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Developing the youngest of writers is a multifaceted process, influenced by the interplay between transcription (the mechanical aspects of writing) and composition (the generation and sharing of ideas).

Research from the past few decades would suggest a centralist (sensible) approach to teaching early writing [LINK]. An approach which includes a focus on teaching emergent writing, transcription and composition. An approach that acknowledges the need for foundational transcription skills while also fostering children’s communicative competence. A nuanced integration of these elements creates an environment in which children develop both the technical fluency necessary for writing and the cognitive flexibility to engage in developmentally appropriate writing projects [LINK and LINK].

Start With Emergent Writing

Emergent writing is the early writing that all children bring to school. Developed through experimentation and exploration, it progresses through stages of scribbling and attempts at letter formation before evolving into conventional words and sentences.

(Byington & Kim 2017)

The youngest children, even before they begin to master conventional writing, convey meaning through written symbols – when given the opportunity. Take Wyatt as an example. Below is the first picturebook Wyatt ever made. Wyatt attends a school in an economically-underserved area of Leeds. Wyatt produced this book on his first week at Nursery.

Isn’t that a brilliant story? I should explain that Wyatt is already learning a number of things about writing. He is learning that a book should have a picture and some emergent writing on every page. He has also learnt that when you are ‘telling’ your book – you should ‘tickle your writing’. This involves moving your finger across your emergent writing so you can tell people what it says (oral language development anyone?).

Far from being a mere precursor to conventional writing, emergent writing is seen as a foundational phase that children go through and ensures they engage with written language as a tool for communication. It’s this emergent writing that helps them understand why developing their transcription is so necessary – because it will help them make and share meaning with others more successfully.

As you can see from Wyatt’s book, the development of composition – the ability to generate ideas, organise them, and express them is a critical aspect of emergent writing. However, once letter formation and encoding instruction is introduced, children transition quickly towards using informed spelling, writing sentences, and making simple stories and information texts. Therefore, emergent writing only acts as a very temporary scaffold [LINK].

Emergent writing develops children’s communicative competence from the earliest stage of their writing development. By allowing children to express themselves, we develop children’s motivation and confidence. As a result, they want to learn more about writing and being a successful writer. Emergent writing helps children know the reason why they are being apprenticed in transcription. This leads nicely into our next section…

The Importance Of Transcription In Early Writing Development

As you can see in the table shared earlier, emergent writing does not dismiss the importance of transcription skills. Transcription is, in fact, a necessary foundation for successful composition.

The work of Berninger & Amtmann (2003), among others, highlights the cognitive demands involved in writing. Transcription, particularly when children are first learning to write, requires a lot of cognitive effort. Our young writers must focus on letter formation, encoding, and punctuation while simultaneously thinking about their writing ideas.

Berninger & Amtmann simply wanted to remind us that during this early stage in their writerly lives, children might not always fully engage with the content of their ideas or the organisation of their writing. But over time, with repeated practice, and with explicit instruction in handwriting and encoding, this gets better and better. It’s important to note that, according to Berninger & Amtmann, transcription does not need to be mastered before composition can take place. Instead, research recommends developing both concurrently but with a particular focus on transcription [LINK].

An Evidence-based Centralist Approach

Given the intertwined nature of transcription and composition, a centralist approach to early writing instruction is essential. Instead of strictly separating transcription and composition, or focusing exclusively on one at the expense of the other, teachers should aim to provide an approach that supports both aspects of writing in tandem. The balance lies in prioritising transcription without excluding opportunities for meaningful composition. This centralist approach acknowledges that:

1. Transcription supports composition: Secure transcription skills serve as a foundation for more complex writing projects [LINK]. When children are able to write without excessive effort spent on forming letters or encoding words, they have more cognitive resources available to focus on their ideas and revising their manuscripts. Teachers will see that as children’s transcription improves – so their compositions improve too.

2. Composition supports transcription: It’s important to remember that dictation isn’t writing. Writing is about expressing ideas and communicating meaning [LINK]. By engaging in composition from an early age, children actually understand the purpose behind learning about transcription. Writing is a tool for communication – not the nonsensical forming of letters and the encoding of sounds for no apparent reason (dictation). Early compositional opportunities ensure children are always using and applying their newly acquired transcriptional skills [LINK].

3. Early writing experiences foster motivation: Children who are encouraged to write stories, draw, and share ideas through writing, even while their spelling and handwriting is still developing, are more likely to have a positive attitude towards being a writer [LINK]. This motivation is the fuel that supports children’s engagement with writing, leading to greater proficiency in both transcription and composition over time.

Practical Implications For Instruction

A centralist approach to early writing development can be implemented by utilising several key instructional strategies:

1.Explicit Handwriting Instruction & Practice

The research is clear [LINK]. Children benefit from explicit handwriting instruction and practice. The more this becomes automated, the more cognitive space children have to focus on the compositional aspects of their writing.

2. Explicit Encoding Instruction & Practice

Again, the research is clear [LINK]. Children benefit from explicit encoding instruction and practice. This involves teachers modelling strategies for encoding the words you want to transcribe to paper (or screen) before inviting children to use these strategies for themselves during writing time [LINK]. The more this becomes automated, the more cognitive space children have to focus on the compositional aspects of their writing.

3. Integrated Writing Activities: Teachers can design simple writing projects that allow children to engage in both transcription and composition. For example, children can be encouraged to write simple stories, make little information books, draw pictures and share what their writing says orally [LINK and LINK]. As children continue to develop fluency in their transcription, the focus can shift towards revising their compositions, expanding ideas, and using more complex sentence structures [LINK].

4. Realistic Expectations: Writing development covers the lifespan [LINK]. In the earliest stages of writing development, we should be flexible in our expectations for transcriptional accuracy. While basic transcription skills should be developed as a matter of priority, children should also be encouraged to experiment with writing in ways that offer them opportunities for idea generation and meaning-making. Informed spelling, irregular letter formation, and incomplete sentences should not be seen as sinful and unforgivable errors but part and parcel of the natural progression towards producing more refined writing. After all, these are young apprentice writers we are talking about!

5. Providing Instruction & Feedback On Both Aspects: Educators can provide instruction and feedback that supports both transcription and composition. For example, they might praise a child’s creative ideas during Author’s Chair, offer feedback to children’s encoding attempts, and provide corrections during handwriting practice. Feedback should be supportive and encouraging, helping children understand the value of both accurate transcription and meaningful composition [LINK].

6. Encouraging Writing Across Contexts: Writing should not be confined to dictation sessions, handwriting practice and formal writing lessons. Encouraging children to write during continuous provision and in response to their reading during reading lessons in important too. Continuous provision is an excellent way of providing additional authentic opportunities for both transcription and composition to develop simultaneously.

7. Focus On Developing Children’s Writing Fluency. Writing fluency refers to a child’s ability to write quickly, smoothly, and happily without frequent pauses to think about letter formation or spelling. It can be measured by either the amount written within a certain time or the frequency of pauses during writing. Skilled writers tend to write longer sections without pausing, which reflects their ease in translating thoughts into words. Factors like spelling, handwriting speed, working memory, attention, and motivation all influence writing fluency. Enhancing these skills can help children express their ideas more easily and improve the quality of their writing overall [LINK].

Conclusion

The development of writing skills in young children is a dynamic process that requires a focus on both transcription and composition. By integrating emergent writing with specific attention on foundational transcription skills, we can create a writing pedagogy that fosters both creative expression and technical proficiency. This approach ensures that children have the opportunity to engage meaningfully with writing (and being a writer) from the earliest stages, while gradually developing the skills needed to express themselves more fluently and effectively. In doing so, we empower young writers to develop the cognitive, affective, motor, and linguistic skills necessary for success.

Recommended publications:

• Getting Children Up & Running As Writers by Ross Young & Felicity Ferguson [LINK]
• Already Ready: Nurturing Writers in Preschool and Kindergarten by Katie Wood Ray & Matt Glover [LINK]
• Kid Writing: A Systematic Approach to Phonics, Journals, and Writing Workshop by Eileen Feldgus & Isabell Cardonick [LINK]
• What Changes In Writing Can I See? by Marie Clay [LINK]
• Handbook On The Science of Early Literacy by Sonia Cabell, Susan Neuman, and Nicole Patton Terry [LINK]

Recommended articles:

• How do children start learning to write before they start school? [LINK]
• How can you teach children to write before they know their letters? [LINK]
• Let’s use ‘kids writing!’ [LINK]
• Encoding and ‘informed spellings’ [LINK]
• Promoting preschoolers’ emergent writing [LINK]
• The unrealised promise of emergent writing: Reimagining the way forward for early writing instruction [LINK]
• The effects of preschool writing instruction on children’s literacy skills [LINK]
• Early alphabet instruction [LINK]
• Early spelling development [LINK]
• What are children doing as they produce writing? [LINK]
• How do we develop writing fluency? [LINK]
• What is writing fluency? [LINK]
• Spelling and handwriting provision: A checklist [LINK]
• Building up to extended writing projects [LINK]

Original article: LINK

By Margaret Vaughn

This article explores the evolution of student agency within recent educational reforms and highlights empirical research from various classroom settings to demonstrate the impact of agency across different contexts. It aims to propose a collaborative approach to understanding and promoting student agency, emphasising the importance of structures and supports that facilitate its development [LINK].

The article also notes that structural inequalities often inhibit student agency, particularly for marginalised groups [LINK]. It explores how creating agentic spaces in schools could transform educational experiences for students and teachers.

Understanding student agency

Student agency refers to the capacity of students to act independently and make their own choices in the writing process. It encompasses several dimensions, each of which contributes to how students engage with their writerly education and exert influence over the writing classroom.

Historical and theoretical perspectives

1. John Dewey: Dewey emphasised that agency is about choice and deliberation, highlighting that human nature involves active decision-making rather than being solely driven by extrinsic motivation.
2. Lev Vygotsky: Vygotsky’s view of agency is rooted in social interaction. He suggested that individuals develop agency through their engagement with social practices and contexts.
3. Albert Bandura: Bandura’s social cognitive perspective associates agency with self-efficacy—the belief in one’s own capabilities—and the effort to control one’s writerly apprenticeship.
4. Contesting norms: Some scholars argue that agency involves challenging writing norms and practices [LINK] or is viewed as a motivational concept where individuals make choices and decisions [LINK]
5. Identity and dialogue: Other perspectives emphasise that agency is about using writing to reshape one’s world and construct a writer-identity by bring your funds-of-knowledge and funds-of-identity to your writing [LINK].

A model of student agency

The model of student agency proposed in this article includes three key dimensions:

• Dispositional dimension: This dimension focuses on students’ personal dispositions, such as creativity, goal-setting, and resilience. It involves students acting on their intentions and purposes. For example, Ms. Edward’s class initiated and organised a class-wide poetry anthology project based on Christmas to raise money for the charity Shelter.

• Motivational dimension: This aspect of agency is concerned with students’ ability to regulate their actions, persist through challenges, and make decisions [LINK]. An example is Ned’s efforts to make a graphic-novel despite his initial setbacks, showcasing his motivation and persistence in the face of obstacles.

• Positional dimension: Agency is also shaped by how students interact within the writing classroom. It involves co-creating agency through interactions with peers and teachers. For example, Mr. Robinson’s class developed dual-language books in collaboration with Ukrainian refugees, illustrating how agency is constructed through collective efforts with classmates [LINK].

Supporting student agency

To foster student agency in the writing classroom, teachers can:

1. Talk with your pupils: Involve students in the process of planning class writing projects and adapt your instruction based on their feedback [LINK, LINK, LINK and LINK]. For example, Ms. Vann gave her class sticky notes asking them what they would like to learn about writing [LINK].
2. Integrate children’s cultural and linguistic backgrounds: Invite students to use their cultural and linguistic backgrounds in class writing projects [LINK and LINK]
3. Make writing projects real world projects: Connect class writing projects to students’ interests and real-life experiences [LINK]. For instance, Mr. Palmer’s project where children wrote curiosity letters to people of interest [LINK].
4. Cultivate a students as knowledge creators and sharers: Develop a classroom culture that views students as active participants and knowledge generators. This involves creating opportunities for students to exert influence and contribute their own funds-of-knowledge to their writing. For example, by inviting children to make a class encyclopedia of knowledge [LINK].

Student agency is a dynamic and multi-dimensional concept that involves students’ personal dispositions [LINK], motivational aspects [LINK], and interactions within social contexts [LINK]. By adopting practices that support these dimensions, educators can create writing classrooms where students are empowered to actively participate in and shape their writerly apprenticeship. Engaging students in meaningful ways [LINK], adapting instruction based on their needs and interests [LINK], and integrating their cultural backgrounds [LINK] are all essential strategies for cultivating agency in the writing classroom.

Conclusion

In schools that foster student agency, opportunities arise when students are empowered to make choices, act on their intentions, and shape their learning experiences [LINK and LINK]. These writing schools allow students to be proactive and influential, positioning them as knowledgeable contributors and leaders within the classroom. Writer-teachers obviously play a crucial role in these contexts by working collaboratively with their students, employing flexible and adaptive teaching strategies that respond to students’ most pressing needs and interests. When students and teachers engage in this dynamic and reciprocal process, it creates rich and meaningful writing space that enhances the writerly experiences for both parties. Such classrooms and schools not only support academic growth but also cultivate a sense of agency that prepares students for future writing challenges and opportunities.

By Jean Marie Farrow, Barbara A. Wasik, Annemarie H. Hindman and Michael J. Farrow

Original article: LINK

Supporting early writing development is essential for children’s future literacy and academic success. While many early childhood classrooms offer writing centres with paper and writing tools, teachers often miss opportunities to provide intentional support for key writing skills. Specifically, there is a lack of focus on the language-based skills needed to help children generate and translate their ideas into writing [LINK]. Instead, writing instruction in early childhood typically emphasises isolated skills like name writing, letter formation, and encoding. While these activities support children’s transcriptional development, they do not support children’s compositional development, which is crucial for children’s long-term academic success [LINK].

When children are not given opportunities to compose their own writing – they can struggle as they move through school and writing projects become more demanding [LINK]. It can often be a lack of compositional development which leads to children’s frustration and avoidance for writing and prevents them from discovering the pleasures of expressing their thoughts, knowledge and creativity (Young in press).

By developing children’s compositional skills early on, teachers can help students build both the skills and confidence they need to write effectively. This paper provides practical strategies from successful early childhood classrooms that teachers use to reduce children’s cognitive load and improve their development during writing time.

***

Isolated skill practice in letter formation and encoding, while essential, is not enough to provide a well-rounded writerly apprenticeship [LINK]. Composing involves multiple cognitive steps, beginning with idea generation. For example, a teacher might ask, “What could the story books we are making be about?” This question encourages children to generate ideas with a clear goal in mind. They then translate those ideas into drawings and language, using their vocabulary, grammar, and understanding of conversations. Finally, children transcribe their ideas onto the paper in developmentally appropriate ways — whether through emergent writing or conventional adult writing [LINK].

It’s this translation of thoughts into written form that propels children’s writerly growth [LINK]. It’s these sorts of opportunities which draw children’s attention to the magic of writing – and how you can use it to make and share meaning with others. They begin to understand that writing is a means of expressing yourself – and it’s fun! When teachers intentionally support this process, they help students not only improve their writing skills but also cultivate a deeper connection with them as people [LINK].

If children are given a well-rounded writerly apprenticeship in the early years, we typically see them go through the following milestones:

• Ages 2 – 5: Children translate their ideas for their writing into short phrases. For example, “Pirate ship crashes. BOOM!”.
• Ages 4-6: Children begin using sentences, including the use of modifiers and more precise vocabulary. For example, “The pirate ship is on the ocean”.
• Ages 5-7: Children often verbalise multiple sentences, using their growing understanding of grammar to tranlsate their ideas for writing. Their ability to use the correct verb tenses improves. For instance, “There was a terrible storm. The pirates were jumping overboard! Ahhh!” Here, the child not only shifts focus between the storm and the pirates but also shows an emerging ability to handle tense changes.

At this stage, children’s sentence structures can move away from being relatively simple to expressing more intricate ideas by combining ideas through compound and complex sentences [LINK].

***

Research has consistently shown that writing stories, expressing opinions, and creating informational texts – activities that demand children to compose writing – contribute far more to children’s writing achievement than isolated skill practice like spelling drills or handwriting exercises [LINK, LINK, LINK]. In other words, it’s through writing their own stories and ideas that children become better writers. This type of generative practice also strengthens their oral language and listening comprehension, reading, vocabulary, sentence structure, and overall literacy skills too. Classroom environments that foster interactive and supportive writing activities, where teachers engage with students about their topics, structure, and language choices, can lead to higher-quality writing [LINK, LINK].

***

Despite its importance, many early years teachers can feel underprepared to provide effective writing instruction. Writing in the early years does requires direct and intentional teaching (Young & Ferguson 2023, 2024a, 2024b).

Practical strategies for fostering idea generation and compositional development

Below are the sorts of effective strategies that teachers in high language-growth classrooms employ to support their children’s writing development.

• One effective way to help children generate ideas is by focusing on their memory retrieval. Start by reminding them of the writing project and its purpose. For example, if the project is making their own ABC Book, show them an example. This narrows their attention and directs their memory to retrieve relevant information about the ABC books they’ve read previous – for example, they have a picture and a word on every page.

• Expand children’s ideas by repeating what they said as a question. Expansions are a great way to help children build on their initial ideas. For example, if a child says, “My parrot went to bed,” you might respond, “Your parrot went to bed?” “Yes, it goes right into his cage and daddy puts a blanket over it – night night.” “Whoa, cool. Let’s definitely write that down!” Expansions like this extend children’s thinking and help them construct more detailed pieces of writing than they would otherwise [LINK].

• For classrooms with a high proportion of bilingual learners, these strategies can be especially useful, as English language learners may need extra support in memory retrieval and language construction. For more details, see our eBook: A Teacher’s Guide To Writing With Multilingual Children [LINK].

• Use a developmentally appropriate writing process where children are encouraged to talk, draw and talk about their drawings before writing about what their drawing ‘says’. Once their writing is finished they should share what they’ve made with others [LINK].

Original article: LINK

By Margaret Vaughn, Bong Gee Jang, Vera Sotirovska & Gemma Cooper-Novack

Classrooms are inherently complex environments where writer-teachers must navigate multiple demands and responsibilities. These include adhering to institutional directives and teaching in a way that respects students’ diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds [LINK], and creating opportunities for students to develop essential skills such as writing proficiency and motivation [LINK]. Beyond these tasks, a crucial aspect of writing instruction is fostering student agency – empowering students to apply new-found writerly knowledge independently, and to take ownership of their compositions.

The role of writer-teachers in fostering agency

Teachers play a vital role in planning class writing projects that promote agency. When students act on their sense of agency, they take initiative, use and apply their learning, and influence the instructional process. Agency is therefore a fundamental element of effective writing teaching. As such, writer-teachers must engage in deep reflection about their instructional strategies to cultivate classroom environments where students feel empowered and can actively use and apply new writerly-knowledge.

Insights and implications for fostering agency in the writing classroom

From the comprehensive review, several key insights emerge about how to encourage teachers to reflect, understand, and plan for agency in the writing classroom Here’s a synthesis of the recommendations based on the review’s findings:

Foster agency through instructional practices, dialogue, and materials:

• Instructional practices: Teachers should integrate practices that allow for student choice. This could include establishing publishing goals for class writing projects together [LINK], having Ideas Parties so children can choose what they would like to write about within the parameters of the project [LINK], make contributions to the success criteria for the project after reading as writers together [LINK] and give children access to time and support for pursuing their own personal writing projects at school and at home [LINK].
• Dialogue: Facilitate open and invitational dialogue during pupil-conferencing that promotes critical thinking and collaborative engagement. Encouraging students to voice their thoughts and interact with their peers and writer-teacher can help them exercise agency more effectively [LINK].
• Link agency to writing achievement: Focus on fostering agency as a means to enhance children’s writing engagement, attention and focus, which will invariably but indirectly support improved writing outcomes [LINK].

Implications for school leaders and teacher educators:

• Professional development: Structure professional development to focus on strategies for cultivating students’ self-awareness, persistence, intentionality, and choice-making [LINK, LINK, LINK]. Providing teachers with practical tools and resources can enhance their ability to foster agency in their students [LINK].
• Supportive environments: Create school contexts that support agency [LINK] by addressing barriers such as restrictive writing schemes or ill-informed external pressures.

Conclusion

There is a growing recognition of the need for agency-centered writing teaching [LINK, LINK, LINK]. By fostering environments where students can exercise agency, teachers can help them become more engaged, independent, and successful writers.

We are delighted to announce the publication of our latest book: How To Teach Narrative Writing In The EYFS.

Unlock the magic of writing narrative in the EYFS with How To Teach Narrative Writing In The Early Years. This innovative guide by writer-teachers Felicity Ferguson and Ross Young is designed to transform how young children create and share their stories in the early years writing classroom.

Based on extensive research and practical experience, this book offers a fresh perspective on teaching fiction and personal narrative. It emphasises the importance of infusing personal voice, humour, and artistry into their stories, making them engaging and memorable for both writers and readers. Within these pages, Ferguson & Young also present The Writing For Pleasure approach, a methodology proven to inspire the youngest of writers and enhance their writing skills.

Inside, you will find:

• A detailed progression for teaching narrative writing.
• Step-by-step guides for planning and teaching narrative writing projects.
• Insights into using mentor texts to inspire and guide your young writers.
• Practical advice on delivering effective writing lessons, including idea generation, planning, drafting, revising, proof-reading and publishing.
• Strategies to support multilingual learners and children with special educational needs.
• Methods for assessing writing in a way that celebrates growth and creativity.

The authors, drawing on their own challenging journey to becoming effective writing teachers, share their story and research findings, providing a compelling argument for a new way of teaching writing that prioritises both rigour and pleasure.

Equip your young writers with the tools and confidence they need to express themselves and share their knowledge with the world. How To Teach Narrative Writing In The Early Years is your essential guide to fostering a lifelong love of writing in every child.

Individual license – £10.95

School/Institution license – £54.75

or FREE for members

Hi Ross and Phil. We love your website! Do you have any advice on how we can teach nonfiction writing in the EYFS? We really want to inspire our children and give them lots of confidence. Thanks so much.

Yes! Here are some strategies that should hopefully inspire your youngest of writers and develop their writerly knowledge and confidence.

• Help children to choose their own writing topics: Invite children to write about their own ideas, capitalising on their ‘funds of knowledge and identity’ to increase their motivation and engagement [LINK].

• Use mentor texts: Mentor texts are texts that can teach children about great writing. Mentor texts can be commercially produced books or even texts written by writer-teachers or other children from previous years. Introduce children to different types of non-fiction, such as traditional, browseable, literary, ‘doing’, narrative and faction [LINK]. Help children identify the craft moves the writers have used so that they can use them in their own writing too [LINK].

• Encourage a social environment for writing: Let children share their ideas with each other through activities like Ideas Parties to stimulate their thinking and build a sense of community. Encourage talking before, during and after writing to rehearse ideas and hear the reactions of their readers [LINK].

• Make drawing an important part of the writing process: Recognise that drawing is a crucial way for children to plan their writing. Encourage drawing and colouring before asking children to write about those drawings [LINK]

• Teach mini-lessons: Mini lessons are short, direct instruction. Introduce children to one specific strategy or craft move at a time. These can be based on successful aspects of mentor texts, for example, how to use labels in an information book. They could also focus on overcoming specific challenges in writing. For example, a ‘New thing? New page!‘ mini-lesson would demonstrate how to structure non-fiction writing while a ‘Make a drawing – tell your drawing – write your sentence‘ mini-lesson would help children connect their ideas to written sentences. To find out more, see our eBook: How To Teach Non-Fiction In The EYFS.

• Help children to re-see and check their writing: Reassure children that writers like to make changes to their writing. Show them how you’ll often add details to your writing and drawings to improve them. You can produce developmentally appropriate checklists to help them check their writing with you too.

• End with a publishing party: Having a specific audience and purpose for their writing is so motivating for the youngest of writers. Help children to consider who they are writing for and how they will share their finished writing.

What’s important is that we build a Writing For Pleasure environment in the EYFS. This means making writing time a positive and social experience for children, allowing them to choose topics that interest them most. This approach not only leads to better outcomes but also cultivates a greater love for writing too.

***

If you found this advice useful, you may want to consider purchasing a copy of our book: How To Teach Non-Fiction Writing In The EYFS. Alternatively, it’s free for our members.

Join us at HfL’s annual English conference ‘Powerful Pedagogy: Say it, Read it, Write it’ – a dynamic day of learning designed specifically for primary school teachers and leaders. This enriching event will allow you to explore innovative teaching strategies and effective pedagogy to support all learners in reading, writing, and spoken language.

Join us online for a day of learning on the 6th of February 2025.

Getting writing right: Evidence-based recommendations for teaching writing

This talk draws on over fifty years of research reviews, including meta-analyses and case studies, conducted by The Writing for Pleasure Centre. It identifies 14 evidence-based principles that have been consistently associated with high-performing writing instruction. These principles, which form the core of the “Writing for Pleasure” pedagogy, include strategies such as building a community of writers, setting clear writing goals, and teaching the writing process. With a solid research foundation, these practices are shown to raise writing standards and accelerate progress for all learners. This session will explore how teachers can implement these principles to foster effective writing instruction in their classrooms.

Learning Outcomes

• An understanding of pedagogical approaches to speaking and listening, reading and writing that will enhance pupil engagement and learning.
• An informed understanding of current research and good practice.
• Effective ways to support all learners no matter their age, stage, background or current attainment.
• Strategies for developing a holistic and cohesive approach to English teaching in school.

On the 8th of October 2024, Ofsted published its Strong foundations in the first years of school report. It purports to examine how schools secure the foundational knowledge and skills that every child needs by the end of KS1.

The mission of The Writing For Pleasure Centre is to help all young people become passionate and successful writers. As a think tank for exploring what world-class writing teaching is and could be, a crucial part of our work is analysing emerging guidance reports such as the one provided by Ofsted. It is therefore important that we issue a review of what this document has to say.

We will review Ofsted’s report against The Science Of Early Literacy, The Science Of Writing and what we presently know about the fourteen principles of world-class writing teaching (Young & Ferguson 2024). Our review will highlight both the good things shared by Ofsted and also their oversights, and we will provide further exemplification and suggested reading where we think we can add value.

1. Writing fluency

“Schools introduce complex writing tasks too early. They do not give children enough teaching and practice for them to become fluent in foundational knowledge and skills, such as in handwriting and composing simple sentences.”

✅ Ofsted raise a valid concern about the balance between foundational skills and more complex writing projects in early education. Introducing complex class writing projects too early can overwhelm children who have not yet established essential skills like handwriting, encoding (spelling) and sentence construction. When these skills are not solidified, children can struggle, leading to frustration and disengagement.

Schools could benefit from adopting a more structured, gradual progression, ensuring that students establish these skills before moving on to more complex writing projects. To do this, schools could focus on developing children’s writing fluency as quickly as possible, and there is a good amount of research on this (Young & Ferguson 2021a, 2022, 2023, 2024; Cabel et al. 2023).

How do we develop writing fluency? [LINK]

❌ However, it’s wrong for Ofsted to suggest that these transcriptional skills should be taught in isolation, away from the craft of authoring. Nor does this foundational knowledge need to be somehow completely mastered before children can be given ‘the right to write stories’. Such a perspective not only goes against research recommendations but is also developmentally unsound. To pursue this recommendation would be an instructional mistake (Young & Ferguson 2022, 2024).

For example, if we were to follow Ofsted’s recommendations, Wyatt (from an economically underserved area of Leeds) wouldn’t have been able to make this picturebook on his first week of Nursery. His Nursery uses the Writing For Pleasure approach to teach writing (Young & Ferguson 2022). This means children learn something about writing every single day and they are invited to write every single day too.

Isn’t that a brilliant story? I should explain that Wyatt is already learning a number of things about writing. He is learning that a book should have a picture and some emergent writing on every page. He has also learnt that when you are ‘telling’ your book – you should ‘tickle your writing’. This involves moving your finger across your emergent writing so you can tell people what it says. This is how I know what Wyatt’s book says. He was able to ‘read’ it to me – and I privately wrote down what his writing said in my notebook.

Ofsted would do well to read the research on developing children’s transcription and compositional skills simultaneously [LINK]. 

As you can see from our publications: Getting Children Up & Running As Writers, How To Teach Non-Fiction Writing In The EYFS, How To Teach Narrative Writing In The EYFS and Sentence-Level Lessons For 3-11 Year Olds, practising these skills needn’t be done away from meaningful and authentic writing opportunities. For even more exemplification, readers can view our List Book and Picturebook Projects for the EYFS and KS1.

Find out more: 

• The different perspectives you can take on teaching early writing [LINK]
• How do we develop writing fluency? [LINK]
• Getting children up and running as writers [LINK]
• The research on developing children’s transcription and compositional skills [LINK]
• No more: They don’t know what a sentence is! [LINK]

2. Oral language development

“In order to write, children need to be able to compose orally (that is, to say out loud what they want to write)”

✅ Ofsted are right. We want children to develop their oral language and listening comprehension skills. Indeed, an ability and opportunity to ‘tell’ their writing could have the largest direct effect on the quality of young children’s writing (Kim & Schatschneider 2017). Again, we see how daily writing benefits Wyatt as he has learnt very early to say out loud what it is he has written down using his emergent writing.

Indeed, engaging in daily and meaningful talk while writing is one of the best ways to develop children’s language. This is one reason why a developmentally appropriate writing process, one which involves plenty of talking and sharing, is so important in the early years of writing.

A recommended recursive writing process for the EYFS (Young & Ferguson 2024)

There are a variety of different talking strategies children use as they craft texts. Children talk with one another before they write, as they write and after they write. These interactions occur in different ways and can include:

• Idea explaining – Children share what they plan to write about during the session with others.
• Idea sharing – Children work in pairs or small ‘clusters’ to co-construct their own texts together.
• Idea spreading – One pupil mentions an idea to their group. Children then leapfrog on the idea and create their own texts in response too.
• Supplementary ideas – Children hear about a child’s idea, like it, and incorporate it into the text they are already writing.
• Communal text rehearsal – Children say out loud what they are about to write – others listen in, comment, offer support or give feedback.
• Personal text rehearsal – Children talk to themselves about what they are about to write down. This may include encoding individual words aloud. Other children might listen in, comment, offer support or give feedback.
• Text checking – Children tell or read back what they’ve written so far and others listen in, comment, offer support or give feedback.
• Performance – Children share their texts with each other as an act of celebration and publication.

Encouraging children to talk and collaborate together during writing time is an evidence-based research recommendation, and the opportunity to talk as they write improves children’s final written outcomes. Children who talk as they write go on to write richer and more sophisticated texts. This may be because talk gives children more working memory for writing or because talk between children assists them in deciding what to say and how to encode it.

It’s important for Ofsted to recognise that oral language development in the context of the writing classroom goes beyond simply asking children to ‘rehearse a sentence’ before they write it, though this is one of a number of essential strategies for early writers to internalise (Young et al. 2021). Instead, children’s development as talkers relies on ‘a conversational context’. Children’s language develops when they are given the cognitive responsibility to use it. Ultimately, children must be the ones to construct their own speech and writing, otherwise, as the evidence shows, they learn little. The acquisition of language is a dynamic and creative process, not the passive reciting and copying of someone else’s model.

Ofsted’s review rightly acknowledges the profound role spoken language plays in the development of children’s encoding and spelling abilities. Thoughts and ideas have to be encoded into oral language (whether publicly by speaking them aloud, or privately in the mind) before being transcribed into written texts. This is aided by children’s ability to use their listening comprehension skills (Kim 2022). Unfortunately, Ofsted doesn’t show a clear  enough understanding of what is meant by developing children’s oral language. We therefore hope that these definitions are useful.

In poorly designed early years classrooms, you’ll see children given many opportunities to practise dictation, reciting and encoding. However, there is a big difference between dictation, reciting and encoding and developing children’s oral language for writing. Unfortunately, ineffective early years classrooms do not typically have a clear programme of study which helps develop children’s oral language alongside composing their own texts (Young & Ferguson 2021b, 2021c; Kim et al. 2021).

Find out more: 

• Developing children’s talk for writing [LINK]
• How important is talk for writing? [LINK]
• Getting children up and running as writers [LINK]

3. Explicit handwriting and spelling instruction

“Teaching handwriting only in phonics sessions, as some schools do, is part of the problem. It means that children do not learn the basics of letter formation that establish the foundations for speedy and fluent handwriting later on.”

✅There are many benefits to teaching about letter formation in your phonics sessions, but additional  explicit letter formation and handwriting instruction is important too. This need not take very long but should be regular. To read more about the research and best practice for teaching handwriting, see our provision checklist [LINK].

❌ What’s troubling is the complete absence of any discussion around emergent writing, essential to children’s early writing development (Cabel et al. 2023).

The job of teachers in the early years of children’s writing development is to nurture a generation of children who will feel themselves to be writers, and who will write happily without the constant need to ask anxiously ‘Is this right?’ or ‘I don’t know how to write it – can you do it?’

That’s why it’s a good idea at the beginning of the year to teach a lesson on the subject of ‘kid writing’. Even before mastering letter/sound correspondence or becoming a formal reader, a student (for example Wyatt) can scribble or approximate every single word they know. Therefore, all children can write if we set up the expectation that they should use a mixture of kid writing (using their approximations to make and use marks) and ‘adult writing’, using their ever developing knowledge of letter/sound correspondence and their sound and word mat resources. Kid writing is obviously a very temporary scaffold but an important one, because it ensures all the children in your class can access daily writing regardless of their ability or experience.

Here is what I typically say when delivering this particular lesson:

When I was your age, only three, four or five, I hadn’t learnt how to do all my ‘adult writing’ yet, so, while I was learning, I used my own writing too – we can call it ‘kid writing’. Let me show you what kid writing can look like.

At this point, I show the class some of the writing I’ve collected from children at different stages of development so they can see for themselves what kid writing can look like:

• Squiggles
• Letter-like shapes
• A selection of known letters
• Informed encoded ‘sound’ spellings [LINK]

I continue with:

As you can see, while these children were learning more about adult writing, they used ‘kid writing’ too. You can use this writing in your books. If you want to use some adult writing that you already know, go for it! By the way, my teacher taught me more and more about adult writing every day and now I can write like an adult. I’m going to teach you how to write like adults this year too!

This lesson is based on what is appropriate in terms of child development and reflects the stages of emergent writing. You can find out more by looking at the diagram below and by following the accompanying link. 

(Byington & Kim 2017)

• Promoting preschoolers’ emergent writing [LINK]
• The unrealised promise of emergent writing [LINK]

Of course, an added benefit to all this is children learning to use and apply their developing spelling (encoding) skills, something that Ofsted also highlights as important. We would certainly agree with Ofsted here. This is something we often pick up on when working with colleagues in the EYFS and KS1. Indeed, it feels like the time is now right for Ofsted to move its focus on how phonics can help children with their early reading to focusing on how it can have a transformative impact on children’s early writing development. It takes a lot of cognitive energy for children to take the phonemes of their speech and present them as graphemes of written language; otherwise called encoding. In the context of writing, phonics instruction should also focus on how to encode and produce ‘sound spellings’ (also known as informed spellings, approximated spellings and phonetic spellings) and be orientated towards how this instruction will be relevant and useful to the class as writers during their daily writing time (Young & Ferguson 2022). We know that when children receive phonics instruction that also encourages them to produce ‘sound spellings’ when they are writing, they outperform those not in receipt of such instruction on a whole variety of writing and reading measures (Rowe 2018).

Find out more: 

• Early spelling development [LINK]
• Invented spelling in kindergarten as a predictor for future reading and spelling success [LINK]
• Using encoding instruction to improve the reading and spelling performances of elementary students at risk of literacy difficulties: A best-evidence synthesis [LINK]
• Encoding and ‘informed spelling’ [LINK]

4. Working-class children have got no experiences worth hearing about

“For children with fewer opportunities and experiences in their home lives, there is little to tell. ”

❌ The classism here is quite breathtaking. We couldn’t quite believe it. Is there any lower educational expectation than believing that a child has nothing to say? The reality is children don’t have fewer experiences than others: they simply have different experiences. We can’t give children rich lives, but we can give them the lens to appreciate the richness that is already there [LINK]. All children have funds-of-knowledge, funds-of-identity and funds-of-language they can profitably draw on to make and share meaning with (sympathetic) others. Ofsted would do well to read the research used to develop our Writing Realities framework [LINK]. This deficit thinking is not helpful to anyone – least of all children from economically underserved areas.

Find out more:

• True stories [LINK]
• Someone at home books [LINK]
• My friend… stories [LINK]
• A story about me [LINK]
• Memoir writing [LINK]

Summary

What we are really pleased about:

✅ The need to teach writing explicitly is put front and centre in the report [LINK].

✅ There is a focus on developing children’s writing fluency [LINK].

✅ Reiterates the point that phonics instruction should serve children as encoders as well as decoders [LINK].

✅ Oral language development is highlighted as a significant factor in children’s writing success [LINK].

✅ Teaching sentence structures functionally is reiterated [LINK], [LINK], [LINK].

✅ The need for short but regular handwriting and spelling instruction is acknowledged [LINK], [LINK].

✅ Showcases how schools need to have a clear progression for writing development in the EYFS through to the end of KS1 [LINK].

What we are less than thrilled about:

❌ Suggesting that foundational knowledge needs to be somehow mastered before children should be given ‘the right to write’ [LINK].

❌ Not mentioning the importance of accepting and building on children’s emergent writing practices when they first come to school [LINK].

❌ Not accepting that making errors is a part of learning to write.

❌ Suggesting that working-class children have no experiences worth writing about [LINK].

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives – E.M. Forster

Why write about the world outside?

British poetry has a long tradition of connection with landscape and nature. We cannot separate ourselves from the natural world, and young people are increasingly concerned about it. What we can do is bring into sharper focus for both children and ourselves the joyful, healing, subtle, delicate or terrifying aesthetics of nature. Children can share their experiences of nature with others, and this is the most important aspect of the project. When writing a nature poem, we’re aiming to share a particular experience, and we have to resist the temptation to write generally about it. It’s about choosing a diamond moment. We are lucky enough to have many experiences with nature, in urban jungles, streets, allotments, gardens, weather, woods, parks, beaches, rivers, seas, peaks, hills and playgrounds. Many of these experiences will be enjoyable; some may not!

This poetry project gives children the opportunity to write an impression, to capture a moment, to use poetry as a symbol and to make something familiar seem unfamiliar. Perhaps the children could even produce a literary magazine showcasing the power and fragility of nature.

Original article: LINK

Sarah J. McCarthey, Ngan Vu & Jiadi Zhang 

This study investigated how children demonstrate agency in writing projects across three elementary classrooms within a single US school. The researchers uncovered significant insights into the relationship between curriculum design and student agency.

The findings illustrate that a writing curriculum that supports choice and the expression of students’ voices enabled them to integrate their funds-of-knowledge, funds-of-identity and out-of-school experiences within their writing [LINK]. This approach facilitated rich, meaningful writing experiences where students could reflect their personal voices and identities.

However, misunderstandings around the science of writing and phonics instruction have impacted writing curricula and student agency. The prevailing trend towards presentational-skills writing instruction has lead to reduced opportunities for student choice and self-expression [LINK and LINK]. This flawed pedagogical approach has constrained students’ ability to engage deeply with their writing and has limited their opportunities for a creative and agency-driven writing apprenticeship.

To counteract these limitations, teachers can (and must) proactively reform their writing curricula and instruction to better support student agency [LINK and LINK]. This includes offering choices in content, process, and product, which can enhance motivation and engagement. As highlighted by the study, allowing students to create their own writing and negotiate their identities within the writing classroom can empower them to become more engaged and adaptive participants in the writing process.

In essence, fostering student agency in writing requires an instructional approach that values and integrates students’ voices, experiences, and perspectives. By doing so, educators can nurture a more dynamic and responsive educational environment that supports students’ development as creative and autonomous writers.

***

Key studies and perspectives illustrate how classroom environments and instructional practices can either support or hinder students’ agency. For example, McCarthey’s research shows that students express agency by engaging with or resisting classroom norms, while Hamel’s study emphasises the role of teacher support in fostering a writing classroom where students feel empowered to share and publish their compositions.

The researchers also touch on the role of genre in writing instruction, suggesting that while teaching about text forms can help students understand different text types, overly rigid approaches to genre teaching can stifle creativity and agency. Instead, integrating genre instruction with opportunities for student choice, as seen in the Writing For Pleasure approach and Rylak et al.’s study, can enhance students’ engagement and agency in writing.

***

Findings from the research showed how the writing curriculum in different classroom settings shaped students’ writing practices, their interactions with their peers, and how they expressed agency through their writing. The study focused on three different classrooms and examined how students navigated and negotiated their writing experiences.

K/1st grade classroom:

• Writing environment: A dynamic and colourful space where students had multiple opportunities to write, often in a collaborative and fluid manner. The curriculum was open, allowing students choices in topics, genres, and collaboration. This flexibility encouraged creativity, such as combining pictures and text and collaborating with peers [LINK].
• Student agency: Students showed enthusiasm for writing, expressing creativity and independence in their choice of topics and writing styles. Collaboration was encouraged, and students actively engaged in sharing their work with peers, which allowed them to incorporate feedback and ideas into their writing [LINK].

2nd/3rd grade classroom:

• Writing projects: Students worked on personal narrative writing where they could discuss life experiences [LINK]. While genre instruction was crucial, the study suggests allowing students to make choices within genres to maintained children’s engagement and relevance.
• Student agency: The life experiences project allowed students to explore their identities and express themselves creatively. The students’ writing showed a blend of classroom literacy and personal experiences.

4th/5th grade classroom:

• Writing projects: Students engaged in opinion writing [LINK] and a poetry project. While the opinion writing was more structured, the poetry project allowed for greater personal expression and creativity [LINK]. Again, while genre instruction was crucial, the study suggests allowing students to make choices within these taught genres to maintain children’s engagement and relevance.
• Student agency: The poetry project was particularly enjoyed by students as it allowed them to explore their identities and express themselves in a less constrained manner.

Conclusion

This study emphasises the importance of fostering student agency in writing instruction by creating supportive, flexible, and culturally responsive learning environments [LINK]. Teachers should focus on building classroom communities where students are supported to choose their writing topics in an open, friendly, and safe atmosphere. This kind of environment encourages regular peer feedback and interaction, whether in pairs, small groups, or as a whole class. Allowing students to make choices, particularly within the parameters of a specific genre, aligns with best practices and significantly promotes their sense of agency [LINK].

In addition, the research highlights the value of culturally responsive practices in enhancing student engagement and agency in writing. Recognising and valuing students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds can make a meaningful impact on their writing experiences [LINK]. As multilingualism becomes increasingly prevalent, it is important for classrooms to explicitly incorporate and value children’s funds-of-language and writing in multiple languages [LINK]. This approach not only fosters inclusivity but also respects and leverages students’ full linguistic repertoires, enhancing their overall learning experience.

Furthermore, a school’s writing curriculum should connect to students’ lived experiences and real-world contexts [LINK]. This connection allows students to act on their intentions and interests, helping them develop their writerly identities and empowering them to express their creative ideas. Such an approach encourages students to engage deeply with their writing and see its relevance beyond the classroom.

In conclusion, the researchers argue against the use of highly structured writing schemes that limit students’ creative expression. Instead, it advocates for curricula that prioritise student-driven writing projects, enabling students to create extended texts, explore various genres, and write for real audiences [LINK]. The critique of curricula which misunderstands ‘the science of writing‘ highlights the limitations of approaches that focus narrowly on writing responses to reading and provide few opportunities for extended writing. These flawed curriculums are considered detrimental to the development of students’ writerly identities and agency [LINK and LINK].

The study ultimately advocates for open, stimulating writing classrooms that offer students choice and opportunities for critical engagement with texts. Such classrooms can serve as models for others, especially in an era where prescriptive educational mandates are becoming more common. The overall message is a call for instructional practices that prioritise student agency, cultural responsiveness, and real-life relevance in writing education, moving away from rigid, scripted writing schemes towards more inclusive, effective and affecting approaches [LINK].