National Writing Day 2024

Writing is a lifelong skill empowering communication and self-expression. It is crucial to children and young people’s development as it enhances self-confidence and critical thinking skills, but also encourages creativity.

Writing is also part of everyday life, from making plans with friends over text or WhatsApp, helping with children’s homework, writing emails in the workplace, or even making a shopping list. However, 1 in 3 children currently leave primary school without the writing skills they need to succeed in life.

At the National Literacy Trust, we champion writing for enjoyment as a key part of supporting children and young people’s writing attainment.

Writing for enjoyment:

• supports mental wellbeing
• inspires creativity
• helps children express their thoughts and feelings
• improves writing skills.

We believe writing doesn’t just belong in an English lesson but can be used as a fun way to explore many different ideas and topics. We know that writing for enjoyment has the wonderful ability to boost children and young people's wellbeing and help them feel connected to the world. In our writing resources, you’ll find activities that will help bring writing for enjoyment into every corner of your classroom.

When we asked children and young people to tell us why they write, we identified 10 writing motivators which we grouped conceptually to form three categories of young writers:

• the creative writer
• the mindful writer
• the social writer

Our resources and writing programmes are designed for them.

To help you mark National Writing Day - and to celebrate writing throughout the year - we created classroom resources including insights and activities for early years children as well as inspiration and ideas you can use with pupils aged 4 to 14.

Writing for pleasure activities for schools

This resource provides an innovative range of classroom writing games, prompts and ideas you can use in primary or secondary schools to celebrate writing, reflect on reasons for writing and encourage everyone to find their own motivation and voice.

The writing activities align with the statutory requirements of the English programmes of study: Key stages 1 and 2 National Curriculum in England) which states that pupils should be taught to develop positive attitudes towards and stamina for writing by:

• writing narratives about personal experiences and those of others (real and fictional)
• writing about real events
• writing poetry
• writing for different purposes.

Supporting writing in the early years

For children in early years settings, we know that early experiences of writing will have significant influence on their views and feelings about writing as they get older and learn the necessary skills to become successful writers. Our resource explores how to support children in their earliest years to develop a positive view of themselves as writers, develop an interest in the purpose of writing, and to begin to recognise the power of writing as a tool for communication.

Early years activities supporting writing

• Supporting writing in the early years: guidance
• Stanley's Stick early years writing resource

Explore the resources linked below to discover classroom ideas and session plans aligned to creative, mindful and social writing.