It was no surprise to many. “Girls continue to perform better than boys in all of the early learning goals,” stated the 2018 EYFSP profile results. “The gender gap for the percentage achieving at least the expected level is largest in writing.”

Reading also had a significant gap between the genders and, interestingly, so did exploring media and materials.

It is interesting because I have long been interested in the potential link between exploring media and materials, and writing outcomes. Because while there is a significant gender gap in both areas, boys actually achieve higher in expressive art and design (84.1 per cent expected level or higher) than in writing (67.4 per cent expected level or higher). So could you use the latter to help boys achieve more in the former?

EYFS strategies

In 2016-17 I undertook a piece of action research to find an answer. Working with a nursery class with twice as many boys than girls, I wanted to see if we could improve the outcomes of one or two boys by the end of Reception.

Experience has shown me that boys can show a lot less interest intrinsically in small, quiet mark-making at three years old, but they do tend to get far more involved in larger, physical messy activities that create marks.

So I built into the provision many more opportunities for gross-motor mark-making activities using various media, tools, music and movement. They had the opportunity to express themselves physically while the adult interactions provided important opportunities to talk about the marks and effects they made.

Here are just some of the activities I tried regularly:

1. Painting to music
   In a similar style to “Write Dance”, we used a variety of music that either they liked or that reflected what we were learning about. While looking at Chinese dragon dances on the IWB, the children had a paintbrush in each hand and made rising and swooping movements with the paint that reflected different parts of the dance or music.

2. Adding “scores” to their imaginative games outdoors on the ground using large chalks
   Lots of their games had a competitive element, so we introduced marking a “score” for each point/win. This was very popular and also great for maths.

3. Using different objects with paint to compare the marks left behind
   Balloons dipped in paint and splodged on walls, rolling balls in large trays lined with paper and paint, large toy vehicles rolled in paint then rolled across the ground.

4. Using tools
   Large trays filled with various substances to see what marks their fingers or tools could make.

5. Engaging with purposeful “writing” opportunities in role-play situations
   Especially on large cardboard boxes! I really find boys often need a “purpose” to write.

By the time I introduced graphemes to the paint, the boys were really engaging in mark making.

So what was the impact? We still had a gender gap by the time the cohort went up into Year 1, but this time the boys achieved higher than the girls.

You can’t put it all down to the changes we made, but I believe that for at least some of them, being expressive with mark-making helped to ignite an interest.

Nicky Clements is head of EYFS at Victoria Academies Trust. She tweets @nickyclements71