The Village With Three Corners: The Writing Framework Built Around Meaning

As Reception teachers prepare for the new school year, many are looking for a way to support young children as they move from mark making into purposeful reading and writing. The Village With Three Corners is now at the heart of a new writing framework.

This approach complements phonics but shifts the focus to meaning-making. It helps children apply what they know about sounds and spellings in the context of story, communication, and their own writing.

It is aligned with the Department for Education’s 2025 Writing Framework, which highlights the importance of building on phonics knowledge to support writing and spelling. You can read a summary of that framework here.

From Phonics to Writing for Meaning

The writing framework is introduced after the 10-Day Speech Sound Play Plan and the daily 30-Minute Core Code routine, when children are working towards the end of the The Purple Phonics Core Code level. By this point, children have developed strong phonemic awareness and can identify many grapheme–phoneme correspondences. They are ready to begin reading and writing with real purpose. This is not about copying sentences or rehearsing set phrases. Children are supported to write their own ideas, using mapped texts and accessible vocabulary that reflects real language use.

Mapped Stories That Support Writing

The pre-readers in The Village With Three Corners have been fully mapped to show how each word can be decoded and encoded. This makes the stories accessible to early writers and supports writing development without restricting them to a narrow set of taught correspondences.

Mapped high-frequency words appear throughout the stories. These words are presented in a way that supports both reading and spelling, allowing children to use them confidently in their own writing.

Independent Writing Support with MyWordz®

Alongside the mapped books, children use MyWordz® technology to explore how words are structured. They can type in words to check their spelling using the Phonics Spell Check tool. This encourages independence and removes the need for memorising irregular spellings or relying on abstract rules. Children are able to write what they want to say, and check how their words are constructed as they go.

Story Play and Classroom Tools

The Story People are wooden peg dolls we use to bring the characters to life. These can be used to act out the stories, retell key events, and encourage oral composition. We use them within Peg Play Talk Therapy

Discussion cards and writing cards linked to each story are also available. These support vocabulary development, sentence construction, and writing for meaning, while reducing workload for teachers.

Children can play with the Story People!

Writing Starts Here

The new writing framework builds on phonics knowledge and helps children move into writing with meaning and confidence. With mapped texts, high-frequency word support, independent spelling tools, and low-prep classroom resources, The Village With Three Corners provides a complete foundation for writing in Reception.

Our focus is on reading for pleasure, and enjoying writing for life!

Avery cannot contain the joy he experiences reading the story!

For the first time, this autistic child can access reading in the way that makes sense to his brain. He can check the 'sounds' and see them ready-mapped to the letters!

When children are given access to mapped books early, before reading becomes a struggle, they are more likely to experience success and joy. This fosters a positive reading identity and helps prevent the frustration that can undermine confidence.