With the term ‘sentence’ being mentioned in excess of 300 times across the writing framework, it is absolutely highlighting the importance of ‘the sentence’, when teaching children to write. It suggests that helping children to master sentences is central to the development of fluent, confident writers and that sentence-level teaching is:
“the engine that propels pupils from writing the way they speak to using the structures of written language.”
It also suggests that without secure sentence knowledge, children cannot move forward effectively in their writing journey. In this blog, I will explore the strengths of these messages while also addressing some of its ‘blind spots’ to help ensure that misinterpretation does not lead to unintended consequences in the classroom.
Talk as the foundation
Pleasingly, the framework emphasises that talk is essential for building children’s understanding of written language. Teachers are encouraged to rephrase children’s spoken contributions, extend them, and provide oral models of appropriate sentence structure. This oral rehearsal helps children to hear how sentences sound, which in turn can help to inform their writing choices.
Prosody - our use of pitch, timing, and emphasis - is highlighted as a subtle but effective tool. For example, during genuine conversations, raising pitch at the end of a question or pausing at the end of an idea helps children to internalise sentence boundaries. The framework also recommends sentence stems and frames, which scaffold oral composition and link spoken language to written structures.
Oral composition and cognitive load
The framework highlights the importance of oral composition even once children can write independently. Speaking a sentence before writing it reduces cognitive demand: children have already organised their ideas and chosen a structure. Visual prompts such as pictures, flow charts, or animations, can further support this process, helping children to focus on sentence construction rather than memory.
Reading as a model for writing
The writing framework rightly talks about using reading as a model for writing. Reading widely, and importantly being read to, exposes children to a rich variety of sentence structures. This is not just about vocabulary growth; it is about noticing how sentences are built, punctuated, and varied for effect. Providing opportunities for our children to overlearn familiar stories with repetitive sentence structure within their early education is key. I’m sure you can all appreciate these familiar ‘single clause sentences’ used for effect:
Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me. I’m the gingerbread man.
Teachers can draw children’s attention to these features during shared reading, but the framework cautions us to distinguish between reading as a reader and reading as a writer. Both are important, but they serve different purposes.
When children read as writers, they begin to notice how authors use short sentences for dramatic effect, longer ones for detail, and questions or commands to engage the reader. These observations can then feed directly into their own writing repertoire.
Explicit sentence-level teaching
The framework insists that sentence-level teaching should be a deliberate component of the writing curriculum where children should be provided with planned opportunities to practise constructing single-clause sentences before moving on to more complex structures.
However, children may naturally attempt multi-clause sentences without instruction and thankfully it is noted that this should not be discouraged but that explicit teaching must continue to focus on ensuring that the foundations are secure.
In our Securing Full Stops and Fixing Full Stops projects, we share effective tried-and-tested teaching strategies which enable children to develop secure understanding of what a sentence is, improving their overall accuracy and supporting their composition.
It suggests a clear progression in the teaching of sentence structure. For example, once children can confidently write single-clause sentences, they can extend them with conjunctions, adverbials, or additional detail. The National Curriculum offers considerable guidance and support here, setting out the expectations of sentence structure to form a well sequenced and progressive learning journey. This could be the time to take a look at how the teaching of sentence structure progresses from year to year across your school. This will ensure children build on strong foundations.
Dictation as a tool for sentence structure
The Writing Framework also identifies dictation as a strategy for consolidating children’s understanding of sentence construction. When teachers dictate sentences for children to write, children must attend closely to the subject–verb relationship, punctuation, and overall structure. This reduces cognitive load because the content is provided, allowing them to focus on accuracy and form. Dictation reinforces the link between oral and written language: children hear the sentence, process its grammar, and then transcribe it. Over time, regular dictation, used appropriately, helps children internalise sentence boundaries, develop fluency, and apply these structures independently in their own writing.
Blind spots and unintended consequences
While sentence-level teaching is rightly emphasised in the writing framework, teachers should remain mindful of potential blind spots. A strong focus on subject–verb accuracy can unintentionally narrow children’s understanding of what writing can be, particularly when they encounter poetry, where fragments and unconventional syntax are often used deliberately for rhythm, ambiguity, or emotional effect. If pupils are taught that only “correctly structured” sentences are valid, they may miss the creative possibilities of language.
Similarly, while dictation is a valuable tool for reinforcing sentence boundaries and accuracy, as well as practising transcriptional fluency, it should not become the sole method of writing practice for developing writers; over-reliance risks positioning children as passive transcribers rather than active composers of meaning. To avoid these unintended consequences, the explicit teaching of sentence structure should be within context, so it is meaningful for children. This, alongside opportunities for children to explore flexible, creative uses of language and to generate sentences independently, ensures accuracy is taught without stifling imagination.
The writing framework makes clear that sentence-level teaching is not about drilling grammar in isolation. It is about equipping children with the tools to express ideas clearly and creatively. By mastering sentences, they gain confidence not only in writing but in thinking. Step by step, sentence-level teaching builds the bridge from spoken language to written composition, and that bridge is the foundation of future writing success.
