The road to reading

Reading is fun. It’s also a key skill that helps us to learn and to live our lives – so starting to read is an exciting and important stage in children’s development. As with so much of their learning, children practise many of the skills they need for reading over a long period, starting years […]

Mark making – children’s early writing

What is mark making? Mark making is the term used to describe the marks that children in their early years make on paper and is the first steps towards learning to write. Being able to write is one of the many things that most of us take for granted. Even if we’re not keen writers, […]

Picture books

The power of picture books How wonderful it is to enjoy children’s picture books and escape into their imaginative worlds reading them aloud with children. They open up such worlds of fascinations, awe, wonder, surprise and awakening. How much feeling and emotion can be portrayed through the characters and story. How much can the characters […]

Evidence and research about writing: EYFS and beyond

References and resources about cursive and joined up handwriting On our Cursive and joined up writing are not in the EYFS and Cursive and joined up writing in early years: more evidence against pages we present the evidence and argument that joined up or cursive handwriting is not part of the EYFS statutory requirements and our evidence presents the case […]

Cursive or joined up writing in early years: the case against

Cursive or joined up writing in the early years We already know that there is no mention of handwriting, joined up or cursive writing styles in the EYFS statutory requirements and none about joined up writing specifically in the EYFS Development Matters guidance. We have written about this in our Cursive and joined up writing is […]

Cursive and joined-up writing in the EYFS

Content published on 24.3.17 – not updated with references to the EYFS 2021 although the principles still apply Is joined up or cursive writing in the EYFS appropriate? There is much debate about how and when to teach handwriting and whether to introduce joined up cursive or partially cursive writing to young children as opposed […]

Cursive writing

The three pages in this section help to present the evidence for NOT teaching cursive or joined up writing in the early years. The EYFS statutory requirements (2021) do not specify anything about handwriting. The Development Matters 2021 briefly references handwriting (but not specifically cursive and joined up writing) in relation to the prime area […]

The DfE’s new reading framework by Helen Bradford

Introduction In July 2021, DfE published The reading framework: Teaching the foundations of literacy which, it says, focuses on the early stages of teaching reading and the contribution of talk, stories and systematic synthetic phonics (SSP); supports primary school leaders to evaluate their teaching of early reading and best practice for improving early reading (especially in Reception […]