Written

• Early exposure to printed language

  1. Reading towards writing

  2. The writing process likely begins as soon as children are exposed to written text and become familiar with printed language

  3. Early reading enables young children to begin to see phoneme-grapheme correspondence, the connection between the sounds they hear and the written symbols that correspond to them

  4. This will, in turn enable them to move on from speech to written expression once that connection has been firmly established
• There is a strong evidence base to suggest that children who are exposed to a rich reading environment in early years become more successful both in their writing and in school generally
• Reason for increased success

  • Children have increased exposure to the letters and early words that they are going to try to write
  • They have become accustomed to the letters, particularly of more familiar words like their own name and names of others around them
  • From memory - and perhaps practice at home they become familiar with language and writing
  • If children have derived enjoyment from language and the reading experience, they are far more likely to appreciate and understand the importance of the written word, and they will then wish to develop mastery of it sooner rather than later
• First books


  • Not read by a child independently but, rather, reading is a shared process with adults
  • Child will associate this early reading with relaxed home time with a parent or other relative
  • The process is made more enjoyable as it builds relationships and the child is also likely to be physically close to the person who is reading to them
  • These early books will introduce key learning concepts to children, such as colours or numbers
• Learning to read


  1. As a child gets older, the link between reading and writing becomes more obvious, particularly as he or she enters more formal childcare or educative settings

  2. The teaching of reading and writing is closely linked
• Stages of reading development (Jeanne Chall)

  • Pre-reading or pseudo reading
  • Initial reading and decoding
  • Confirmation and fluency Reading
  • Reading for learning
  • Multiple Viewpoints
  • Construction and reconstruction
• Pre-reading or pseudo reading stage


  • Children will still be read to by caregivers but might imitate the reading process by turning pages and pretending to read, or creating stories based on the images in the books. They may identity some letters of the alphabet
• Initial reading and decoding stage


  • Children will begin to decode words in order to read and understand basic texts. They may identity familiar whole words or recognise letters and blend sounds together to sound out the words. This can make the reading process slower and can hamper an understanding of the text
• Confirmation and fluency Reading stage

  • Reading will have become a faster process. Children will be able to decode words more readily and read with some fluency. There will be a greater sense of the text as a whole emerging by now
• Reading for learning stage

  • Rather than learning to read, students now read in order to learn. The might be accessing a wider range of texts by this point and reading to obtain facts and scanning for the most relevant details
• Multiple Viewpoints stage


  • Students will begin to recognize how meaning can be conveyed in different ways. with a different focus. As a result, they will become more critical readers, recognising bias and inference
• Construction and reconstruction stage


  • By this point, individuals can read a range of sources and synthesise these in order to develop their own interpretations. They can skim and scan efficiently and recognise what is and is not important to read
• As children get older, the motivation for reading develops, so that there may be a wider range of reasons to read
• Look and say approach

  Encourages children to identify familiar words as a whole to then read them accurately
• Phonic approach

  Starting point for children not only as they begin blending sounds within a word, in order to decode the word as a whole but also as they start to write words for themselves
• Synthetic phonics


  • Teaches children the individual phonemes independently from reading. Once these are embedded, they can then blend them together to pronounce a word. The child is synthesizing the individual phonemes to place them together into a whole word
• Analytic phonics

  • Does not teach the individual phonemes to children before they begin reading but encourages the breaking down of words into key sections (onset and rime)
• Reading schemes

  • Jolly Phonics
  • Read Write Inc
  • Oxford Reading Tree
• As a child becomes a more confident reader, they will find far more variety in the texts they encounter and begin to explore the conventions of non-fiction as well as fiction
• Familiar texts are used to encourage children to apply previous knowledge to understand how to write/read
• Higher attainment is linked to early book ownership, trips to the library and parent-led explicit teaching
• Cultural capital


  Areas such as intellect and education, which are not financially valuable but are linked to social and cultural worth
• The popularity of projects like these demonstrates an awareness of the importance of reading to a child's academic and social development and success
• It is very difficult for a child to progress in their literacy development if the spoken acquisition of language has not progressed
• The general cognitive awareness of how language works needs to be in place before writing can develop
• A child needs to have a wide lexical range and an understanding of how these words work together in terms of grammar and syntax in speech in order to start writing individual words and then progressing to the production of written sentences
• Fine motor skills development

  • Picking up a pen or pencil to write is likely to be a natural, unconscious movement for you but it is one of the first challenges for a child when learning to write
  • Carers in early years settings actively encourage children to use a tripod grip when writing or drawing
  • Young children tend to refine their motor development from gross to fine motor skills; this could explain why children's writing can initially over-large and imprecise
• Directionality


  • Reading or looking at books helps children to develop an awareness that writing is positioned from left to right on a page and almost always presents itself in straight lines
  • Early writers struggle to keep their words in a logical order, or a straight line
• Cognitive awareness


  Children must learn how words are presented, or encoded, into written form. This is perhaps the most challenging area of learning to write from a cognitive perspective
• Emergent writing


  Before children can write coherent letters or words, it is likely that they will be in the emergent writing stage. At this point, a child will be engaged in a complicated process of making signs on the page that they intend to represent a particular word or series of words
• Stages of writing development (Kroll)

  • Preparatory stage (up to age 6)
  • Consolidation stage (age 7-8)
  • Differentiation stage (age 9-10)
  • Integration stage
• Preparatory stage


  • Children are developing their fine motor skills, practising holding a pen or pencil and starting to get to grips with basic spelling principles
• Consolidation stage


  • Children are writing as they speak, usually in short declarative sentences, using conjunctions. They will tend to use the conjunctions 'and' or 'but'. Sentences will often be incomplete
• Differentiation stage


  • Children are beginning to differentiate between speech and writing. Different styles of writing are understood. There are still a number of errors. Writing guides might be provided. Writing might reflect thoughts and feelings
• Integration stage


  • Children are able to integrate their knowledge of speech and writing to produce more sophisticated and varied written work
• Writing process


  1. Spelling stage (Preparatory stage up to age 6)

  2. Consolidation stage (age 7-8)

  3. Differentiation stage (age 9-10)

  4. Integration stage (mid-teens)
• Writing process stages


  • Spelling stage: Children developing fine motor skills, practicing holding pen/pencil, learning basic spelling
  • Consolidation stage: Writing as they speak, using conjunctions like 'and' or 'but', often incomplete sentences
  • Differentiation stage: Beginning to differentiate speech and writing, understanding different writing styles, still errors, writing may reflect thoughts/feelings
  • Integration stage: Developing personal style, able to alter writing for audience and purpose
• Ages attributed to each writing stage are not definitive, added to by Katherine Perera's research
• Approaches to teaching writing

  • Creative model
  • Rule-based model
• Creative model


  Child allowed to experiment creatively with language without strict correction, become more accomplished through trial and error