess a pupil’s ability to apply phoneme-grapheme correspondences through encoding. A spelling assessment is likely to be included in your school’s phonics or spelling programme. Standardised spelling tests can be used to get a sense of the following:
A pupil’s ability to encode the sounds (phonemes) they can hear in the word they want to write and transcribe those sounds to paper (graphemes).
A pupil’s ability to spell polysyllabic words (words with more than one syllable), use their morphological knowledge (the smallest meaningful units of language e.g. un- help -ful), and apply spelling rules (e.g. there, their and they’re).
To differentiate between (1) and (2), the pupil can be asked to sound out words before writing them. If they struggle with spelling polysyllabic words, additional instruction targeting syllable division and morphology may be necessary.
How does a composition assessment work?
A composition assessment usually involves reading a sample of a pupil’s writing. This allows teachers to assess their sentence construction, cohesion, and their grammar and punctuation use. Alternatively, teachers can give children a blank picturebook of about 4-8 pages and ask the child to write a book for children who are younger than them. Each page should provide an opportunity to draw a picture and write underneath. This will assess a child’s ability to organise their ideas, translate their ideas into a plan (through their drawings) and transcribe those ideas to paper quickly and happily. We can call this their writing fluency.
Pupils who struggle with organising their writing ideas benefit from:
drawing what they plan to write -> using their drawing to orally rehearse what it is they are going to write -> transcribing a single sentence underneath their picture.
Once children achieve a level of mastery, they can be asked to write two sentences, before moving onto writing multiple sentences or a paragraph per a page. We call this our ‘book-making approach’. It’s the approach recommended for all children in EYFS and KS1 and is incredibly effective in building up children’s writing fluency. Indeed, if children can receive such an apprenticeship early on in their writerly lives, the need for such an intervention later on becomes increasingly uncommon.
For children who are beyond the need for our book-making approach, sentence starters and graphic organisers will support children’s writing.
Those who struggle with grammar use and sentence structure may need to increase the frequency in which they engage in writing. Such children should attend ‘writing club’ where children can write alongside a teacher and receive live verbal feedback, quality modelling and additional instruction. For more information on the ‘book-making approach’ and our ‘writing club’ intervention, download our book: Supporting Children With SEND To Be Great Writers. For more on our sentence-level intervention projects, see our book: Sentence-Building Mini-Projects.
What data can help inform interventions?
For struggling writers, assessment data should guide any interventions.
Pupils whose handwriting is illegible will need additional explicit handwriting instruction and practice (see our provision checklist for more details – LINK).
Pupils who make frequent spelling errors may need additional intervention in learning common encoding strategies (see our publication: Getting Children Up & Running As Writers for such strategies).
Writing development is multifaceted, and by systematically identifying and addressing barriers, we can better support all pupils in becoming confident and capable writers.
How does a standardised writing assessment work?
Fortunately, we already have a nationwide standardised writing assessment produced by the STA. These are the Teacher Assessment Frameworks. For teachers in the Early Years, we have the Early Learning Goals. We recommend using these frameworks to assess children’s writing throughout the academic year. Because these assessments are standardised, children who are regularly failing to evidence certain statements of the framework in their writing are likely candidates for additional support.
It is important to remember that assessing a single piece of writing against the assessment framework only ever provides an approximation of a pupil’s current writing ability, as factors such as knowledge of their writing topic, familiarity with the success criteria, and individual motivation and genre preferences can influence children’s outcomes. However, multiple assessments, collected over time, can offer useful insights for teachers and parents/carers. On its own, a writing assessment offers a broad overview of a pupil’s writing skills but has limited diagnostic value. However, when combined with other teacher assessments, it can sometimes highlight pupils whose writing fluency is unexpectedly weak. These pupils often benefit from targeted support to develop their planning strategies and sentence construction. As always, classroom teachers should consult their school’s SENCO when a pupil displays unusual difficulties with an aspect of writing. They can then look up the difficulty, and our evidence-informed recommendations, in our book Supporting Children With SEND To Be Great Writers.
How can we identify the interventions that are likely to be most beneficial for pupils using these assessments?
Using the figure above, let’s consider some example pupils to illustrate how we can identify appropriate interventions:
Pupil A is a boy in the spring term of Year 3. His most recent writing assessment was disappointing compared to his peers. His handwriting fluency is also slower than his peers during handwriting lessons. A follow-up spelling assessment suggests that he is a good encoder. However, he struggles with sentence structure and organising his ideas. As a result, he is added to the ‘writing club’ intervention group focusing on book-making at the sentence-level. He is also monitored regularly to track improvements in his handwriting fluency.
Pupil B is a girl in the autumn term of Year 4. Her writing fluency is not a problem. She regularly writes plenty. However, her spelling is often unconventional and difficult to decode. An assessment of her segmenting and encoding skills suggests she is a weak encoder. As a result, she attends an encoding intervention. By summer term, it’s decided she should attend a spelling intervention.
Pupil C is a girl in the autumn term of Year 5. Her recent writing assessment is in keeping with the rest of her class. Her handwriting fluency suggests no significant issues with speed or legibility, but her organisation of ideas in class writing projects is inconsistent. Based on this, she meets with her teacher in a small group the day after their first planning lesson. Alongside her teacher and peers, she refines her plan in preparation for the drafting phase of the class writing project.
Pupil D is a boy in the summer term of Year 6. His teacher believes his handwriting fluency is strong. However, his most recent writing assessment shows he is producing writing that is significantly weaker than his peers. He is given additional classroom support focused on planning (extra small group session), revising (small-group revision checklist session) and proof-reading (works through an editing checklist one item at a time) his writing. His teacher gives him a personal writing project book and encourages his parents to help him write at home. This should hopefully reinforce the strategies he uses in class.
What might spelling interventions look like?
The structure of spelling interventions depends on available resources. At a minimum, pupils with significant difficulties should be taught encoding strategies (see our book Getting Children Up & Running As Writers for more details).
For pupils with significant gaps in spelling knowledge, they should receive focused instruction on high-frequency spelling patterns and rules, using structured practice sessions (for example see Spelling For Life by Lyn Stone).
What might letter formation and handwriting fluency interventions look like?
The ideal handwriting intervention provides pupils with structured opportunities to develop fluency and legibility. Strategies may include:
One-to-one handwriting support sessions that reinforce correct letter formation and spacing.
Small group interventions where pupils practice copying structured passages to improve speed and accuracy.
Progressive handwriting exercises that move from letter formation to sentence and paragraph-level writing.
For more information on this, see our Handwriting & Spelling Provision Checklist [LINK].
What might writing structure interventions look like?
Most pupils develop writing structure through classroom instruction, but some benefit from additional targeted support. Effective interventions may include:
Pupils struggling with grammar and punctuation should receive support in sentence construction, particularly focusing on subject-verb agreement, punctuation, and complex sentence structures (see our sentence-level intervention projects for more details LINK).
Additional small group instruction and feedback with children who could use a little bit of extra time and guidance (LINK for more details on organising small group instruction).
Are these the only ways to undertake spelling, handwriting or writing interventions?
The interventions described above represent reasonable approaches to addressing barriers to writing development. As long as an intervention is designed to target a specific writing difficulty and includes explicit modelling and guided application, it is likely to be effective. Schools should adapt interventions to meet the needs of their pupils and ensure that writing development remains a central focus of literacy instruction. For more, see our reference book Supporting Children With SEND To Be Great Writers which covers every aspect of writing difficulty with supporting advice and strategies.
Offering small-group or one-on-one interventions for students demands careful allocation of limited resources and adjustments to the timetable, which inevitably limits their exposure to other areas of the curriculum. This is a decision that must be made with great consideration. However, there are few concerns more urgent than ensuring students develop strong literacy foundations, including the ability to write proficiently. As such, making adjustments in this area is often essential.
It is imperative that the impact of any writing intervention is evaluated. Such evaluation should involve assessment of the component of writing addressed in the intervention. It makes sense to use the same type of assessment that was used to identify the barrier to writing development in the first place. For example, if a pupil were assigned to a spelling intervention because a spelling assessment suggested they struggled with encoding, then a similar spelling assessment should be used to see if progress has been made. Equally, the impact of a writing fluency intervention is likely to be best evaluated using assessments of writing ease and speed.
Finally, be cautious in assuming that slow progress means a pupil needs a completely different approach. If assessment has identified a specific barrier to writing, be confident that addressing this barrier directly is the best way forward. Instead of automatically changing tack, consider how the intervention might be supplemented by the two suggestions described in the next section.
How can we adapt our classroom teaching to meet the needs of all pupils in writing?
Naturally, not all pupils will be able to easily ‘keep up’ or ‘catch up’ with their peers through extra support. These pupils will benefit most from sensitive, persistent support that takes into account additional challenges to their motivation and confidence. There is no single ‘correct’ way to achieve this because it will be specific to the needs of the pupil in question. However, here are some adaptations that can be used to support struggling writers while they are in class:
Alter the teacher-pupil ratio at key moments in a writing unit. Small-group instruction can be particularly powerful when you want to give some children some extra time and attention at the planning stage. We can also recommend undertaking ‘revision checklist sessions’, where you can meet with children in small groups to check their writing against the co-constructed success criteria for your class writing project. Finally, breaking proof-reading down into small manageable daily chunks can ensure that all children have ample time to proof-read their manuscripts. For the children who finish their proof-reading early, they can work on a personal writing project, freeing the teacher up to work with the most vulnerable or least experienced writers in the class. For more on this, see our book: How To Teach Writing.
Alter the amount of modelling undertaken by adults. Struggling pupils often require significantly more modelling than is typically seen in writing lessons. If you are lucky enough to have an assistant teacher in your class, they should write alongside your least experienced writers during daily writing time. They should undertake the same task that the children have been asked to do. In the process, children can watch how their ‘writer-teacher’ untakes the task while they do it too.
How can we best support pupils with written expression difficulties and other writing-related special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND)?
Written expression difficulties (also known as ‘disorder of written expression’) is a specific disorder that encompasses challenges in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and organising ideas coherently in writing. These difficulties often persist over time, emerge during the developmental years, and are not solely attributable to inadequate instruction or other external factors.
Children with written expression difficulties often exhibit:
Limited writerly knowledge compared to their peers.
Reduced understanding of the writing process.
Gaps in genre knowledge.
Negative perceptions about writing and their identity as writers.
They may believe that writing is primarily about mechanics – such as spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, and penmanship – and feel dependent on external assistance to write.
There is no qualitative difference between the writing instruction required for those with written expression difficulties and their peers. However, there is a quantitative difference: these pupils will require significantly more time, scaffolding, and practice than others, often necessitating small-group or one-to-one support. Teachers should also be mindful of the potential impact of writing struggles on a pupil’s confidence and motivation too. Ensuring that support is structured to build both the skill and the will is crucial in helping pupils develop as competent and independent writers.
How might we support pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities relating to spoken language in writing?
Speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN) encompass a range of difficulties that can impact writing. Pupils with language disorders may struggle with sentence construction, word choice, and coherence in writing.
Language disorders show themselves in a variety of ways. Pupils may struggle to translate their thoughts and ideas into written words, use immature language structures for their age, or have difficulty organising their ideas. Additionally, their writing may reflect difficulties in retrieving words from memory or understanding certain grammatical conventions. Not every instance in which a pupil struggles with writing is a result of a significant, ongoing language difficulty. Some pupils will overcome their struggles through brief, targeted support. However, others might need ongoing intervention beyond the classroom. Early writing interventions, like our ‘book-making approach’ (LINK for more details) and our What is a sentence? and What is end punctuation? intervention projects can be highly effective (LINK for more).
What data should be tracked by teachers and leaders responsible for writing across a school?
All data collection and analysis should have a clearly defined purpose and should be minimised wherever possible. The reasons to gather data relating to pupils’ writing include:
To inform classroom teaching or interventions. Writing assessment data can highlight areas of need, such as audience awareness, development of voice, organisation, sentence-structure and adherence to conventions. This allows teachers to tailor their instruction accordingly.
To assess the impact of teaching approaches. Long-term tracking can reveal the effectiveness of interventions and curriculum adjustments.
To inform parents/carers of their child’s progress. Assessment data can help communicate strengths and areas for development to families in a meaningful way.
Beyond formal assessment data, teachers may also track qualitative aspects of pupils’ writing, such as engagement, writing stamina, and confidence in expressing ideas. By doing so, they can ensure that interventions are tailored to both skill development and motivation. For more on this, download our Children’s Writing Survey.
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I was sitting in a lecture for my NASENCO course when we were asked to start thinking about research ideas on ways in which we could support our SEN children with an area of need. My mind went back to my Year 6 class and to one autistic boy in particular, Yahya, who came to us at the end of Year 5 with the dreaded label of ‘not being able to read or write’. The child who entered my Year 6 class was full of life and ideas, interested in everything – especially obscure video games! However, by his own admission, he would shrug his shoulders and say matter-of-factly, “I can’t write.” As a school, we had recently introduced the Writing For Pleasure approach, and I knew I had my research project then: Yahya would be a writer!
Autistic children often face significant barriers to writing (Asaro-Saddler 2016) such as cognitive, social, academic, or rigid literal thinking, but arguably, the way we teach writing is the biggest barrier. When talking with Yahya, it was clear that he thought he couldn’t write for a number of reasons: he found handwriting tiring, believed spelling conventionally whilst drafting was essential to being a good writer, wasn’t interested in teacher-assigned topics, and lacked writing role models.
The table below shows the effect-size of best practices in supporting children’s writing development. Understanding these strategies, I set out an action plan for Yahya and other autistic students to think about their writing needs and how to best support them. During my teaching time, I followed these writing approaches and hosted weekly masterclasses with colleagues, where I could explain the approach, share what seemed to be working, and discuss any potential pitfalls.
From Young & Ferguson (2023) Supporting Children with SEND to Become Great Writers [LINK]
Alongside my brilliant TA, we introduced Yahya to what it meant to be taught by a ‘writer-teacher’. We would write alongside him, not for him. We would share our own writerly interests with him and model our writing process in real-time — including our spelling mistakes (and spelling strategies), scrapy handwriting, use of drawings, and even how to deal with writer’s block. Yahya quickly realised that drawing on your own funds-of-knowledge was a big part of our writing process, and he opened up about his love for an obscure Roblox game called Doors.
For Doors, Yahya was the expert. He had willing and ignorant readers, including the class TA and me. He started planning by drawing pictures about the game, explaining what to do, and even writing some fanfiction. He was fully engaged in these projects. Over time, he began writing phrases about the game. More often than not, this writing made little sense to outsiders, but Yahya could explain what he had written and, with support, was beginning to proof-read his own spellings attempts after drafting. Yahya went on to create a whole series of varied picture books about Doors. He then started writing at home too, and combined with targeted mini-lessons, he was becoming a writer.
His classmates were interested in what he was doing, and they bonded over their shared interests. Many autistic children have highly specific interests, and embracing these can be key to engaging them with writing. I began noticing more opportunities in the real world where writing catered to hyper-specific interests. I often scroll through and post on obscure West Ham fanzine forums (which my partner assures me is a niche audience) but there is a market for it! Similarly, for Doors, we found that there are various Reddit communities where people share guides, fanfiction stories, and discuss what they love about it and why. I hope we have given Yahya that same outlet.
Yahya came back to see us in Year 7, seemingly a foot taller! He said that secondary school was quite different, but he was doing okay. He also delivered some writing that he had done in the car on the way down to visit us. I think he is a writer now…
If you’d like to learn more about supporting autistic pupils with writing, I’ll be hosting a FREE masterclasses at the NEU London Region SEND event on Saturday, May 17th. Details are on the flyer below.
