An unhelpful myth has taken root in early years education: children should avoid writing altogether until they can spell simple words correctly and form all their letters accurately.

This misunderstands an important point. There is a big difference between expecting young children to complete formal writing tasks before they are ready and encouraging them to experiment with marks, symbols, drawing and early writing.

This myth has two sources. The first is Ofsted’s Strong Foundations report, which argues that “curriculums for writing often introduce complex tasks too early”.

The second is the Department for Education’s Writing Framework. This states that “emergent writing” (experimenting with making marks and drawing) is “not a necessary stage that children have to go through before they can be taught to write letters and words”.

On one level, I think both of these comments are sensible and helpful.

Help with oral language and physical development

Starting with Ofsted’s argument, I have often seen children in Reception being expected to write sentences - for example, about what they did at the weekend - when they may not all be developmentally ready for this task.

They may not yet have the oral language needed to say a full sentence aloud. They may also lack the physical control or letter knowledge needed to write it.

In this position, children often toil unhappily at the task and quickly start to feel that writing is a slog and something they dislike.

In these instances, it would make more sense for the school to focus on helping children with their oral language development. Speaking in sentences and using a rich vocabulary to talk about their experiences and feelings will help them a great deal with the process of composing what they want to say before they write it down, in later years.

Likewise, they will benefit from a focus on physical development, allowing them to build the core strength and dexterity needed to write.

Research evidence also points to the importance of learning the correct way to form letters before beginning to write at length.

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) recommends this in its Preparing for Literacy guidance report as an important step on the road to a fast, fluent and efficient handwriting style. The alternative is that bad habits, like poor pencil grip and incorrect letter formation, become embedded, needing to be unlearned later on.

The recommendations of both the DfE and Ofsted therefore make sense. And yet I know, from speaking to educators and school leaders, that these recommendations have led many to believe that we should not be encouraging children in the early years to write at all.

Emergent and interactive writing

This is not the case. It’s true that, as the writing framework says, emergent writing is not a “necessary stage” for children to pass through. But there is sound research evidence to suggest that it is beneficial to provide engaging resources and to encourage young children to draw, scribble and pretend to write during their play, even if they cannot yet write and spell conventionally.

Similarly, research also shows that early “interactive writing” can have a positive impact. This is where the educator and child first talk together about a message to write down, and then “share the pen”, with both helping to write the message. The EEF says this approach “can improve both communication and language outcomes and early literacy outcomes”.

This doesn’t mean we should abandon explicit teaching. Children benefit from direct instruction in letter formation, handwriting and spelling. But they also benefit from opportunities to use marks and writing meaningfully before they can do these things fluently.

We should not push children if they are not keen to take part in emergent writing activities, but we should still include these activities in our curriculum planning. We should allocate time and space to them and make an effort to get all children involved, not just those who are already keen.

Of course, Reception classrooms should teach the foundations of writing explicitly and carefully. But they should also give children rich opportunities to experiment with marks, symbols and writing for real purposes.

That is not lowering expectations. It is helping children to begin to see themselves as writers.

Dr Julian Grenier CBE is the co-editor of Putting the EYFS Curriculum into Practice (2nd Edition)