Research School Network: Writing to succeed in the Secondary classroom How can teachers implement instruction that supports students to write fluently & accurately in subjects across the curriculum?

Writing forms part of the triumvirate of foundational literacy which sets students up for success both in school and society. We know that poor literacy makes it harder for students to achieve goals in the world of work or further study – especially for disadvantaged students (EEF, 2019). Therefore, the need to develop teachers’ knowledge of the components of writing and the strategies to teach them effectively is crucial. 

The EEF’s ​‘Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools’ (2019) outlines seven recommendations. Of these, three are of particular interest when considering writing:

• Prioritise ​‘disciplinary literacy’ across the curriculum
• Combine writing instruction with reading in every subject
• Break down complex writing tasks.

Here, we’ll focus in particular on the knowledge and pedagogy needed to break down writing tasks so that students can rise to the challenge and write with confidence across their different subjects.

The Simple View of Writing

The graphic above highlights why writing is complex: both for teachers to teach, and for students to master. It places a heavy load on students’ working memory due to:

- the need to simultaneously combine knowledge of the subject content

- the physical literacy skills to transcribe it, and 

- the processing aptitude and stamina to successfully bring it to fruition.

Let’s look at an example of what this might look like in a KS3 Geography lesson on globalisation. A Year 9 student has been asked to write two paragraphs to answer the question:

To what extent has globalisation created more challenges than opportunities?

To be successful in this writing task, students would need to master several elements:

The table above exemplifies the high demand the task places on working memory because writing is such a multifaceted skill: if students are not equipped to be successful in each component, then their writing will not be successful. 

To overcome this challenge and set students up for success, teachers can harness the impact of modelling and metacognition when instructing students to write in their subject. They can do this through:

1. Providing a complete example of excellence to set the standard
2. Defining the success criteria
3. Narrating their expert thought process as a subject specialist

To return to the Geography writing task, what could the student’s Geography teacher implement in the classroom to help them?

The teacher could use a complete, pre-planned model which makes the end goal clear and gives students something they can refer to as they write. 

Not only would this support writing composition and transcription due to the exemplification of structure, vocabulary and sentences, but it would also guide students’ executive function as they can use it as a process to follow and a checklist to review when they have finished. 

To avoid seeing the text in its entirety causing overwhelm, the teacher could narrate the steps to success through deconstructing the model and then use the steps to reconstruct it. This is helpful in making this ​‘largely implicit [process] explicit to students’ (EEF, 2025).