In the earliest stages of learning to write, we focus on securing strong foundations that will support our children throughout their education and beyond.

At The Whiteoak Academies, we recognise that the crucial component knowledge of pencil grip, letter formation and sound-letter correspondence are the building blocks of successful writing. Therefore, our focus at this stage, is on the direct teaching and repeated practice of the transcription skills of handwriting and spelling. This ensures that these skills become automatic for children. 

In EYFS and Year 1, our writing approach follows a clear and supportive sequence:

Explore

Explore is an essential part of the writing process. It allows our youngest pupils to engage and become familiar with books, their structure, language and themes. We will also start to explore grammatical structures and features. However, we will not overly focus on text types or the characteristics of different genres at this point.

High-Quality Modelling

Strong teaching and modelling are essential for our youngest writers. From the very start of each unit, teachers demonstrate key skills through a structured approach:

I do – the teacher models the skill

We do – the class practises together

You do – pupils apply the skill independently

In the earliest stages, modelling focuses on the core foundations of writing, including:

· Correct seating position

· Pencil grip

· Letter formation

· Applying taught phonics knowledge

· Finger spacing between words

· Use of capital letters and full stops

· Securing early sentence construction

Each new objective is taught clearly and revisited regularly. This consistent, high-quality modelling helps children understand what success looks like and how to achieve it. We consider the 'I do, We do, You do' process as the 'passing of a baton' and consider carefully when children are ready to demonstrate independently the knowledge and skills being modelled. 

Write

Throughout the sequence, we give our pupils repeated opportunities to write and therefore practise and apply the skills they have been taught. Opportunities to write in small, adult-led groups move to whole class sessions as independence grows. In our EYFS provision, there are opportunities to write independently under the careful supervision of adults. This ensures that key skills are practised correctly and that the tripod pencil grip is well-developed. One of the key approaches we use across EYFS and Year 1 is dictation. This helps to:

Reduce cognitive load (create space within their working memory)

Allow children to develop an understanding of what a sentence is

Match writing tasks closely to each child’s phonics knowledge

Engineer success and build confidence (in just the same way as decodable reading books do for early reading)