Provide word banks, notebooks, clipboards, post-its and other writing resources for both indoor and outdoor play.
Ensure resources enable children to draw on their out-of-school practices and personal interests, such as children’s popular culture or sports teams.
Include oral stories and explore ways for both adults and children to develop oral storytelling skills.
Provide a range of opportunities to write for different purposes about things that interest children.
Resource role-play areas with listening and writing equipment, and ensure that role-play areas encourage writing of signs with a real purpose, e.g. a pet shop.
Plan enjoyable activities and games that help children create rhyming strings of real and imaginary words, e.g. Maddie, daddy, baddie, laddie.
Support children to understand that the letter shapes they write (graphemes) link to units of sound (phonemes).
Provide regular playful multisensory systematic phonics activities that help children to represent phonemes in their writing.
When reading stories, talk with children about the author and illustrator, to help children identify with these roles. For example, ask children why they think the author wrote the story, if the author knew the people in the story, or why the illustrator chose to draw a particular moment in the story. Ask children if they would like to be an author and/or illustrator.
