Nursery World - Learning & Development: Writing

Literacy is linked to a specific body of knowledge and skills, so practitioners should focus on helping children to acquire these essentials, says Vicky Hutchin.

Literacy, along with Mathematics, Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design, has been designated as a 'specific' area of learning in the revised EYFS 2012. The Specific areas are dependent on the Prime areas and linked to a specific body of knowledge and skills rather than to child development. Literacy is strongly dependent on language development and ability to communicate. The EYFS 2012 highlights two aspects of literacy: (1) Reading (2) Writing.

As with reading, the writing Early Learning Goal expects a high level of skill for children at the end of the reception year, with an emphasis on phonic skills to help them spell: children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways that match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences that can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible (EYFS, 2012).

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