What is Explicit vs Metacognitive writing instruction?

Teacher Choices trials explore some of the most common questions teachers ask about their practice, testing the everyday choices educators make when planning their lessons and supporting their students.

This Teacher Choices trial will test two different approaches to re-teaching sentence-combining in Years 3 and 4: using explicit instruction or metacognitive strategies.

• Explicit instruction helps pupils master sentence-combining techniques through clear modelling and structured practice.
  
• Metacognitive strategies help learners think about their sentence-combining choices and improve how they plan, monitor, and evaluate their writing.

Who is leading this project?

The evaluation is being carried out by Oxford MeasurEd and Navigator Insight (formerly Qa Research). Oxford MeasurEd is responsible for trial design, analysis, reporting, and research with teachers. Navigator Insight is responsible for school recruitment and coordinating baseline and endline testing.

What will this project look like in your setting?

Each participating school will involve one Year 3 class and one Year 4 class. The two classes will be randomly assigned to use different approaches: one class will use explicit instruction and the other will use metacognitive strategies.

Classes will deliver their allocated approach in at least three 15 – 25-minute re-teaching sessions each week, over a 12-week period (January-April 2027).

Schools will receive a free implementation guide to support delivery of the sessions. As a thank you for completing evaluation activities, schools will receive £100 after baseline testing and a further £100 after endline testing. Schools that host an in-person visit from the evaluation team will also receive an additional £100 following completion of the visit.

Who can take part?

The trial is open to state mainstream primary schools who:

• have a minimum of 20 pupils in all Year 3 and 4 classes
• are not participating in another Year 3 or Year 4 literacy project funded by the EEF

In schools with more than one Year 3 and 4 class, one class in each year group will be randomly selected to participate in the research, though all Year 3 and 4 teachers are encouraged to implement the choice their year group has been assigned to.

How can you register your interest?

Complete the short form at the bottom of this page.

If you have questions about the approaches and the evaluation, please contact the Oxford MeasurEd team at: Teacher.​choices-​evaluation@​oxfordmeasured.​co.​uk. Alternatively, if you have questions about school recruitment and baseline and endline testing, please contact a member of the Navigator Insights team at: teacherchoices@​navigator-​insight.​co.​uk.

Teaching sentence-combining is one of the most effective ways that teachers can help pupils improve their confidence and fluency in writing, and is recommended in the Department for Education’s 2025 national writing framework. However, there is limited evidence on whether it is most effective to teach it through explicit instruction or using metacognitive strategies.

This trial will generate new evidence on everyday classroom practice and on a routine but consequential decision that key stage 2 teachers make when deciding how to teach writing.

The project will be evaluated by Oxford MeasurEd and Navigator Insight using a randomised controlled trialAn RCT is used evaluate an educational programme by assigning settings to one of two groups: the intervention group, who receive the programme or the control group, who continue with business as usual. This ensures that any differences in outcomes can be confidently attributed to the programme, providing a robust estimate of the impact and contributing to the evidence for what works in improving educational outcomes. (RCTAn RCT is used evaluate an educational programme by assigning settings to one of two groups: the intervention group, who receive the programme or the control group, who continue with business as usual. This ensures that any differences in outcomes can be confidently attributed to the programme, providing a robust estimate of the impact and contributing to the evidence for what works in improving educational outcomes.).

Within each participating school, one Year 3 and one Year 4 class will be randomly allocated to deliver sentence-combining re-teaching sessions using either explicit instruction or metacognitive strategies.

The evaluation will assess the impact of each approach on pupils’ writing attainment using the Writing Assessment Measure (WAM), alongside its effect on pupils’ writing self-efficacy, measured through the Self-Efficacy for Writing Scale (SEWS).