Writing to me is a bit of a passion. I just love being part of the process and watching children realise their potential when they’re able to communicate through writing. I thought I’d write this post this week to share my thoughts and ideas around children’s writing. Whatever your experiences are around children’s writing, hopefully this post will expand your experiences.
Writing expectations:
So here is the ELG for writing in EYFS:
“Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible.”
DFE (2014)
Changes are coming to the EYFS curriculum and the new ELG for writing, as of September 2021, is as follows:
“Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible”
DFE (2020)
As you can see, there’s a lot for these little people to learn, but if done sensitively and in an encouraging way we can instill a love of writing that will support the children in all areas of learning, as well as moving onto the next stage of school life.
What comes before writing?
Before writing can even take place, there are so many more skills that children need to learn. Some include:
Gross motor skills - large muscles e.g. shoulders, elbow
Fine motor skills - smaller muscles e.g. wrists, fingers
Pencil control / grip - how the children hold and control the writing utensils
Mark making - giving meaning to marks and see that these marks are a way of communicating
Communication and language - need to be able to communicate their writing to others
Imagination - need something to write about
Memory - need to ‘hold a sentence’ before being able to write it
Letter formation - if written the wrong way around, the meaning changes
These are just a few of the skills and connections that children need to make. You will be able to see that some are inter connected and some will follow the child development process, for example the development of gross motor skills before fine motor skills.
Although every child develops at different rates, writing does generally follow a process. The image below shows a pattern that may seem familiar when looking at children’s writing process. This is something I love to do. To see the progression children make. Take a look at the writing of children in your setting and see where you think they’re at according to the image. Also, what’s great to see is the possibility of the progress that can happen.
Unknown source
Writing in the environment
The best way to support children’s writing development is to make sure that they have plenty of opportunities to practise this, as well as motivating the writing process. In my classroom, I try to make sure that there are writing opportunities in every area. Last year, I got rid of my writing area. What we noticed was that children were only writing in this area, however what we aim for is for children to want to write, therefore this needs to happen when and where they wish. So, by limiting our practise to having a writing area, we weren’t promoting this way of working. This being said, we still needed a place for the resources that children need to engage them to write. After reading Anna Ephrgave’s books and reviewing in the moment planning, I saw that in her setting she had something called a graphic area. In this area were the resources children needed for writing. Therefore, we adopted this approach too and created a graphics area, where the resources are stored, but that can be used in ways the children want. As mentioned, I’d also adapted the environment to ensure there were writing opportunities throughout the environment. This included examples such as, putting paper and envelopes in the role play area for children to write letters, adding post it notes to the construction area for children to name and label their models and adding character booklets to the reading area for children to label and write about familiar characters. By doing this the children have equipment readily available to them, whenever they need it. By doing this I have also seen an increase in children’s desire to write, which has in turn supported their progress in writing.
Following children’s interests
Yes, there are things that we do need to explicitly teach children when it comes to writing. Developing their phonic sounds, segmenting sounds when writing and punctuation all needs to be taught to children. However, we need to make sure that we provide a balance between this directed teaching and following children’s interests. How I do this is by using my phonics session to also model and teach writing, but then when interacting with children during their free flow play I will follow the children’s interests. For example, a child in my class saw the paper and envelopes in the role play area, I had previously modelled how to write a letter and she wanted to write a letter to her Mum. To begin with we thought about what she wanted to write about, we then slowly went through each word and used the sounds she knew to write the letter. What we ended up with was a genuine interest in writing, as it was purposeful and enjoyable to the child. As well as this the child was able to independently apply the knowledge she’d been taught during adult directed sessions to her play. An essential element on development and learning. Children need to apply the skills they’ve been taught into their play in order to fully grasp these concepts.
Staff training
Whatever experience or qualifications your team has, doing some training on writing is important. I currently work with a fairly inexperienced team and small team, however all whom have great potential and commitment to provide the best for the children in our care. Therefore, although I discussed with them the writing process and how to support and develop children’s writing, another element of this was to reflect on current practise. Some questions I asked my team were:
How often do you model writing with children?
Can you think of any examples of how you moved children’s writing on through their play?
Were there any times that you think you could have incorporated writing in your interactions? How?
Where do you think writing happens?
What we got were great discussions! I was very proud of us all for reflecting and gaining a deeper understanding of our practise and how we could continue to improve in order to support the children. I encourage you to do this with your team too. If you have an environment of trust within your team then they will see this as a chance to reflect and adapt practise in order to drive improvements. I also modelled this as their team leader. I was open and honest in my reflection and stated that I did not model writing enough during free flow play. It’s by identifying these errors in practise that allows us to become aware of our ways of working in order to change. Try to plan in this reflection time, it is so instrumental to our practise and being the best selves we can in order to allow children to be their best selves.
Useful documents to support children’s writing development:
One of the best documents I use then looking at and planning for children’s writing is the DFE exemplification materials for the ELG’s:
This documents has also got some valuable examples:
https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/6100/7/pns_earlywriting_fs071301_Redacted.pdf
Although this is for Reception children, it does still have some good ideas, as well as supporting any higher ability Nursery children:
Anna Ephgrave’s books - ‘Nursery year in action’, ‘Reception year in action’ or ‘Year One year in action’
There is always much more, however these are just some of the materials that I have found useful. If you have any other resources please leave a comment in the comment section below to share any other materials you’ve used in order to support this area of learning.
I hope this post has made you think and reflect on your current practise and how to encourage and promote a purposeful and motivating love of writing for our youngest learners.
*Please note that the images of the environment pictures have been taken from Pinterest rather than from my own setting.