The EYFS Framework
The EYFS sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to ensure children’s ‘school readiness’ and gives children the right foundation for good future progress through school and life.
The EYFS is about what children learn, as well as how they learn. Effective practice is a mix of different approaches. Children learn through play, by adults modelling, by observing each other and through adult-guided learning.
The EYFS seeks to provide:
- Quality and consistency in all early years settings, so that every child makes good progress, and no child gets left behind.
- A secure foundation through planning for the learning and development of each individual child, and assessing and reviewing what they have learned regularly.
- Partnership working between practitioners and with parents and/or carers.
- Equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice, ensuring that every child is included and supported.
Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage for group and school providers.
The areas that relate most closely to handwriting within the EYFS Framework are Physical Development and Literacy.
Educational Programme – Physical Development
Physical activity is vital in children’s all-round development, enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives. Gross and fine motor experiences develop incrementally throughout early childhood, starting with sensory explorations and the development of a child’s strength, co-ordination and positional awareness through tummy time, crawling and play movement with both objects and adults. By creating games and providing opportunities for play both indoors and outdoors, adults can support children to develop their core strength, stability, balance, spatial awareness, co-ordination and agility. Gross motor skills provide the foundation for developing healthy bodies and social and emotional well-being. Fine motor control and precision helps with hand–eye co-ordination, which is later linked to early literacy. Repeated and varied opportunities to explore and play with small-world activities, puzzles, arts and crafts and the practice of using small tools, with feedback and support from adults, allow children to develop proficiency, control and confidence.
The links below share good practice to support children’s physical development.
- DfE video (2021) Physical Development with links to gross and fine motor skills.
- DfE Help for early years providers, resources relating to physical development.
- Education Endowment Foundation (EEF, 2024) Guidance on Physical Development.
Educational Programme – Literacy
It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading. Language comprehension (necessary for both reading and writing) starts from birth. It only develops when adults talk with children about the world around them and the books (stories and non-fiction) they read with them, and enjoy rhymes, poems and songs together. Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Writing involves transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech, before writing).
Curriculum Guidance
Many early years practitioners use the non-statutory guidance (see below) to support the implementation of the Educational Programmes.
Assessment in the Early Years
When assessment takes place in early years, it is important for practitioners to remember that children grow and develop at their own unique rates and not every child will follow a ‘typical’ pattern of progression of development, this does not limit a child’s ability to make progress or take away focus from their individual strengths.
DfE Carrying out an assessment
Best Fit for the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP):
“The best-fit model requires practitioners to consider the whole of each Early Learning Goal (ELG) description when making these judgements. ‘Best fit’ does not mean that the child has equal mastery of all aspects of the ELG. Teachers should not ‘tick off’ the bullet points one by one but should use their professional judgement to determine whether each ELG in its totality best fits the child’s learning and development.”
Types of Assessment in EYFS
- Initial assessment: this is often completed by practitioners and caregivers on entry to a setting to establish where a child is working at in terms of their developmental journey.
- Formative assessment: this is the ongoing assessment which is vital in the learning and development process. Formative assessments involve the continuous process of observing and then shaping teaching and learning experiences for each child reflecting on that knowledge.
- Summative assessment: these are often written at predetermined points in the year and provide practitioners and caregivers with a summary of what the child knows, understands and can do at a particular point in time
Statutory Assessments in the EYFS
Early Learning Goals
When children are assessed at the end of EYFS, practitioners use the Early Learning Goals. The ELGs that relate directly to handwriting are found in the Physical Development area under both Fine Motor Skills and the Literacy area (under Writing).
The ELGs for Fine Motor Skills are:
Children at the expected level of development will:
- Hold a pencil effectively in preparation for fluent writing – using the tripod grip in almost all cases.
- Use a range of small tools, including scissors, paint brushes and cutlery.
- Begin to show accuracy and care when drawing.
The ELGs for Writing are:
Children at the expected level of development will:
- Write recognisable letters, most of which are correctly formed.
- Spell words by identifying sounds in them and representing the sounds with a letter or letters.
- Write simple phrases and sentences that can be read by others.
It is important to remember that in order for children to reach these goals, they must also have a good level of physical development and a good level of communication and language skills.
Handwriting is an incremental process that builds on children reaching a good level of physical development, language and communication. In the Progress Check at age 2 (from the EYFS), practitioners will be assessing children’s overall physical development including their gross motor skills as well as their fine motor skills. These early movement skills are an important foundation for children to become successful handwriters. Core strength and balance are vital for children to be able to sit to write. Fine motor strength and dexterity are important for children to be able to hold a pen or pencil. A good level of communication and language are imperative for children to be able to understand and follow instructions when learning to write. A solid understanding of positional language is also needed when children are learning to write so that they can understand what is meant when letter formations are described.
At age 2, practitioners would be working at the child’s level and would be encouraging mark making in the form of using paints and chalks to make pictures and shapes; practitioners would also be encouraging children to understand that their marks have meaning. By the time a child starts school in the reception class, practitioners would be supporting them to develop their mark making into recognisable shapes and letters dependent on ability.
Development Matters and Birth to 5 Matters both have excellent guidance for practitioners to ensure their provision is supportive of developing early mark making skills as well as supporting children to reach a good level of physical development and communication skills overall.
Birth to 5 Matters has clear examples of what a child might be doing, what adults might do to support, and what the environment could look like in order to best support children’s overall physical development as well as their moving and handling:
Development Matters provides clear outlines of how practitioners can observe, support and implement enabling environments so that children can reach a good level of physical development:
Good quality early years provisions will have a variety of resources to encourage early mark making and handwriting skills. These may include: encouraging children to paint, chalk or make marks with water on large vertical surfaces. Children will benefit from making marks using a variety of media. Children can strengthen their fine and gross motor skills by accessing outdoor climbing and play equipment and by having free access to peg boards, tweezers and threading.
How to Begin Teaching Handwriting
We know that the best way to teach handwriting is through the use of letter families. Although this is not explicitly mentioned in the EYFS, it is detailed in the National Curriculum and mentioned throughout.
Letter families relate to those letters that start in the same place and use the same initial movement to create more than one letter, e.g. the letter C has the same beginning as the letters a, g, q, d and o.
SEND in the EYFS
For pupils identified with SEND, practitioners must ensure reasonable adjustments are in place to enable them to make progress and be included in all aspects of the curriculum.
Nasen provides some excellent overviews of the SEND Code of Practice and the EYFS Framework which highlight at a glance how practitioners and settings can ensure success for SEND pupils.
For pupils with specific physical disabilities practitioners should engage specialist support through their local authority and liaise with relevant health professionals to ensure the necessary equipment and adjustments are in place.
PDNet is a national charity that aims to support practitioners to successfully adapt and understand which reasonable adjustments should be made to ensure inclusion for children and young people with physical difficulties. They offer free training for staff working with pupils with physical difficulties and disabilities.
Specialist teachers from the local authority should be in place to assist pupils with vision or hearing impairments (QTVI and TOD). Specialist teachers and health professionals may offer further guidance around how to successfully ensure adjustments in the teaching and learning of handwriting.
Recent Reports
In the Ofsted research and analysis paper Strong foundations in the first years of school, handwriting is explicitly mentioned as an area for improvement.
The report found that some settings were introducing complex tasks too early, leaving children without the foundational knowledge of how to hold a pencil correctly and form letters and numbers. The report goes on to say that:
‘teaching handwriting only in phonics sessions, as some schools do, is part of the problem. It means that children do not learn the basics of letter formation that establish the foundations for speedy and fluent handwriting later on. Further, plans to teach handwriting in key stage 1 do not always include important elements that the national curriculum requires, such as making sure that children understand which letters belong to which handwriting “families” and that they practise these. Incorrect letter formation then becomes a habit. Even when schools provide explicit handwriting lessons, teachers do not always demonstrate well enough to children what they need to do. For example, asking children to trace over letters, rather than showing them how to form letters correctly, is unhelpful.’
Handwriting and Phonics
Handwriting and phonics, alongside other literacy skills, are inextricably linked. However, the SSP (Systematic Synthetic Phonics) programmes are designed to improve outcomes in Reading and Spelling. Whilst SSP programmes do introduce children to graphemes and encourage children to form letters, this does not constitute teaching handwriting. Handwriting needs to be taught discretely outside of phonics lessons.
In Conclusion
Children’s physical development and ability directly impacts their handwriting capabilities. In EYFS, practitioners are able to adjust their provision and plan for their pupils’ individual needs. Consider carefully how children can reach a good level of physical development so that they can go on to become successful and functional handwriters.
Useful Resources
- Pegs 2 Paper is a fantastic resource which uses pegs and boards to develop early handwriting skills.
