Uncategorized – Page 8 – The Writing For Pleasure Centre

The Writing Map & Evidence-Informed Writing Teaching

Because of formatting, we can recommend downloading the PDF version of this article:

In our professional development work, we have found that a clear and structured understanding of writing development is essential for effective teaching. To support this, we created our writing map – an equivalent to Christopher Such’s reading map (which we highly recommend viewing here). Our writing map doesn’t just serve as a theoretical model for writing – it also serves as a practical guide for teachers and school leaders looking to strengthen their writing instruction.

Through our work with schools, we have observed that those with a strong grasp of these underlying principles are more confident and strategic in shaping their writing curriculum. However, many schools seek greater clarity in how to apply this knowledge effectively. This is where the writing map plays a crucial role – it bridges theoretical understanding with effective classroom practices, helping teachers and leaders make evidence-informed decisions about their school’s writing approach.

In this article, we will explore how the writing map aligns with the most effective writing practices, guiding you through its key components step by step. You can find an explanation of the writing map itself here.

Conceptualising Writing

Writing can be defined simply as: the construction of a text to share meaning.

The construction of a text requires a young writer to draw on their knowledge of transcription, composition and other indirect cognitive skills.

Transcription, composition, and indirect cognitive skills become increasingly integrated as a young writer develops. Their proficiency follows a gradual developmental trajectory, where these components become more and more interconnected and automated over time.

Transcription

To help develop children’s transcription, teachers can:

From Nursery onwards, encourage children to engage in emergent writing practices. This includes going through a developmental process of making scribbles, marks, producing letter-like shapes before eventually using ‘informed spellings’. Emergent writing is a temporary scaffold that children use while they are in the process of developing their letter formation, encoding and spelling knowledge. To find out more, download our article:

How can you teach children to write before they know their letters? [LINK]

Once phonics teaching has been introduced, you can begin to teach children encoding strategies which will wean them off their emergent writing practices towards writing ‘informed spellings’. To find out more, download our article:

Encoding and ‘informed spelling’ [LINK]

We can also recommend our publication Getting Children Up & Running As Writers [LINK] as well as Kid Writing: A Systematic Approach to Phonics, Journals, and Writing Workshop by Eileen Feldgus & Isabell Cardonick.

Next, schools can check their handwriting and spelling provision against our checklist. You can download this checklist separately here.

Composition

To help develop children’s composition:

Content knowledge. Teachers can explicitly teach children idea generation techniques so that they draw on ideas and knowledge held in their long-term memory. You can read more about the motivational and cognitive benefits of supporting children to generate their own writing ideas here.

Knowledge of text structures. Teachers can devote instructional time to the reading and discussion of mentor texts. These are texts which realistically match the type of writing children are being invited to produce for themselves. Through reading and discussion, the teacher and children can collaboratively generate a list of ‘product goals’ (also known as success criteria) that they believe are essential for making their writing meaningful and successful. To find out more, see the following:

How to get success criteria right in the writing classroom [LINK]
Reading In The Writing Classroom: A Guide To Finding, Writing And Using Mentor Texts With Your Class [LINK]

In addition, you can provide children with planning grids or graphic organisers which match the typical structure for the genre of writing they are being invited to plan for themselves. For more on this, see our publication: No More: I Don’t Know What To Write Next… Lessons That Help Children Plan Great Writing [LINK]

Knowledge of sentence structure. Teachers should teach grammar, punctuation, and at the sentence-level through the principles of SRSD instruction. To find out more, see our CPD articles:

Getting writing instruction right [LINK]
Guidance on teaching at the sentence-level [LINK]
The components of effective grammar instruction [LINK]

Craft knowledge. To build up children’s craft knowledge, teachers can use the principles of SRSD instruction to teach children about figurative language, rhetorical devices and other authorial craft moves. To find out more, see our publication: The Big Book Of Writing Mini-Lessons: Lessons That Teach Powerful Craft Knowledge For 3-11 Year Olds [LINK]

To support English language learners, you can invite them to create dual-language texts and engage in translanguaging practices (translanguaging is the practice of using multiple languages fluidly within your writing). To find out more, see our publication: A Teacher’s Guide To Writing With Multilingual Children [LINK].

Finally, to help children develop their own unique writer identity, style, and voice, schools should read our Writing Realities Framework and think about how they can implement its recommendations. You can download it for free here.

Vocabulary. Teachers can put aside instructional time at the editing stage of a class writing project for children to review their use of vocabulary and look for potential opportunities to use synonyms. In addition, teachers can teach functional grammar lessons at the word level (for example, discussing their choice of nouns, verbs and adjectives). To find out more, see our publications:

No More: ‘My Pupils Can’t Edit!’ A Whole-School Approach To Developing Proof-Readers [LINK]
Grammar Mini-Lessons For 3-11 Year Olds [LINK]

In addition, schools should ensure that they are developing children’s vocabulary in the wider curriculum subjects and through their reading.

Writing Fluency

To develop children’s writing fluency, school leaders and writing coordinators should ensure that there is a clear progression from EYFS through to LKS2. This is achieved by first accepting children’s emergent writing practices as a temporary scaffold when they first arrive at school. Children are weaned off such practices through daily phonics instruction, handwriting instruction, and by teaching children key encoding strategies. Throughout their time in the EYFS and KS1, children should be invited to use and apply these strategies every day during dedicated writing time. It’s through this daily writing time that children also learn to apply foundational sentence-level skills. This kind of systematic, rigorous and daily routine ensures each child between Nursery and Year Two composes thousands of sentences and crafts hundreds of short (and developmentally-appropriate) compositions. In the process, they internalise all the key skills that allow them to write fluently, happily and accurately. To find out more, download our CPD articles:

How do we develop writing fluency? [LINK]
Building up to extended writing projects [LINK]
No more: ‘They don’t know what a sentence is!’ intervention projects [LINK]

Indirect Cognitive Skills

Intimation is the writerly technique of suggesting or hinting at ideas, details, or meanings without explicitly stating them. When teachers comment that certain pupils show a ‘flair’ for writing, it is often because of their ability to use intimation techniques. To help children develop these skills, we can teach them authorial craft moves through the principles of SRSD instruction. To find out more, see our publication: The Big Book Of Writing Mini-Lessons: Lessons That Teach Powerful Craft Knowledge For 3-11 Year Olds [LINK]

Perspective-taking. Perspective-taking involves being able to take on another person’s point of view – for example, trying to understand what your readers’ reactions might be to your text. Teachers can help children receive others’ perspectives on their writing by ensuring there is a daily routine of class sharing and undertaking regular Author’s Chair sessions with their class [LINK].

Alternatively, perspective-taking in narrative writing might mean sharing how a character is feeling at certain moments in a story. Teachers can actively teach writerly techniques authors use to consider their characters’ perspectives. A number of these techniques can be found in our publication: The Big Book Of Writing Mini-Lessons: Lessons That Teach Powerful Craft Knowledge For 3-11 Year Olds [LINK]

Finally, at the beginning of a new class writing project, teacher and children should take some time to discuss the publishing goal for the project. This should include discussion around what they think their readers’ needs are. To help support such discussion, classes can ‘fill in the GAP’. To find out more, see the following CPD article:

Establishing publishing goals for class writing projects [LINK]

Planning and monitoring. To help support children’s ability to achieve writing goals, monitor their progress, and reduce cognitive load, teachers can plan their writing units so that they (1) teach the writing processes, (2) set daily process goals. These are probably the two most effective things a teacher of writing can do to improve children’s competency. To find out more, see the following CPD articles:

The components of an effective writing unit [LINK]
The components of an effective writing lesson [LINK]
Trust the process: setting process goals [LINK]
How we can support children as they are writing [LINK]

Teachers should also ensure children are given plenty of time to develop (and receive verbal feedback on) their writing plans. For more, see the following CPD articles:

Teaching children how to plan their writing in the EYFS and KS1 [LINK]
Teaching children how to plan their writing in KS2 [LINK]
Using focus groups to teach writing [LINK]

Finally, teachers should employ further scaffolds for children who need them. We can recommend looking up suitable scaffolds in our reference book: Supporting Children With SEND To Be Great Writers: A Guide For Teachers And SENCOS [LINK]. Despite its title, this book is useful for supporting any child with writing difficulties. You simply look up the aspect of writing that your class (or an individual child) is struggling with most, and there will be a host of research-based scaffolds and strategies waiting for you.

Explicit Teaching & Meaningful Writing Experiences

Transcription, composition and cognitive skills are developed via:

Explicit teaching.
Meaningful writing experiences.

These interact with one another. Children use and apply what they learn from explicit teaching when undertaking meaningful writing opportunities. Because children are undertaking meaningful writing experiences, they become increasingly interested in your explicit teaching.

Let’s start with explicit teaching. One of the most validated things a teacher can do to improve their writing teaching is to deliver their instruction through the principles of SRSD instruction (which stands for: self-regulated strategy development). SRSD instruction has been shown to significantly improve the writing of all writers, including those with learning disabilities [LINK]. The beauty of SRSD instruction is that you can use it to teach ‘craft knowledge’ [LINK], sentence-level strategies [LINK], grammatical features [LINK], planning techniques [LINK], revision strategies [LINK] and proofreading [LINK].

Here’s how SRSD instruction typically works:

Step One:	Orientate Remind the children of the class writing project they are currently working on. This includes checking they know what they are writing and who they are writing it for.
Step Two:	Discuss Introduce the craft move you want the children to try out in writing time today. Give the craft move a name. For example ‘show don’t tell’. Then be a salesperson. Tell your class why this craft move is so fantastic and how its use could transform their writing. Link the craft move to the class’ success criteria for the writing project. For example: ‘show don’t tell’ is going to help us achieve ‘share your characters’ feelings’, which is one of our success criteria.
Step Three:	Share Models or Model Live Share models. Show children examples of where other writers have used this craft move in their writing. There should certainly be an example of where you’ve used the craft move in your own writing. You should also show examples from other recreational or commercial authors and/or from previous students’ writing. Invite children to ask you questions. Or Model using the craft move live in front of your class. Share some of the writing you are currently working on and show how you’re going to use the craft move to enhance your writing. Invite children to ask you questions.
Step Four:	Provide Information We always recommend turning your instruction into a poster or resource which the children can refer to throughout writing time. This helps them memorise the craft move and any conventions it might involve. For example, you might make a poster to accompany a lesson on punctuating speech. The poster can almost always be pre-prepared to save time and can remain up in the classroom over many days, weeks or even months! Children will be showing independent, self-regulating behaviour every time they consult the poster.
Step Five:	Invite Invite children to use the technique during that day’s writing time. Monitor children’s use of the craft move during your daily pupil-conferencing. Sometimes you might feel you want your children to practise the strategy prior to using it in their own writing. However, in all honesty, we find this is rarely necessary.
Step Six:	Evaluate You can invite children to share how they used the craft move in their writing during class sharing and Author’s Chair. If you have noticed a student who has used the craft move in a particularly powerful, innovative or sophisticated way during your pupil-conferencing, you should invite that child to share their writing with the class. The class can then discuss their friend’s writing and its impact.

It’s important to remember that the stages shared above constitute a good guide. However, teachers should also feel free to experiment with them if they want to. The professional judgement made by a particular teacher might be that a certain stage could be omitted altogether and that another stage might need more time devoted to it. For example, some teachers like children to practise the taught craft move prior to using it in their own writing, while others find this an unnecessary distraction. Some like to model the craft move live, and create their poster in front of their class, while others like to have made their poster prior to the lesson, or to share writing they have already crafted.

It can be useful to compare SRSD instruction with The Gradual Release Of Responsibility model for instruction (Pearson & Gallagher 1983). We hope that teachers notice how writing instruction can be delivered and then applied, in context, by children every day.

I did or I do – The teacher either shares how they’ve used the craft move or models how to use it live.
We do – The class is invited to use and apply the craft move to their own writing that day.
You do – Children understand the value of the craft move and so continue to use it in their future writing.

I, We & You sits in stark contrast to the ineffective but common habit of ‘front loading’ writing instruction at the beginning of a writing unit and proceeding to ‘cross your fingers’ in the hope that the children will remember everything you’ve tried to teach them. This kind of practice doesn’t help children to write well.

Another thing to like about SRSD instruction is how it naturally links explicit teaching to meaningful writing experiences. Children are expected to use and apply what they learnt that day to real composition. This is important because explicit instruction and meaningful writing experiences need to interact with one another. Children use and apply what they learn from explicit teaching when undertaking meaningful (and developmentally appropriate) writing opportunities.

Let’s talk about meaningful writing experiences. We know that to build a successful writing classroom, teachers must establish:

A community of writers.
Purposeful and authentic class writing projects.
Writing goals that their class needs to achieve.

Children need to know why they are in the writing class. What is their reason for being there? Writers are moved to write in many ways and these purposes for writing provide a great way for teachers to organise meaningful class writing projects across the year(s).

To support school leaders, we suggest they carefully sequence class writing projects across a pupil’s time in school and ensure that they get to attend to these different purposes for writing in ways that are developmentally appropriate. Ultimately, a writing classroom’s goal is to foster a collective engagement in writing while producing manuscripts which align with the curriculum and resonate meaningfully with their intended audiences.

Beyond whole-class writing projects, children need to be given time and opportunity to pursue their own personal writing projects – both at school and at home.

For more on developing meaningful writing experiences, see the following CPD articles:

Building up to extended writing projects [LINK]
Articles & resources to help you develop a cohesive approach and progression for writing in your school [LINK]
Example programme of study and progression documents [LINK]
A Guide To Personal Writing Projects & Writing Clubs For 3-11 Year Olds [LINK]
Supporting children writing at home [LINK]

Oral Language

Oral language makes a contribution to aspects of writing that we’ve already discussed. However, there are other things a writing teacher can do to use children’s oral language as a supportive resource. For example, while children are in the process of generating ideas and planning their writing, give them time to talk at a ‘discourse level’. This means letting them tell you and their friends their story prior to writing it. Let me draw out their story and tell it again. Let them act out their story too if they would like! In the context of nonfiction writing, the same applies. Let them discuss their topic and let them draw about it (before explaining their drawings orally to others).

Next, we want to make sure that children are given regular opportunities to re-read or ‘tell’ aloud their texts as they are crafting them. The technique of ‘write a little – share a little’ can be useful here as can Author’s Chair [LINK and LINK for more on these strategies].

Oral rehearsal is also something that will need to explicitly modelled to children. This is the idea that we sometimes translate phrases and sentences out loud to ourselves prior to transcribing them down. If you can link this to drawing too, then all the better. This is why picturebook making in the EYFS and KS1 is such a powerful teaching strategy as we can teach children to (1) ‘make a drawing’, (2) ‘tell their drawing’ and (3) ‘write a sentence about your drawing’. The last action can obviously be changed depending on the children you’re working with. For example: ‘write a word’ or ‘write a paragraph’. For more on this, see our publication: Getting Children Up & Running As Writers [LINK] and our CPD article: Building up to extended writing projects [LINK].

For free CPD articles on utilising and developing children’s oral language in the writing classroom, see the following:

Developing children’s talk for writing [LINK]
Friends and authors: The benefits of children co-authoring [LINK]
Dialogic writing. How to support peer feedback conversations [LINK]
A quick guide to class sharing and Author’s Chair [LINK]

The Reading-Writing Connection

Reading and writing support each other’s development by:

Understanding and analysing mentor texts (these are texts which realistically match the kind of writing children are trying to produce for themselves).
Reading, recognising and using typical text structures and genre features in their own writing.
Reading can help children generate and develop their own writing ideas (this process is called intertextuality).
Regularly rereading their text as they go.

For more on this, download our publication: Reading In The Writing Classroom: A Guide To Finding, Writing And Using Mentor Texts With Your Class [LINK]

Reading comprehension development supports children’s:

Vocabulary.
Knowledge of sentence structures.
Knowledge of text structures.
Craft knowledge.
Content knowledge (For example, when they are asked to write about their reading in reading lessons. This also includes reading and writing about their learning in the wider curriculum subjects).
Intimation.
Perspective-taking.

Decoding mutually supports children’s ability to encode (transcribe the sounds they hear in the words they want to write).

For free CPD articles on the subject of the reading-writing connection, see the following:

What does the research say about reading in writing lessons? [LINK]
What is a high-quality text in the context of the writing classroom? [LINK]
Intertextuality. The glue that binds reading for pleasure and writing for pleasure together? [LINK]
Reading different types of fiction in the writing classroom [LINK]
Reading different types of nonfiction in the writing classroom [LINK]

Motivation

Motivation matters. When students are motivated to write, they pay more attention, put in more effort, persist for longer, and are able to write more independently.

Motivated writers bring care and commitment to their writing. Motivating writing teaching is by its definition effective teaching. Children who receive such practice are more likely to learn more.

When pupils lack writing motivation, they get distracted more easily, they do the bare minimum to get by, they avoid taking any risks that might make their writing more successful, they require constant cajoling and policing to stay on track, and they retain very little of what they learn.

Influenced by Peps Mccrea’s writings on motivation, we produced our own book entitled: Motivating Writing Teaching [LINK]. The chapters of the book are organised around five core drivers of writing motivation.

The first is success. One of the best ways to boost children’s motivation is to teach them well. This is about teaching in such a way that we can give students confidence that they will be successful.

Next is culture. This is social in nature. It’s about how the attitudes, routines and actions of the classroom and school environment influence pupils’ view of writing and being a writer.

Then we have motives. This is about students locating what is moving them to write and why they are bothering.

After, we have identity. This is about building up a bank of positive past experiences with being a writer. Linked to this identity is a student’s self-concept and their long-standing writerly self-esteem.

Finally, we have buy-in. This is how we can attend to students’ interests, preferences, and provide them with a sense of choice and control.

Together, these drivers provide a framework for action that all teachers can use to build pupils’ writing motivation. In our book, we take the best of motivational psychology and match it beautifully to evidence-informed teaching practices.

Social & Cultural Development: Building A Community Of Writers

Writers develop through individual cognitive growth and positive social interactions within a writing community. Being part of a supportive and enthusiastic writing community is essential to children’s writing development.

To find out more, you can access these free CPD articles:

The writer(s)- within- community model and improving the teaching of writing across a school [LINK]
Why effective writing instruction requires a writer-teacher [LINK]
Our Writing Realities framework [LINK]
Our Children As Writers survey [LINK]

A few years ago, we were lucky enough to travel around England and visit some of the best performing writing teachers in the country. These teachers were experts in creating a community of writers in their classrooms. We wrote about what we observed in our book: Writing For Pleasure: Theory, Research & Practice [LINK].

What now?

While we offer one-off professional development sessions to schools and MATs, and recognise their value in strengthening schools’ conceptual understanding of writing and help them identify areas for improvement, we believe long-term and sustained support is essential for translating this knowledge into effective classroom practice. Most schools we work with ultimately seek more than just theoretical guidance – they want to implement a reassuringly consistent approach to writing teaching that they can adopt, adapt, and use as a foundation for change. In these cases, we typically introduce the theoretical foundations of writing instruction before guiding schools through our Writing For Pleasure approach that balances four key priorities:

Checking the school’s provision for explicitly teaching encoding, handwriting and spelling.
Developing children’s writing fluency in the EYFS and KS1.
Providing opportunities for students to craft purposeful and authentic writing.
Engaging students and teachers in discussions about writing to deepen their understanding of the craft.

To achieve these priorities, we introduce three core writing structures:

Short ‘book-making’ projects: Focused intervention projects which build automaticity and accuracy in encoding and support sentence construction and cohesion.
Reading as writers: Analytical and reflective discussions of mentor texts that help students establish ambitious goals for their own writing.
Class writing projects: Opportunities for students to generate ideas, plan, draft, revise, proof-read and publish extended pieces of writing.

These structures are not anything complex. They simply make practical the principles of world-class writing teaching [LINK for more on this]. They support teachers while allowing them flexibility for adaptation and ongoing improvement.

Our support also extends far beyond writing lessons. We help schools tackle challenges such as assessment, supporting children with specific writing difficulties, helping English language learners, and fostering a school-wide culture of writer-teachers. The majority of our work with schools can be summarised as follows:

Providing constructive feedback on schools’ current approach to writing instruction and their writing curriculum, either through online discussions or in-person consultancy.
Helping classroom teachers and school leaders develop a deeper understanding of writing development so they can make evidence-informed instructional decisions that feel right for their school.
Outlining our Writing For Pleasure approach so that schools can adopt, adapt, or use it as a foundation for further development.

Finally, we work hard to provide free or very affordable alternatives to our consultancy work. We believe passionately in ensuring that high-quality professional development is accessible to as many teachers as possible.

Anyone can send us a message via email, Twitter, Facebook or Blue Sky with any questions, and we’ll do our best to answer them.
We hear from many schools who have used our website to drive their own CPD. You can access all our free CPD materials here.
Individual teachers can purchase our eBook How To Teach Writing for £5.95. Schools can purchase a licence for all their staff to gain access for £54.75 [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].

If you want to get in touch, you can use our contact form or email us: hello@writing4pleasure.com

Ross Young & Felicity Ferguson

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Visualising The Science Of Writing: The Writing Map Explained

Because of formatting, we can recommend downloading the PDF version of this article:

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This is a writing map we have started using in our professional development. We tried to create a writing equivalent to Christopher Such’s reading map (which we can highly recommend viewing here).

We see the importance for teachers and school leaders to understand the core principles of writing development – what we refer to as the underlying science of writing. We know that writing is something that is both personal and intensely social, both cognitive and emotive.

Our experience consistently shows that schools with a solid understanding of this theory are better equipped to make informed decisions when developing their writing curriculum. We often collaborate with schools that need more confidence in this area, guiding them to deepen their understanding and refine their approach with greater clarity and intentionality. This writing map has therefore become an increasingly essential part of our work.

In this article, we will look to guide you through the writing map one step at a time. You can download a larger presentation version of the map here.

Conceptualising Writing

Writing can be defined simply as: the construction of a text to share meaning.

The construction of a text requires a young writer to draw on their knowledge of transcription, composition and other indirect cognitive skills (Berninger & Amtmann 2003).

Transcription, composition, and indirect cognitive skills become increasingly integrated as a young writer develops (Sedita 2022). Their proficiency follows a gradual developmental trajectory, where these components become more and more interconnected and automated over time.

When composing, early writers will often go through a process of writing-telling. This is where they list their ideas, one after another, without too much thought. Developing writers then start writing-transforming. This is where they will plan and revise their compositions to improve its effectiveness. Finally, advanced writers undertake writing-crafting. This is where they will actively and continually consider the needs of their audience (Bereiter & Scardamalia 1987).

Writing development involves the progressive integration of transcription, composition, and cognitive skills.

Transcription

Transcription includes:

1. Emergent writing – producing scribbles, marks and letter-like shapes before eventually using ‘informed spellings’. Emergent writing is the developmental foundation for later conventional transcriptional skills. It acts as a temporary scaffold.

Kim & Byington (LINK)

Emergent writing → develops into → convention transcription

Once letter formation, phonics and encoding instruction are introduced, children’s emergent writing transitions towards using informed spellings.

Informed spellings = words that are spelt as they sound and influenced by the child’s growing phonological awareness and their knowledge of spelling rules and patterns.

2. Handwriting – fluency in forming letters or keyboarding.

3. Spelling – developing phonemic, orthographic, and morphological knowledge.

Transcription is based on our knowledge of → English orthography (the typical conventions used to write the English language) → and is influenced by → etymology (the history of words) → which affects a code of grapheme-phoneme correspondences → which to be used requires → phonemic skills (e.g. encoding and segmentation).

Encoding = the process of translating spoken language into written form. Encoding is the counterpart to decoding.

Segmentation = the ability to break down spoken words into their individual sounds (phonemes). This skill is essential for spelling and writing because it helps children recognise the sounds in words and match them to corresponding letters or letter patterns.

Transcription skills are also supported by morphology (how words are built from smaller units called morphemes, which are the smallest meaningful parts of a word e.g. un-help-ful).

Transcription is developed through explicit teaching and meaningful writing experiences.

Composition

When composing, children will go through the writer’s process of conceptualising, generating ideas, translating, transcribing and reconceptualising their writing (Graham 2018).

Conceptualise – Consider the purpose and audience for their writing.
Generate ideas – Generate ideas of what it is they would like to share with their readers.
Translate – Convert their ideas into possible phrases and sentences.
Transcribe – Children physically make their marks on paper or screen.
Reconceptualise – This is something children are doing all the time. They will regularly stop, think, rethink, share, discuss, re-read and perform their developing compositions.

Now we have a good understanding of what composing involves, let’s think about what it requires:

Vocabulary – knowing what words are going to say exactly what you mean.

Content knowledge – the ‘stuff’ you want to write about. If this content is held in children’s long-term memory, it can make writing easier.

Knowledge of sentence structure – includes syntax and punctuation:

Combining sentences to enhance fluency and coherence.
Using different sentence types for effect.
Using grammar as a meaning-making tool.
Punctuation usage.

Knowledge of text structures:

Understanding different genres – e.g. narrative, information.
Applying typical genre features – e.g. magic in fairytales, an abstract for a science report.
Using cohesive devices – e.g. being chronological, cause-effect, compare-contrast.

Craft Knowledge involves:

Developing your unique writer identity and style. This may involve using different language varieties, adapting your writing to various tones and levels of formality, and, for multilingual writers, creating dual-language texts and engaging in translanguaging practices (translanguaging = the practice of using multiple languages fluidly in your writing).
Use of figurative language – e.g. personification, simile.
Rhetorical devices – e.g. appealing to a reader’s emotions, placing two ideas together to highlight their differences.

Writing Fluency

Both transcription and composition are required for writing fluency which can be identified as:

Accuracy – e.g. forming letters correctly.
Automaticity – transcribing to paper or screen what it is you want to say quickly and happily.

* A quick note on automaticity. This should not be confused with the process of conceptualising and organising ideas which does not always happen quickly and happily! Automaticity is here to indicate that fast transcription can occur once a child has translated their ideas into phrases or sentences in their mind.

Indirect Cognitive Skills

Indirect cognitive skills include (Hacker 2018; Kim & Graham 2022):

Intimation – the writerly technique of suggesting or hinting at ideas, details, or meanings without explicitly stating them.

Perspective-taking – considering how to successfully write for different purposes and audiences – knowing your readers’ needs.

Planning and monitoring includes:

Metacognition – the awareness a writer has over their own thought processes while writing.
Self-regulation – a writer’s ability to set goals, monitor their progress, and adjust their strategies to craft and improve their writing.
Executive function – the mental processes that help a writer start and complete their writing – including knowing how to generate writing ideas, plan, draft, revise and proof-read.
Working memory – allows a writer to temporarily hold and manipulate information while writing. For example, remembering what they have already written or keeping track of key details they want to include.

We can personify the planning and monitoring strategies children use to craft texts. This would include:

These higher-order cognitive skills interact with composition and are required for producing the most meaningful and successful writing.

Explicit Teaching & Meaningful Writing Experiences

Transcription, composition and cognitive skills are developed via:

Explicit teaching.
Meaningful writing experiences.

These interact with one another. Children use and apply what they learn from explicit teaching when undertaking meaningful writing experiences. Because children are undertaking meaningful writing experiences, they become increasingly interested in your explicit teaching.

Explicit teaching	Meaningful writing experiences
Handwriting and spelling instruction Self-regulation strategy development instruction Includes: grammar, sentence-level, literary craft moves, rhetorical devices, planning, drafting, revising, proof-reading, publishing Verbal feedback and pupil-conferencing Scaffolding – including aids, modelling and guided practice	Short ‘fluency’ based writing projects Reading as writers and studying mentor texts Whole-class writing projects Personal writing projects (both school and home) Class sharing and Author’s Chair

For more on this, see our document The Writing Map & Evidence-Based Writing Teaching [LINK].

Oral Language

Oral language supports (Kim & Graham 2022):

Encoding & segmentation
Vocabulary – knowing what words are going to say exactly what you mean
Talking at the text level – e.g. storytelling
Monitoring – by re-reading your writing aloud to yourself (and others)

Oral language helps develop fluency, cohesion, and effectiveness and is developed through:

Time for discussion and storytelling
Oral rehearsal before transcribing
Egocentric talk (what’s called ‘self-talk’ while writing)
Class sharing and regularly reading aloud

The Reading-Writing Connection

Reading and writing support each other’s development by:

Understanding and analysing mentor texts (these are texts which realistically match the kind of writing children are trying to produce for themselves).
Reading, recognising and using typical text structures and genre features in their own writing.
Reading can help children generate and develop their own writing ideas (this process is called intertextuality).
Regularly rereading their developing text.

Reading comprehension development supports children’s:

Vocabulary.
Knowledge of sentence structures.
Knowledge of text structures.
Craft knowledge.
Content knowledge (For example, when asked to write about their reading in reading lessons. This also includes reading and writing about their learning in the wider curriculum subjects).
Intimation.
Perspective-taking.

Decoding mutually supports children’s ability to encode (transcribe the sounds they hear in the words they want to write).

(Kim & Graham 2022; Such 2025)

Motivation

Motivation supports planning & monitoring as it involves value (the importance or significance a young writer places on their writing) which affects their:

Persistence – their desire to continue working on their writing despite difficulties.
Attention – their desire to focus on their writing and not get distracted.
Effort – the time and energy they invest in creating and refining their writing.
Self-efficacy – their belief in their ability to create successful and meaningful writing.

When students are motivated to write, they pay more attention, put in more effort, persist for longer, and are able to write more independently.

Meaningful writing experiences and explicit teaching support children’s motivation.

* Quick note. While we have motivation supporting children’s writing development, research is increasingly emphasising it as a core element of writing development. Like cognitive psychologist John Hayes, in his writing model, we could have placed motivation as the first element in the process of writing production [LINK for more].

This makes sense as the word ‘motive’ derives from the Latin movere meaning ‘to move’. As teachers, we need to help students see the value and purpose for writing. They need to be moved to write.

Social & Cultural Development: Building A Community Of Writers

Finally, and most importantly, writing is a social and cultural activity shaped by participation with a writing community (Graham 2018). Writers develop through:

Individual cognitive growth

Positive social interactions within a writing community

Writing alongside their writer-teacher and peers.
Receiving feedback and social recognition.
Making connections with readers by publishing and performing their writing
Collaborating, co-writing, reading, thinking and talking about writing (and being writers).
Taking part in authentic class writing projects.

Being part of a supportive and enthusiastic writing community is essential to children’s writing development.

What now?

Checking the school’s provision for explicitly teaching encoding, handwriting and spelling.
Developing children’s writing fluency in the EYFS and KS1.
Providing opportunities for students to craft purposeful and authentic writing.
Engaging students and teachers in discussions about writing to deepen their understanding of the craft.

To achieve these priorities, we introduce three core writing structures:

Short ‘book-making’ projects: Focused intervention projects which build automaticity and accuracy in encoding and support sentence construction and cohesion.
Reading as writers: Analytical and reflective discussions of mentor texts that help students establish ambitious goals for their writing.
Class writing projects: Opportunities for students to generate ideas, plan, draft, revise, proof-read and publish extended pieces of writing.

Providing constructive feedback on schools’ current approach to writing instruction and their writing curriculum, either through online discussions or in-person consultancy.
Helping classroom teachers and school leaders develop a deeper understanding of writing development so they can make evidence-informed instructional decisions that feel right for their school.
Outlining our Writing For Pleasure approach so that schools can adopt, adapt, or use it as a foundation for further development.

Anyone can send us a message via email, Twitter, Facebook or Blue Sky with any questions, and we’ll do our best to answer them.
We hear from many schools who have used our website to drive their own CPD. You can access all our free CPD materials here.
Individual teachers can purchase our eBook How To Teach Writing for £5.95. Schools can purchase a licence for all their staff to gain access for £54.75 [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].

If you want to get in touch, you can use our contact form or email us: hello@writing4pleasure.com

Ross Young & Felicity Ferguson

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References:

Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (2013). The psychology of written composition. Routledge.
Berninger, V.W., Amtmann, D. (2003). Preventing written expression disabilities through early and continuing assessment and intervention for handwriting and/or spelling problems: Research into practice. In Handbook of Learning Disabilities, Swanson, H.L., Harris, K.R., and Graham, S. (Eds.) (pp. 345–363). New York: Guilford Press
Byington T., Kim, Y. (2017) Promoting preschoolers’ emergent writing, Young Children, 72(5)
Graham, S., (2018) A revised writer(s)-within-community model of writing, Educational Psychologist, 53:4, 258-279
Hacker, D. J. (2018). A metacognitive model of writing: An update from a developmental perspective. Educational Psychologist, 53(4), 220-237.
Hayes, J. (2012) Modeling and remodeling writing, Written Communication, 29, 369–388
Kim, Y.-S.G. (2022) Co-occurrence of reading and writing difficulties: the application of the interactive dynamic literacy model, Journal of learning disabilities, doi:10.1177/00222194211060868
Kim, Y.-S. G., & Graham, S. (2022) Expanding the direct and indirect effects model of writing (DIEW): reading–writing relations, and dynamic relations as a function of measurement/dimensions of written composition, Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(2), 215–238
Sedita, J., & Hasbrouck, J. (2022). The writing rope. Brookes Publishing.
Such, C. (2025) Primary reading simplified London: Corwin
Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2022) The science of teaching primary writing Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre

What writing ambitions do schools have for economically underserved pupils?

Original article: LINK

By Clarence Ng & Steve Graham

Effective writing skills are essential for success in school, work, and everyday life. However, research has shown that students in countries like Australia, the UK and the USA are struggling with children’s writing proficiency. This issue is especially pressing for students from economically underserved areas.

A school’s ambitions for teaching writing

A school’s ambitions for teaching writing reflect what they aim to achieve through their writing instruction. Their goals influence their classroom practices, students’ motivation, and overall writing outcomes. Research identifies four types of school ambition:

Mastery – The school is sincerely and deeply interested in students’ long-term learning and development.
Ability – The school is focused on their own competence in delivering effective writing instruction so children achieve genuine academic competency.
Ability-avoidance – The school is focused on getting children to produce writing that looks competent and independent (also called ‘gaming the system’, ‘presenting competency’ or ‘fake competency’).
Work-avoidance – Schools are focused on making their lives easier.

Understanding these different approaches can help schools reflect on their instructional strategies. A school’s ambitions shape the way they view their students’ writing abilities. For example:

A mastery school may implement personal writing projects and encourage revision and proof-reading to develop students’ writing skills over time.
An ability school might seek professional development to improve their own teaching effectiveness.
An ability-avoidance school may concentrate on ‘presenting’ assessment benchmarks in children’s writing rather than genuinely developing their writing competency.
A work-avoidance school is likely to use pre-packaged writing schemes, worksheets, plan minimal writing projects, and provide less feedback to students.

Most schools are likely have a mix of these goals, but reflecting on them can help refine your school’s strategy to better support your economically underserved students.

Understanding teachers’ ambitions for teaching writing to economically underserved students

The study explored how teachers’ beliefs and goals for teaching writing influenced their instructional practices, particularly for students from economically underserved areas.

Key findings include:

Teachers who believed economically underserved students lacked the cognitive abilities for writing were more likely to adopt ability-avoidance and work-avoidance goals. In addition, they focused on only teaching basic writing skills. Finally, these teachers allocated the least amount of time to teaching writing.

Teachers who pursued mastery goals were more likely to teach advanced writing skills to economically underserved pupils. Mastery-driven teachers were generally older and had more experience teaching economically-underserved students and so knew what children are truly capable of. In addition, mastery-driven teachers were more likely to praise their teacher training and other writing CPD. Finally, mastery-driven teachers dedicated lots of time and effort to their writing instruction.

This research highlights the complex relationship between what schools believe about economically underserved students’ writing abilities and the way they approach teaching. Schools with teachers who believe that economically underserved students have strong cognitive abilities (and so do not need a simplified writing curriculum) are more likely to set mastery-driven goals and teach advanced writing skills. On the other hand, schools which think economically underserved students struggle with writing tend to focus on basic instruction and are more likely to avoid setting ambitious writing goals.

Why mastery matters

Findings from the study suggest that teachers and schools who set themselves mastery-driven ambitions provide a more effective and motivating writing education for economically underserved students. When mastery is the dominant motivation, teachers are more likely to challenge students with advanced skills and reject the idea that economically underserved students need only basic writing instruction. On the other hand, schools which focus on performance-related goals deny their students the proper writerly apprenticeship they deserve:

Mastery-driven schools – These schools prioritise students’ long-term learning and writing development. They focus on teaching advanced writing skills and believe economically-underserved students can succeed without relying on a simplified ‘back-to-basics’ writing curriculum. They also spend more time teaching writing.

Performance-driven schools – These schools are more focused on getting their students to present a ‘fake’ (or superficial) level of competency in their writing. They often believe that economically underserved students naturally struggle with writing and tend to emphasise basic skills instruction as a result. They spend less time teaching writing and often feel discouraged by the writing their economically underserved students produce.

Moderate schools – These schools hold a mixture of mastery and performance ambitions. They are more adaptive than performance-driven schools and show a more centralist approach to their writing instruction.

Implications for schools

This study underscores the importance of helping schools and teachers develop positive beliefs about economically underserved students’ writing abilities and encourage them to set mastery-driven goals. To enhance writing outcomes for economically underserved students, schools can:

Reflect on their ambitions to align with best practices for student writing growth [see LINK for more].
Use evidence-based writing instruction that balances the teaching of basic and advanced writing skills [see LINK for more on evidence-based writing instruction].
Engage in long-term professional development to challenge misconceptions about economically underserved students’ abilities [LINK for more on this].

***

If you enjoyed this article, perhaps you’d like to read these too:

The writing lives of working-class children [LINK]
A whole generation of children have been put on “writers’ welfare” [LINK]

Free Discussion Text Unit Plan

Why write discussion texts?

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; an argument, an exchange of ignorance – Robert Quillen

This discussion writing project builds on what children have learnt in other non-fiction projects in previous years. For example, they have learnt how to recount. They’ve learnt how to tell stories and write memoirs of their past. They’ve learnt how to give information to others and how to explain themselves. They’ve learnt how to account for and explain why things happen in both history and science and, finally, they’ve learnt how to hold a position on something they care about through persuasion. However, there are subtle differences between this project and all of the others we provide. Discussion isn’t just explanation. It’s not about simply giving facts or writing about the consequences of something, nor is it just a persuasive piece. It’s not there simply to promote and champion your position, nor is it there simply to challenge or destroy another’s. Instead, discussion brings all of these skills together. Children will learn to consider more than one point of view and use recounts, poetic metaphor, evidence, explanation and persuasion to better understand both sides. Writing discussion pieces is about being both thoughtful and penetrative.

We discuss things all the time. We weigh things up and discuss things in our heads. We hear people out – we might challenge their thinking from time to time and we will probably try to justify our thoughts with some kind of explanation. We might also challenge what we’ve heard but still be open to changing our own opinion. In the world of social media, globalisation and political polarisation, discussion is an important life and academic skill that children should be exposed to, and they should know how to use it for themselves.

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Helping children proof-read their spellings

“Hi Ross and Phi. I’m after a bit of advice on how best to deliver editing lessons for spellings. I often find that these lessons don’t go so well as children struggle to find words they have spelled wrong in their own writing. How would you teach this skill and what resources do you think are best to help children do their corrections independently?”

This is a great question! I’ve tried to provide some advice below.

1. I would break proof-reading for spelling down into three component parts and devote as many days to it as you feel you need to.

Start by proof-reading for common words only (I’ll leave this to your professional judgement; you can give out resources for the 10, 100, 1000 most common words).

Once you’re happy with that, I would then move on to checking “our class’ tricky words“. For this session(s), you will want to create a word mat of all the words your class typically struggles with. It can be useful to flick through some of their books prior to making your word mat.

Finally, children can correct their temporary spellings. Hopefully, at the beginning of the year, you modelled to your class how they can use temporary spellings. This is when we know we want to use a word but we are not sure how to spell it conventionally. You write down the sounds you can hear in the word (so we can read it) and put a circle around it. The children are then given these proof-reading sessions to look up the conventional spelling. They cross out their temporary spelling and write the conventional spelling above. If you haven’t taught your children to do this, you’ll need to do it in reserve. They’ll have to look through their manuscripts with their friends and circle any ‘unsure’ spellings.

If you’ve decided you really want to make spelling a particular priority for a certain class writing project, it might take you anywhere between 3-7 sessions to work through this structure. This leads nicely onto point two.

2. Don’t move on until you’re happy that everyone has done their best proof-reading.

You may well need to devote multiple sessions to spelling. For children whose manuscripts you have seen and are happy with on any given day, they can work on their personal projects, this frees you up to work with a group(s) of children who might need some extra TLC from you. For example, on the first day of checking for common words, most of my class made their corrections. However, I have a small group of pupils who are still working their way through. The next day, I will meet with that group to continue our spelling work while the rest of the class can have personal writing project time (see here for more on setting up personal project writing).

**3. Model how you proof-read for spellings as part of your daily mini-lessons.**

It’s important that you model how to use word mats and other spelling resources as part of your mini-lessons. You need to show children how writers proof-read and what you expect them to do during that day’s writing time. Putting some of your writing (full of the sorts of spelling errors your children make) under a visualiser and showing the children how you are proof-reading it is invaluable.

4. Don’t use dictionaries!

When correcting their temporary spellings, don’t ask the children to use dictionaries to look up their words. The problem with this is you need to know how to spell the word to look it up in the first place. Dictionaries are designed to look up the definitions of words – not their spellings. Instead, give children access to tablets or laptops – where they can type in their spelling on Google. It’ll often come back with ‘did you mean: …‘ and give a definition for the word too.

You can also give children access to smart speakers. Children can then simply say “spell: tyrannosaurus rex” and the nice Siri man will say the word and then spell it out one letter at a time very slowly. Finally, you should give children access to electronic spell checkers [LINK] and/or ACE spelling dictionaries [LINK].

**5. Always celebrate the amount of proof-reading children have achieved.**

It’s important to celebrate your best proof-readers. This way, children don’t see making corrections as a bad thing – but rather is something that great writers do. For example, you can ask children to count up the number of proof-reads they were able to find that day and give a prize to your best proof-reader.

This is also about being optimistic and realistic. They are young developing writers. Even professional writers and publishers will pay professional proof-readers to spot their deviations from conventions. Even then, many ‘errors’ go through to final publication. For example, professional proofreaders catch only around 80% of non-word errors and 66% of word errors [LINK].

6. Proof-reading for spelling can’t replace the explicit teaching of spelling.

As writers, not all of us are great spellers. That means we have to become great proof-readers. However, proof-reading can’t replace teaching children about spelling through explicit spelling instruction. I’ve attached a link to our spelling provision checklist. Check it out and see whether your approach to teaching spelling aligns with best practice [LINK].

***

If you found this article useful, consider downloading our book: No More “My Class Can’t Edit!” A Whole-School Approach To Proof-Reading. Alternatively, become a member and access our programme of study, planning, resources and eBooks for free. To become a member, click here.

The Writing For Pleasure Centre’s FREE Handbook Of Research On Teaching Young Writers NEW 4th Edition

This free handbook addresses some of the major aspects of teaching writing. The aim is to create an invaluable reference guide for all teachers. We hope to update this handbook every year to take account of the latest research and thinking. We would like this handbook to support teachers in developing sound subject knowledge and exceptional classroom practice. We have tried to make the research as accessible as possible. The handbook includes:

Over 1000 research entries covering the major aspects of developing students as writers.
Short abstracts and keyword tags to help teachers find the research they are looking for.
An analysis of the analysis and what it is the best performing writing teachers do that makes the difference.
A chapter dedicated to each of the 14 principles of world-class writing teaching.
Research on the early teaching of writing including compositional development, phonics, encoding, spelling, letter formation and handwriting.
Extended entries on major topics such as speaking and listening, reading/writing connection, multilingualism, special educational needs and disabilities, and social and emotional disorders.
Focused chapters on the affective needs of student writers, including: self-efficacy (confidence), self-regulation (competence and independence), agency, motivation and writer-identity.
Essential literature and suggested reading offered at the end of each chapter.

This handbook is a useful resource for anyone interested in developing world-class writing teaching. Teachers should find what is shared within these pages utterly interesting, informed and helpful.

We have done our best with this third edition to cover many aspects of writing teaching in the best way we can. We have provided a variety of research, from different disciplines, and from a variety of perspectives. We’ve tried to provide a balance between the very latest emerging research and classic studies which contain profound insights and have stood the test of time. If you think some important research entries are missing, then please contact us. You can contact us through our website at: http://www.writing4pleasure.com/contact

New to this fourth edition:

Additional reading on the topic of developing children’s writer-identities.
Recommended reading on the role of phonics, encoding, spelling instruction, letter formation and handwriting instruction on children’s early writing development.
Additional commentary on developing children’s ‘writing fluency’.
A number of articles have been added on the subject of oral language development and children reading, sharing, thinking and talking about writing.
Major additions to the special educational needs chapter.
Recommended reading on the importance of having a reassuringly consistent approach to teaching writing in the early years.
Further additions to verbal feedback and delivering pupil-conferencing.
A *new section* on assessing writing and assessing writers.
Significant additions to the reading and writing connection chapter.

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Developing motivated and successful writers in the EYFS

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When Nursery-aged children like Wyatt and Hudson are invited to write their first ever books, they can hesitate. This is until their teacher encourages them by explaining that the books they read to them are also created by people just like them – implying that they can do the same. In Wyatt’s case, it was his teacher sharing their own book-making that did the trick. Energised by the idea that they can make books, both Hudson & Wyatt enthusiastically spent time crafting their texts: Avengers Assemble, Alligators and Crocodiles & Untitled. After finishing their books, both proudly read them aloud to anyone who would listen, using their illustrations and emergent writing to narrate their stories and following their text with their fingers as they ‘read’. Such successful and profound initial experiences with being a writer can spark sustained interest with children often ‘catching the bug’ of book-making.

***

Research shows that providing young children with daily opportunities to write helps them see themselves as capable writers, developing skills for intellectual, academic, and social purposes while building their foundational reading and oral language skills. Writing enables children to be experts, explore social roles, expand their imaginative play, adopt new identities, and share personal experiences. Encouraging practices like informed spelling and constructive feedback enhances their understanding of phonological awareness, letter names and sounds. This improves both their reading and writing. Motivated writers like Hudson & Wyatt are persistent, strategic, and happy in their work – traits consistently linked to academic success and personal growth [LINK].

***

Sadly, despite its effectiveness, book-making is uncommon in Nursery and Reception classrooms. While writing materials are made available in the writing corner, children can spend minimal time writing there. In Nurseries & Reception classes, writing is generally confined to small portions of literacy instruction, focusing solely on things like letter formation and dictation rather than also encouraging children to use and apply this developing transcriptional knowledge to book-making. However, some teachers are taking a more rigorous and research-informed approach, as observed in the work of:

Already Ready: Nurturing Writers in Preschool and Kindergarten by Katie Wood Ray & Matt Glover [LINK]
A Teacher’s Guide to Getting Started with Beginning Writers by Katie Wood Ray & Lisa Cleaveland [LINK]
Learning To Write And Loving It! by Miriam Trehearne [LINK]
Getting Children Up & Running As Writers by Ross Young & Felicity Ferguson [LINK]
Kid Writing In The 21st Century by Eileen Feldgus, Isabell Cardonick and Richard Gentry [LINK]
About The Authors by Katie Wood Ray & Lisa Cleaveland [LINK]
Never Too Early To Write by Bea Johnson [LINK]
Helping Children Become Readers Through Writing by Arlene Schulze [LINK]
Understanding and Supporting Young Writers from Birth to 8 by Noella Mackenzie & Janet Scull [LINK]
Handbook On The Science Of Early Literacy by Sonia Cabell, Susan Neuman and Nicole Terry [LINK]

These teachers provide:

Whole-class and small group direct instruction – Teach children something about writing and being a writer on the carpet. This includes, but isn’t limited to, teaching about letter formation and encoding strategies.
Whole-class and small group modelling – Share with their class their own book-making. Will write/model/teach alongside small groups of children during book-making time.
Self-initiated writing opportunities – Devote time and resources to establishing and maintaining a writing centre. Will explicitly model how resources from the writing centre can be used throughout the provision.

For young children to engage in writing (and being a writer), it is essential to create a community of writers which makes writing both appealing and meaningful. While writing centres are common in EYFS classrooms, some children rarely (if ever) choose writing over other activities, especially when their writerly experiences have been limited to rote practices like letter formation and handwriting drills, which (unsurprisingly) can fail to capture their interest.

To motivate children to write, they need to see writing as playful, achievable and purposeful. To develop children’s intrinsic motivation for writing, we need to address three basic human needs:

Competency: Children must feel capable of successfully engaging in being a writer.
Autonomy: They should have opportunities to make their own authorial decisions and express themselves freely in their writing.
Relatedness: Writing should connect with their personal interests and should be a social and playful experience.

One effective way to meet these needs is through class writing projects, such as creating picture books (for example units, follow this LINK). This approach allows children to experience self-determination while fostering deep engagement, making writing both enjoyable and rewarding.

Supporting young writers’ sense of competence is critical for encouraging them to engage in and persist with writing. Inviting children to create picturebooks is particularly effective, as it utilises a familiar format and aligns with young children’s natural writing process . This approach builds confidence by showing children that they can create books in ways similar to published authors, expanding the definition of what it means to be a competent writer.

Strategies for building young children’s sense of competency

Use picturebooks as models: Picturebooks serve as mentor texts [LINK for more on this]. By looking at them, they can teach us things about writing. Their combination of images and words mirrors young children’s own meaning-making methods, such as drawing and writing on each page. Early on in the year, before you’ve formally introduced phonics lessons, wordless picturebooks are especially supportive, demonstrating that illustrations alone can tell a story or teach someone something, empowering children who are not yet writing conventionally to still participate in book-making.

Value children’s emergent writing and informed spellings: Encouraging children to add emergent writing to their books, even before mastering sound-symbol relationships, helps them feel competent. For instance, Wyatt confidently added ‘kid writing‘ to his illustrations so that he could ‘read/tell’ you his book. Expecting correct letter formation or critiquing children’s spelling attempts too early and too harshly can undermine their confidence, whereas affirming their efforts nurtures their motivation (LINK for more on whether teachers should write under children’s attempts). Book-making is no fun when you know you are only going to be criticised for your efforts.

Providing feedback that is developmentally appropriate: Effective verbal feedback begins by celebrating what a child has already demonstrated they know. For example, commenting on Hudson’s inclusion of letters – “I see why you put letters on the page; authors do that too” – acknowledges his effort and provides a bridge to future learning. Underwriting, alongside the child, is a great way to move that feedback forward and teach a child something new about writing and being a writer. However, avoid making demands that are developmentally inappropriate. Make sure your feedback is actionable.

Modelling and scaffolding: Teachers should model their own ‘book-making life’ by demonstrating their own writing processes. For example, how they used to use a sound mat when they were their pupils’ age, how they used emergent writing, and how they used to ‘tell’ their picture to a friend before writing about it. Other examples include: modelling how you’re going to do all the pictures for your book before you write about them afterwards or how you are going to use speech bubbles in your book just like Allan Ahlberg does. You can then invite children to use the exact same techniques that you modelled during that day’s daily book-making time too.

Strategies for supporting children’s autonomy

Supporting a young writer’s sense of autonomy is crucial for developing their motivation and engagement. Autonomy, or the feeling that a child is in control of their writing, is best nurtured when children are invited to make decisions about the content and style of their picturebooks. It can be detrimental to impose rigid themes, such as requiring all children to write about the same topic (e.g. wild animals) or asking them to choose from a narrow set of teacher-imposed options, as this restricts their creativity and makes writing feel less motivating. Children are more engaged when they can pursue topics that are meaningful to them, like writing a story about a slime monster or an information text about all the reasons to love Elsa from Frozen.

However, understandably, some young writers can find complete freedom (and a lack of support) overwhelming. It’s important to recognise that the process of figuring out what to write about takes time and your teachers and friends can help you! That’s why we recommend having Ideas Parties together as a whole class (LINK for more on this). Children learn by listening to their peers and thinking about their favourite published authors ideas, and through discussions with their teacher about how to choose their best writing topics. Prior to an Ideas Party, teachers can put aside a number of sessions to expose their pupils to a variety of picturebooks, helping them broaden their understanding of what’s possible when book-making (LINK for more).

Here’s an example of Nursery children in Marcela Vasques’ class being invited to have an Ideas Party.

Gentle nudges and enthusiasm for certain ideas can help guide children without diminishing their own autonomy. For example, if a child regularly enjoys playing shark attacks! at the water table, you might suggest that they could make a book about it. This kind of suggestion, rooted in the child’s own interests and funds-of-knowledge, can inspire them to take ownership of their picturebook.

Strategies for supporting children’s writerly relationships

A young writer’s motivation is greatly influenced by their sense of relatedness – feeling happy and connected to the readers of their picturebooks. For children, strong relationships, especially with teachers, peers, family, and caregivers are crucial to their motivation. When children feel cared for by their writerly teachers and friends, they tend to have higher self-esteem, better school engagement, and improved well-being. This was evident in Hudson’s and Wyatt’s positive experiences with their teachers, who fostered a supportive and social classroom environment that helped them thrive in their writing. In contrast, a child who makes books alone in silence or is asked to engage in less meaningful writing activities will find themselves disconnected from the community of writers in their classroom and can struggle to stay motivated as a result.

Hudson’s interactions with his teacher and friends are characterised by her role as a supportive reader rather than always ‘the corrector’. She showed a genuine enthusiasm and interest in his book! She was playful. For example, Hudson’s unexpected inclusion of a pigeon from Mo Willems’ books in his story about alligators and crocodiles was met with readerly excitement, not correction. The relaxed, respectful dynamic between them both created a secure space for Hudson to be a successful bookmaker.

While competency, autonomy, and relatedness are distinct needs, they must be met simultaneously for a child to be a happy and academically successful writer. For instance, children who are given complete autonomy but lack the instruction and modelling to develop their competency may become overwhelmed and fearful. Similarly, a child who has strong writing skills but feels disconnected or anxious during writing time may have trouble focusing on a class writing project. Therefore, fostering all three needs – competence, autonomy, and relatedness – is key to sustaining a child’s writing success.

How do you plan writing lessons?

It’s important to create a supportive community of writers that integrates reading with talking and making books. This combination forms a powerful research-based teaching practice. By viewing book-making time as a place where people gather together around a shared interest or common activity, teachers can maximise the likelihood that children will enjoy and commit to being writers too. In such a space, all children, regardless of age or expertise, can write together happily. This dynamic encourages social interaction and helps elevate children’s book-making. In the classroom, this concept can be applied by connecting shared picturebook reading with daily opportunities for children to create their own books too.

Reading as writers

Shared picturebook reading offers a powerful opportunity for young children to connect with books and enhance their writing skills [LINK for more]. By engaging in repeated, interactive read-alouds, children respond naturally to stories or information texts, which can inspire them to think critically about the kind of books they would like to make too. A first reading should allow children to react freely, while a second reading should focus on the decisions made by the author and illustrator, helping children understand how they can do these things in their books!

In addition to picturebooks, incorporating list books (also known as board books or baby books) is important at the start of the year, as these are the types of texts children are usually exposed to prior to coming to Nursery or Reception. Bilingual children, in particular, can benefit from such books that emphasise visuals, helping them build understanding and motivation [LINK for more on using list books]. Lastly, connecting the work of professional authors with young writers reinforces the idea that they share the same kind of practices with adult authors. Teachers can highlight cool craft moves in picturebooks before encouraging children to give it a try in their own books that day. In the process, a sense of empowerment and connection between reading and writing is born.

Book-making is playful and social

I will never forget asking a Reception child what book-making was. He replied: “It’s when we get to play writing with our friends”. Social writing spaces provide young children with valuable opportunities to develop their oral language and listening comprehension – not to mention social skills like collaboration and learning from one another.

Let’s define what we mean by oral language development and then consider how much language learning takes place before children enter formal schooling.

Talking	The ability to express one’s own thoughts and feelings.
Reciting	Repeating aloud a text from memory.
Writing	The activity or occupation of composing text for publication.
Dictating	The transcription of someone else’s spoken text.
Developing children’s oral language	The development of children’s own communication using speech and/or writing.

Age	Typical language milestones
Eighteen months old	At eighteen months old, children already have a vocabulary of around fifty words.
Two years old	By two years old, most children produce utterances of two words. These utterances are crafted by the child and are not the parroting back of an adult model. Speech and thought come together by the age of two.
Two and a half	Can utter sentences of three words.
Between three and four years olds	Begin speaking in full sentences. Children can say an infinite number of original sentences – sentences that they’ve never said or heard before.
Five years old	Children are able to use language with a capacity close to that of an adult. For example they use language for the following purposes: to persuade, influence or command others; to share and understand information; to tell stories (both real and imagined) and use language imaginatively and playfully. Children can typically say and write sentences of around five words.
From seven years old	Children usually acquire a full and accurate knowledge of their first language.

As you can see, every single child brings a great deal of language learning into the classroom on their very first day of Nursery or Reception. However, this learning can often be underestimated or overlooked by many who work in education. Research shows that children are most likely to succeed in schools that use and value this existing knowledge and build on it.

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, they learn little. The acquisition of language is a dynamic and creative process, not the passive reciting and copying of someone else’s model.

Children’s talk and writing should be developed concurrently. Children must engage in egocentric talk, talking aloud to themselves as they write. They also need to write alongside and in happy dialogue with their teacher and peers. This means it’s necessary for children to play a daily and active role in their own talk and writing construction. They should also learn about speech and text construction from being ‘overhearers’ to their peers’ talk, help and instruction. In addition, children can engage in what we call parallel writing and co-operative writing, where they participate daily in the kind of activities listed below. Remember, children will 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 (see LINK for more details on this).
Talk to support children’s encoding – 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. Encoding, fluency and automaticity in writing can only really come if children are ‘talking aloud to themselves’ and writing meaningfully and for a sustained period every day. Until that happens, children are relying on their working memory which leaves them with little space to consider the more complex compositional and transcriptional aspects of writing. As a result, their academic progress suffers (for more on developing children’s writing fluency, see this LINK).

To encourage children’s oral language development, some teaching about book-making followed by an invitation to write should be a consistent part of your daily schedule.

Don’t delay. Introduce book-making on their very first day

To introduce bookmaking effectively, it’s helpful to begin on the very first day. It’s all about modelling how and why you book-make before inviting the children to give it a try for themselves. Some teachers like to introduce book-making to a few children at a time until the whole class is familiar with the process. This approach creates a growing group of ‘experts’ who can assist and guide the newer book-makers. To reduce any confusion, show examples of books made by other children previously. In addition, show children the sorts of books you used to make (or would have made at their age if you had been given the opportunity). Clearly explain the routines, materials needed, and where to find them, helping children feel prepared and confident to engage in the bookmaking process. For more on this, see our book: Getting Children Up & Running As Writers [LINK].

Setting up your writing centre

As well as engaging in daily whole-class writing instruction and modelling, you’re going to find that your children will want to pursue their own additional self-initiated writing. This means you’ll have to devote some time and resources to establishing and maintaining a writing centre. To create a community of writers, picturebooks (especially those from shared reading times) should be easily accessible to children in the writing area. These books can serve as tools and sources of inspiration for their own bookmaking.

Writing alongside children

Teachers should ensure that they write alongside a different group of children each day during book-making time. This allows you to observe, model and provide additional bespoke instruction and feedback to children while they are actually engaged in the book-making process. This means you can celebrate the strategies children are using while still looking to move their writing forward by providing additional guidance and instruction. The goal is to book-make alongside your pupils rather than merely supervise from a cold distance!

Additionally, teachers should encourage collaboration among young writers by highlighting and sharing the strategies other children are using. By pointing out the techniques their friends are using, teachers help children see each other as valuable resources and members of a supportive writing community.

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For more guidance, consider purchasing Getting Your Class Up & Running As Writers and How To Teach Writing. Alternatively, you may wish to purchase one of our EYFS unit plans. All our publications and unit plans are available for free to our members. To become a member, please just follow this link.

‘I could write about…’ Inviting children to reimagine teacher (or scheme) chosen writing topics

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As teachers, we often face the challenge of balancing our need for control with children’s need for writerly independence. While parameters are important to young writers, giving them the freedom to reinterpret, reimagine (or reject) a teacher- or scheme-chosen topic can lead to extraordinary results [LINK]. Consider this example from a teacher named Reed whose class trip to a fishing boat became the foundation for a wonderfully diverse set of manuscripts.

When asked to write about their school trip, one student asked if it would be alright to “pretend I’m a lobster being interviewed,” while another wanted to write about a dead seal they had discovered on the beach instead. Reed’s response was inspiring: she praised their originality and highlighted how one topic can spark so many different ideas. This approach, allowing independence to flourish within a shared framework, is a powerful reminder for us as educators. Here’s how you can replicate this strategy in your own classroom, turning teacher (or scheme) controlled writing units into opportunities for independent discovery and self-expression.

1. Start with a common prompt

Provide students with a topic, prompt or idea as a starting point. This might be a school trip, classroom activity, your wider curriculum topic, the book you’re reading together, or even a common theme like ‘revenge’ or ‘celebrations’.

Example: “Let’s think about our class trip to the beach. What did we see? What did we do?” Starting with a shared foundation gives students a springboard for their ideas while ensuring everyone has a common understanding of the project.

2. Host an ‘Ideas Party’

To spark children’s creativity, invite them to brainstorm their own ideas with their friends on flipchart paper. We call this having an Ideas Party. As a writer-teacher, you can spend time with each group and take part in the party too! On the flipchart paper, write the phrase: ‘I could write about…’ Children are welcome to draw or write their potential ideas onto the paper. Example:

Being a lobster being interviewed
The seal we found on the beach
How the waves sounded
A mermaid story

Here are some examples of Ideas Parties undertaken in Nursery, KS1 and KS2.

Here’s an example of children having an Ideas Party in response to reading ‘Leon & The Place Between’ by Angela McAllister

3. Foster a sense of ownership

Once students have brainstormed, emphasise that their unique perspectives are valuable. You might say: ‘Our prompt was the same, but your ideas have made it so special! I can’t wait to read all the different pieces of writing…’. This helps students feel confident in pursuing their own ideas, even if they differ from their teacher’s (or the scheme’s) expected idea.

4. Celebrate the results by taking a ‘Writing Register’

Take time to showcase the variety of responses by taking a Writing Register. This is where you write up your class’ names and ask them for a working title for their piece. Start with your most confident children until everyone has given you a title for their project. Like Reed, celebrate the diversity of thought by saying something like: “Isn’t it wonderful that from the same prompt, we have so many different ideas!”

An example of a completed Writing Register for a short-story project. The initial prompt shared by the teacher was ‘celebration’

An example of a completed Writing Register for a discussion project.

5. Encourage independence in future projects

This method of blending structure with independence can be applied to any genre or writing project. By giving students the option to use, reinterpret, or reject your prompt in their own way, you empower them to think creatively while still addressing the purpose for the writing project.

Why this matters

When we allow students to explore their own perspectives, we teach them that their voices matter [LINK]. A simple writing assignment becomes an opportunity for discovery, self-expression, and creative thinking. As Reed’s class demonstrated, even a shared experience like a school trip can inspire wildly different but equally wonderful writing ideas. The beauty of such an approach is that children who want to follow their teacher’s idea can do so while others can politely reject their teacher’s idea while offering up their own promising alternative.

By embracing this approach, you’re not just teaching students how to write – you’re teaching them to see the world through their own unique lens. And that is the heart of true writerly apprenticeship.

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For more, download our publication: No More: ‘I Don’t Know What To Write About’ [LINK]. Our publications are free for our members. To become a member, click here.

Underwriting: Should teachers do it?

“Hi Ross & Phil. We were wondering – should we transcribe underneath children’s writing so we know what it says? Thanks so much!”

Underwriting involves transcribing a child’s writing using conventional spelling. This can be done either directly under or above the child’s writing, or sometimes at the bottom of the page. When done right, it can be a simple yet powerful tool to support young writers on their journey towards becoming a successful writer.

What is underwriting?

When underwriting, teachers will either write:

The whole sentence, phrase or choose a specific word.
Words that are very close to the conventional ‘adult spelling’, giving you an opportunity to celebrate how close the child approximated the word.
High-frequency words that the child is likely and expected to know.
Words that are so far away from the conventional spelling that they are difficult to interpret.

Why underwrite?

Underwriting should always be about emphasising and celebrating what the child did know about adult writing.

When done correctly, underwriting offers numerous benefits:

Providing a conventional model: Gives children who like it a reference for the conventional spelling which they may refer to later.
Responding to a specific request: Supporting children who specifically ask for help in understanding and remembering what their writing says.
Verbal feedback: It offers opportunities for individualised responsive instruction during verbal feedback.
Celebrating growth: It celebrates children’s approximations, what they did know about the ‘adult spelling’ of the word and therefore gives children confidence and a sense of achievement.

Does underwriting make children scared to write and reduce ownership?

A justified concern with underwriting is how, when it is done badly, it quickly makes children scared to write for themselves. It can also be seen as an act of graffiti on a child’s writing – a daily reminder that they can’t actually write and that someone has to come and do it for them. However, when done thoughtfully, underwriting is a teaching tool, not a correction mechanism. Best practice for underwriting includes:

Undertaken with the child’s consent and with them present.
Celebrates and builds on what the child did know about the ‘adult spelling’.
The teacher uses a pencil and small writing, usually at the bottom of the page.
Never done before the child has made their own attempts at the word, phrase or sentence first.
Not done with every child, all the time, and on every piece of writing they ever produce.
Go over in green pen (or underline) all the sounds the child did hear and write down in the word.

A tool for progress and celebration

Some children enjoy seeing how their writing compares to ‘adult writing’. However, others can get really upset and feel undermined. For some, it can be the equivalent of making a lovely drawing for their teacher – only for the teacher to get a red marker pen out and draw all over it to make it ‘correct’. If this happens day after day, some children can soon lose their motivation and confidence to write independently. With that said, if the purpose of underwriting is clearly explained, children often appreciate the thoughtful and interesting feedback it provides.

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For more, download our publication: Getting Children Up & Running As Writers In EYFS & KS1 [LINK]. Our publications are free for our members. To become a member, click here.

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“This is when we play writing!”: Writing and play in the EYFS

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“This is when we play writing!” – Reception child

I was lucky enough to sit in on a writing lesson one Monday morning in Reception at one of our Writing for Pleasure schools. During the lesson, a new-found friend of mine turned to me on the carpet, with a big grin on his face, and announced: “This is when we play writing!” I’ve never forgotten that moment.

As I sat there, I thought: you’re about to engage in one of the most cognitively demanding activities you’ll encounter in school – and yet, for you, it feels like child’s play. This moment was a clear testament to the excellent teaching I was seeing. It showed how a structured, daily writing approach could seamlessly align with the joy and spontaneity of play. Instruction, structure and play no longer needed to be seen as being in opposition with each other.

The Power of Play In Early Writing Development

Play is the natural language of young children, and writing thrives within this playful culture. Children benefit from engaging in self-initiated spontaneous writing and from a structured writing approach like Writing For Pleasure. Far from being a distraction, play supports children’s early writing skills children need to develop for future academic success. A daily opportunity ‘to play’ writing is essential for young children’s overall development:

Social skills and self-regulation: Collaboratively writing and book-making with your teacher(s) and friends helps children learn to navigate relationships, share, and manage their emotions.
Problem-solving abilities: Through daily book-making children get to ‘play on paper’, experiment, test ideas, and develop their critical thinking skills.
Oral language: Daily writing and book-making involves using a variety of different talk (see this article for more) which builds up children’s vocabulary and communication skills.
Creativity: Book-making encourages children’s Imaginative play on paper and nurtures their original thinking and innovations.
Knowledge and skills: Daily book-making offers opportunities to explore taught concepts and practice important writing skills in an engaging and meaningful way.

Teacher Scaffolding: Enhancing Children’s Writing Play

When teachers scaffold children’s writing play, through their modelling and instruction, they elevate its impact, particularly in supporting children’s writing skills. As Judith Schickedanz puts it: “We will not have done our best for young children if we deny them the path to learning they seek through play. But, we also will not have done our best if we fail to provide instruction.” As Writing For Pleasure teachers in the EYFS can testify, play and writing instruction coexist seamlessly, creating a rich, supportive community of writers where children and adults:

Write during structured book-making time and while playing in the writing centre (and other areas of provision).
Engage with cross-curricular writing activities that integrate writing and book-making with science, PSHE lessons, and other subjects.
Build writing skills through meaningful book-making projects that connect to children’s interests and prior knowledge.

A daily opportunity to ‘play at writing’ is not a luxury – it is a vital component of early childhood education. This practice supports children’s holistic development while offering an engaging and effective way to nurture their early reading and writing skills. Through thoughtful instruction and scaffolding, teachers can cultivate a community of writers that balances the joy of play with the academic rigor essential for lifelong writing success. By keeping writing – and being a young writer -playful, teachers help children develop the skills, confidence, and curiosity they need to thrive.

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For more, download our publications: Getting Children Up & Running As Writers In EYFS & KS1 [LINK] or our EYFS writing plans [LINK]. Our publications and unit plans are free for our members. To become a member, click here.