Ross Young

Free writing CPD materials - covering all aspects of writing teaching writing4pleasure.com/free-writing...

100% The ELG for Writing is an absolute disaster: Writing Off Children’s Potential: Why England’s Writing Early Learning Goal Must Be Reformed writing4pleasure.com/2026/03/24/w...

Time to focus on the little ones. IMO the ELGs and all the DFE materials (esp the early maths and early Literacy) need revision. Child development should be considered www.tes.com/magazine/new...

Dictation just makes children better at dictation.

Visualising the science of early writing: The emergent writing development model explained “Emergent writing is not a preparatory stage before ‘real’ writing begins. It is real writing in the sense that matters developmentally.” writing4pleasure.com/2026/10/20/v...

Reading for pleasure will always be incomplete without writing for pleasure.

“Sentence combining reliably improves children’s ability to perform well on sentence-combining activities. Evidence that it improves the quality of children’s writing is modest and inconsistent.”

Does sentence combining improve children’s writing? What the studies actually show writing4pleasure.com/does-sentenc...

Visualising the science of early writing: The emergent writing development model explained “Emergent writing is not a preparatory stage before ‘real’ writing begins. It is real writing in the sense that matters developmentally.” writing4pleasure.com/2026/10/20/v...

If speech-like writing were the easy/lazy option, it would not be so prized in literature. Yet a great deal of writing we hold up as exceptional is built precisely on the sound of a speaking voice.

Why effective writing instruction requires a writer-teacher “Just as it would be difficult to teach children the tuba if you’ve never played one, so it is difficult to teach children to be writers if you never write.” writing4pleasure.com/2020/11/10/w...

They won’t have anything to write about: The dangers of believing children are ‘culturally deprived’ What if the problem isn't children's lack of ideas, but our assumptions about which ideas are worth writing about? writing4pleasure.com/2020/11/04/t...

What makes children want to write? “Children need a reason to write that matters to them, an audience who will listen, and the knowledge to write well.” writing4pleasure.com/2020/10/22/w...

“Classrooms would be transformed if children wrote what they wanted to write rather than what their teachers told them to.” — Harold Rosen

Does sentence combining improve children’s writing? What the studies actually show Sentence combining reliably improves children’s ability to perform well on sentence-combining activities. Evidence that it improves the quality of children’s writing is modest. writing4pleasure.com/does-sentenc...

Today, we wrote and decorated our Poetry Post in KS2. Tomorrow, we're off round the village to deliver poems to our local community. It's always really well received, with our pupils realising that they can have a positive impact on where they live. There's more info here: ourfp.org/eop/poetry-p...

Does sentence combining improve children’s writing? What the studies actually show writing4pleasure.com/does-sentenc...

Teaching writing and play aren't enemies: writing is playing on paper "Writing is a way for children to claim the world as their own, make their mark, and show that they exist..." writing4pleasure.com/teaching-wri...

Just an FYI, a child can meaningfully be a writer before being able to write conventionally.

Just an FYI, children writing longer or more embedded sentences should not be confused with producing great writing.

Everything Children Learn From Watching You Write: A Framework For Nursery And Reception Teachers writing4pleasure.com/2026/06/23/e...

From How To Make An Earthquake by Ruth Krauss

Why Johnny won’t write: 😔 Lack of confidence 😔 Lack of independence and autonomy 😔 Lack of purpose and authentic audiences 😔 Unhealthy forms of motivation are encouraged 😔 Lack of personal writing time 😔 Lack of satisfaction 😔 Feeling alienated or alone writing4pleasure.com/2025/08/17/w...

Why Johnny won’t write: 😔 Lack of confidence 😔 Lack of independence and autonomy 😔 Lack of purpose and authentic audiences 😔 Unhealthy forms of motivation are encouraged 😔 Lack of personal writing time 😔 Lack of satisfaction 😔 Feeling alienated or alone writing4pleasure.com/2025/08/17/w...

“The result? When we ask young children to write in parallel, the result is usually pretty predictable: ideas become impoverished, sentences simplified, word choices narrowed and texts become less ambitious than the child’s actual thinking and creativity.” writing4pleasure.com/2026/06/30/t...

*NEW BOOK OUT NOW* Handbook Of Writing Research For The Early Years writing4pleasure.com/2026/09/06/n...

Why Johnny can’t and won’t write “The scheme writer enjoys the creative work and the children are left with the clerical labour…” writing4pleasure.com/2025/08/17/w...

Six discourses, four philosophies, one framework: A critical reading of the DfE’s writing guidance “The DfE’s Writing Framework is, at times, a contradiction in terms.” writing4pleasure.com/2025/08/30/t...

Our viewpoint: The use of AI in the teaching of writing “Is there enough personal value in the class writing projects we’ve designed?” writing4pleasure.com/2025/10/15/o...

The science of writing and the book-making approach “When all of these demands land on a child simultaneously, something has to give, and it is usually the quality and ambition of the writing itself.” writing4pleasure.com/2026/06/30/t...

Writing off children’s potential: Why England’s Writing Early Learning Goal must be reformed “The ELG can be met by a child who isn’t required to compose a sentence of their own. This is surely one of the lowest educational expectations you can have...” writing4pleasure.com/2026/03/24/w...

Coming soon! 👀🥳 Handbook Of Writing Research For The Early Years! 👇

If we want to attract children like bees to the idea of writing for pleasure, we must treat our classroom as a field and fill it with the sweetest of nectar – good literature.

Today, 14-month-old Isla got her mum’s pencil case out and ‘played writing’…

Composition conceptualised: Why is it important for teachers to have a productive conception of composition? writing4pleasure.com/2025/07/25/c...

In order to get quality proof-reading from your pupils, they first need to feel they’ve written something worth editing.

Imaginative writing: Our viewpoint “Ultimately, a writing project has gone well if you receive 30+ playful & varied pieces. These pieces are not only successful in terms of the objectives of the curriculum but also meaningful to the young authors…” writing4pleasure.com/2022/10/21/i...

Child on the process of generating writing ideas:

Success criteria are often written by the teacher for the benefit of the teacher, whereas ‘product goals’ are written by the whole class for the benefit of the future reader.

Ideally, no pupil should be given a writing task which does not yield them enough fruit in their own terms, so that they can feel it is worth doing. - John Dixon

I couldn't agree more! This blog on 'inauthentic' writing highlights damaging trends in the teaching of writing in primary. It's a concern at secondary too, where students are sometimes being 'trained' to use sentences & phrases taught by teachers & writing is seen as 'practising' sentences.

The rise of ‘elaborate dictation’ and ‘writing-related simulations’ in English schools: Unethical writing teaching writing4pleasure.com/2025/07/16/t...

“I feel like if I never wrote – life would be a bit boring wouldn’t it – having loads of thoughts but never being able to show it.” - Year 4 Child

Nearly 30% of children not meeting the basic met standard for writing in England this year. Only around 1/10 writing above that basic met standard. Lots to do. People’s thoughts? 🤷‍♂️

Coming soon… 🔜 👀

A writing development rubric for teachers in the early years writing4pleasure.com/2026/07/13/a...

Play isn't a ‘rest’ from writing instruction and writing instruction can be as playful as teachers will allow themselves to be...

Amen to this!

Poetry is the mother of all genres. It’s a versatile medium which informs and aids all other types of writing. Therefore, if we develop children as poets, they will also turn out to be excellent writers.

The different perspectives you can take on teaching early writing writing4pleasure.com/2024/03/15/t...

Relying on dictation can quickly signal to young children that they are not capable of writing for themselves.