Look through a set of good pupils’ writing and you’ll often notice a pattern. The sentences are accurate, vocabulary is broad and the sentence openings vary. And yet something doesn’t quite land. The writing feels controlled, but flat.

Part of that is because of how we now teach writing. We’ve added layer upon layer of instruction with sentence structures, scaffolds and checklists.

To a point, this helps. But it can also shift writing from something expressive to something that must tick certain boxes.

When students are focused on what to include next, rather than what they want to say, their writing can end up losing its sense of flow and personality. What’s missing is not effort, or even knowledge, but the voice of the writer.

Students writing to a formula

Take sentence openers as an example. In many classrooms, we explicitly teach students to vary how sentences begin, encouraging fronted adverbials, subordinate clauses and a range of grammatical forms to help students move beyond repetitive patterns.

But when this variation becomes the goal, students stop writing with intention. You can often see in pupils’ work when variation has become forced.

Some classroom activities can reinforce this further. For example, tasks that involve rolling a dice, picking a structure and applying it to the next sentence can inadvertently teach students that there is a disconnect between the structures they use and the messages they are trying to convey through their writing.

Real writers don’t think, “I’ve already used an adverb opener, so I should try a conjunction next.” They read what they’ve written and make decisions based on what works best. They adjust the pace, shift focus, build tension or reveal emotion because it serves the writing.

From structure to intention

What students need is not less structure but a different way of thinking about it. Instead of them asking, “Which structure should I use?” we can help them to ask, “What does this moment need?”

For example, the opening of a sentence isn’t just a technical choice - it is a decision that tells the reader what to notice and what to expect next. Instead of students asking themselves which grammatical structure they should include next, we can teach them to ask: “What do I want the reader to notice first?”

That small shift opens the door to more deliberate and effective writing.

Reaching for STARS

One way that teachers can help students to make this shift is by grouping sentence openings into sets of meaningful types, giving them options to choose from, rather than a checklist to follow.

This gives pupils freedom to experiment, without entirely removing scaffolding.

In narrative writing, a sentence might begin by placing the reader somewhere, anchoring the moment in time, launching straight into action, revealing a reaction or setting up a situation.

In my classroom, I use a simple framework called “STARS” to help name these choices without turning them into a checklist. Each letter represents a different kind of sentence entrance, with the emphasis on choosing the one that best fits the writing. STARS organises sentence openings by effect rather than grammatical features.

Let’s take a simple sentence opening from a pupil’s narrative - “A small crowd gathered” - and change this.

• Around them, a small crowd gathered. (Space)
• Within seconds, a small crowd gathered. (Time)
• Pushing forward for a better view, a small crowd gathered. (Action)
• Drawn by the noise, a small crowd gathered. (Reaction)
• As tensions rose, a small crowd gathered. (Situation)

In each version, the reader’s attention is directed somewhere slightly different. That control over focus helps the writing to become something much more intentional and engaging.

To help others put this into practice, I’ve created a free Tes resource that introduces the STARS approach.

A small change with a big impact

We’ve given students a way into writing with many of the frameworks that we currently use.

But somewhere along the way, the support has started to become the method. We’ve got better at showing students how to write, but we need to get better at helping them to decide why.

The University of Exeter’s Professor Debra Myhill has emphasised the idea of showing students how they can make choices in their use of grammar so it becomes a tool for meaning-making, rather than a series of structural rules to follow.

Sometimes only the smallest shift is needed to bring the writer back into the writing.

Emma Snow is head of English at Solefield School in Sevenoaks, Kent