Many years ago, as part of the development of what was then the Foundation Stage Profile, (the precursor to the current EYFSP) a series of video vignettes was created to support the consistency of YR judgements. The purpose was to exemplify the ‘pitch’ of what was children were expected to demonstrate. While focussing on individual children, or groups of children, they were filmed as extended sequences of events to replicate both the holistic nature of children’s attainment and the nature of observing predominantly child led activity.

This was, after all, the time of the (in)famous 80:20 ratio. In the Foundation Stage Profile in England, the 80:20 ratio referred to the balance of evidence used to make assessment judgements. It was guidance and not a statutory rule that stated 80% of evidence should come from ongoing practitioner observation of children in child-initiated, everyday activities.20% could come from planned, adult-led or focused assessment activities. The emphasis was on naturalistic observation rather than testing, and focused activities were acceptable, but should not dominate assessment. Evidence could include observations, annotated work, photographs, and practitioner notes,Later reforms to EYFS and the EYFSP (2013 onward) moved away from explicitly stating numerical ratios, but the principle remained that assessment should be primarily observational and embedded in practice, not test-driven).

One of these was entitled (spoiler alert) ‘Ellis and the Trap for Baddies’, you can watch the video here: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=ellis+and+the+trap+for+baddies&&mid=044AEDC345D0EBB03DBD044AEDC345D0EBB03DBD&FORM=VAMGZC)

In the episode, our eponymous hero subverts the adult’s den making activity (which was a ‘thing’ at the time) to instead create a trap to catch any undefined imaginary miscreants that might enter the school uninvited. The conversation starts with his suggestion that this would make a good trap and is skillfully built up by the educator.

“What’s it going to trap Ellis?

The baddies… that are trying to get in.

So, they won’t be able to? They will go into there will they?

I think they will touch it, and they will get caught in it.

And then what will we do with them?

Just leave them there and call the Police and put them in jail probably.”

(Ellis smiles)

The honey toned voice over then goes on to tell us: “Ellis needs pencil and paper for the next part of his mission. He wants to write about the construction he has spent so long thinking through and building… He is more interested in trying to write, saying the words out loud as he formulates a sentence… His writing is clear and well formed… He is able to identify the sounds in the words he wants to write and blends them to read… The exchange reveals his knowledge of sounds and the names of letters… writing ‘baddies’ is proving a challenge… He has had a respectable stab at spelling ‘baddies’”.

The episode was, and is, considered a high quality example of YR writing in which the child constructs the content themselves and uses their literacy knowledge, phonics and letter formation, to create the sentence that describes his intention and effectively reflects his use of language and vocabulary.

In the recently published Writing Framework (which you can access here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68bec95444fd43581bda1c86/The_writing_framework_092025.pdf), the clear difference is made between the two parallel aspects of writing and the significance of the distinction between speaking and writing:

“Writing is more than spoken words written down; it requires control of language in ways that differ from speech and must be explicitly taught. Both composition and transcription are necessary for proficient writing. Transcription Meaning: The skills needed to transfer what the writer wants to say into symbols on the page. This guide explains that writing depends on articulating and structuring ideas, which the national curriculum refers to as composition.

What Ellis demonstrated so effectively are his transcriptional skills and knowledge. The fact he does this independently and confidently, based on his self-constructed sentence related to his own activity is highly potent and important. In terms of the revised expectations for the attainment of the current ELG for writing, he would substantially exceed its expectations.

However, while we do, and should, celebrate this expression of knowledge and the confidence he displays, we need to consider ‘what was lost’, and the implications for how we conceptualise and provide for the development of ‘writing’ in the EYFS in general and specifically in YR.

Ellis’s thinking behind the construction of his trap, and indeed the story and knowledge that accompany it, are multi-layered, highly sophisticated and complex. For example, he uses high levels of metacognition to develop and construct the trap, and this in turn is underpinned by specific knowledge about the necessity to ‘trap’ baddies, and indeed what happens to them when their temporary imprisonment encounters the legal system. In short, there is much more to this activity in terms of thinking, knowledge, language and creativity.

This is what gets ‘lost’, because ultimately, the focus, and understandably celebrated outcome is a short sentence ‘this is a trap for baddies’ which does not acknowledge or explain any of the complexities that underlie it. The reason that this happens, and that all of the richness of the intellectual pursuit that underpins it is lost is that the focus is transcriptional rather than compositional. Ellis wrote what he knew he could physically do, and as a child in YR, albeit at a high level of development, this is limited. So, he therefore distils all of this content to form his single sentence.

Effectively, he dilutes his thinking to fit with what his early literacy skills and knowledge allows him to transcribe. This is what is ‘lost’.To be a successful writer, transcriptional skills are an obvious prerequisite alongside the equally important necessity to understand the purpose and complexity of what writing does.

In essence, it is creating the need for and understanding of a writer’s voice, something distinct from oral communication, and not limited by the level of a child’s transcriptional knowledge and ability. Eventually competence and automaticity in transcription combine with the richness of composition and writers write as they think in a seamless process, and this is typically a long time after they have left the EYFS.

If reading is the process of decoding words to gain access to someone else’s thoughts, ideas, opinions and imagination, then writing is the process by which we create that a possibility for others.

Our writer’s voice is how we connect our thoughts to ourselves and the world around us. By consciously and deliberately choosing and shaping words that describe our intentions, we create our own individual and exclusive canvas of expression, representation and communication.

Writing empowers us to realise our own truths and make sense of our encounters with reality; it invokes our knowledge and perceptions to share our wisdom and invites the word to be part of our own unique revelations.Writing is intellectual alchemy. It is the concrete realisation of thought, the enactment of memory, the distillation of purpose and the beauty of creation.

This all means that for young children we need to ensure that their ‘writers voice’ their ideas, stories and thinking do not get diminished by their early stages of their transcriptional abilities and knowledge. While of the transcriptional aspects need to be taught, learned and celebrated, we need to ensure that their ‘writer’s voice’ unburdened by their developing technical skills. When this is authentically transcribed by adults it enables them to gain the confidence and motivation to see themselves as ‘writers’.