Writing Fitness

“Writing for a long time was treated as a rather poor relative to reading. Often it was simply assumed one would follow the other, rather like one might catch spelling or punctuation rules from seeing a lot of text. However, it has become much more widely recognised that writing is by far one of the most cognitively demanding activities we ask pupils to undertake. It is complex and nuanced and very difficult to teach well.

This complexity is something which David Didau and Rikki Cole’s book Writing Fitness: From Beginner to 5K seeks to address. They make compelling arguments as to why teachers and educators need to have real clarity about what it is we are asking of pupils to allow them to carefully sequence that progression to complexity. They also provide an abundance of examples which allow the reader to see this in action. There is a sharp focus on the importance of crafting sentences, then paragraphs before considering whole text cohesion, and you will find the somewhat rare beast of the careful crafting of the academic essay, often seen as secondary to the ‘creative’ aspects of writing. Didau and Cole also examine the best approaches to pedagogy and assessment, other frequently ignored areas with noisy assessments which don’t provide a sharp enough focus on what has been taught and how.

This book gave me a lot of reflect upon and return to. All English teams will benefit from having this to hand, resulting in much a stronger curricular, with a tighter focus on what pupils really need to know and do and how we can get them there.”

Zoe Enser, School Improvement Lead for The Education Partnership Trust

“Supporting students to write successfully is too often a process fraught with failure and missteps in too many schools. Didau and Cole offer a timely book that not only promises to end the stumbling experiences of too many young people, but their 'Couch to 5K' approach offers a truly step-by-step pathway to success. The book is steeped in the practical challenges that attend developing confident and skilled writers, along with useful strategies that teachers can confidently apply in their classrooms. It isn't just for English teachers either - this book poses an approach for every student to thrive and achieve in every corner of the school curriculum. Get off your couch or chair and grab a copy of this book!”

Alex Quigley, author, Head of Content and Engagement at the Education Endowment Foundation

“Didau and Cole expose many assumptions about supporting students’ writing. In drawing parallels from the ‘Couch to 5K’ running programme, they identify the slow, deliberate practice needed to get great results.

The book challenges the idea that ability is fixed, emphasizing that high-quality curriculum and teaching make all the difference. The authors advocate for ‘doing less, for longer,’ prioritizing sentence-level skills—syntax, phrasing, and structure—before moving on to extended writing.

There’s also the knotty issue of assessment and ‘Couch to 5K’ unpicks the counterintuitive reasons for comparative judgement being more accurate, more effective and more time efficient.

Didau and Cole offer plenty of examples to draw on; it’s a great boon to the thorny question of helping students to write cogently and with purpose.”

Mary Myatt, education writer and speaker

“In this insightful and provocative book, David Didau and Rikki Cole break down the complexities of writing so teachers can rebuild it, sentence by sentence. If you’ve ever struggled with the curse of knowledge—clear on what great writing looks like but not how to help students achieve it—they propose a powerful counterspell.”

Stephen Chiger, Director of Literacy, Uncommon Schools and co-author of Love and Literacy: A Practical Guide for Grades 5-12 to Finding the Magic in Literature

“Writing is a highly complex skill that demands ‘practice, precision and control’. In this comprehensive and practical book, Didau and Cole use the principles of the popular couch to 5k running programme to show how English teachers can close the gap for struggling writers. The book supports teachers to design a structured and incremental curriculum, where writing is explicitly taught alongside frequent chunked practice, and is rooted firmly in the subject. Whether you want to know more about how to assess writing effectively, how to help students become more creative with their writing, or how to bridge speech into writing, this book will be a goldmine of support. This is an exceptional guide for any teacher wanting to ensure students become fluent and confident writers.”

Rachel Ball, Coaching Development Lead at Steplab, former Teaching and Learning lead

“Writing Fitness: From Beginner to 5K is a clarion call to teachers of English: all children can learn how to write well - anyone can do it. Perhaps it’s a clarion call we’ve never really heard before or not taken enough notice of. But all kids can, and Didau and Cole show us how. It should be compulsory reading for all teachers of English. In Writing Fitness we have a brilliant new addition to the English teacher canon.”

Claire Stoneman, Principal and English Teacher

“In Writing Fitness: From Beginner to 5K, Didau and Cole have integrated their knowledge of how we learn with their expertise in teaching writing to develop an approach that will help teachers ensure their students become proficient writers. With meticulous care, the authors break down the highly complex craft of writing into its constituent parts and demonstrate with practical examples how to teach these components in a systematic and rigorous way. This book is not only a valuable resource for individual teachers looking to refine their practice but also a powerful tool for schools seeking to develop a coherent, well-sequenced English curriculum that secures writing fluency for all pupils.”

Andrew Percival, Deputy Headteacher, Stanley Road Primary School

“Writing Fitness: From Beginner to 5K is intelligently divided into three sections: gapless instruction, success before struggle, and perfect practice. Within these sections, the authors speak to and respect the current challenges English teachers are facing (not least managing cognitive load), and offer a rich tool box that is applicable for all. Couch to 5k Writing will help improve children’s writing in classrooms across the world, whilst empowering teachers to make a difference for their most disadvantaged students.”

Caroline Sherwood, Education Partner for a large Multi Academy Trust, author of Codified Leadership

“I knew this was going to be good; I was blown away by just how good. With compelling clarity, it lays out both the rationale and rich exemplification of the journey from sentence to essay. At first glance, an emphasis on the sentence might appear to inaugur a dry and dull approach to teaching writing, thwarting creativity and self-expression. Didau and Cole skewer that argument, demonstrating with flair how to empower learners to think, speak and write critically about literature. Often, writing can be a rather unloved part of the curriculum - a dutiful interlude interrupting the fun stuff. In this alternative approach, writing is systematically woven throughout literature units, enriching both author study and creative expression. As a result learners acquire confidence and competence in the trifecta of speaking, thinking and writing. Subordinating conjunctions, prepositional phrases, appositives and so on are explicitly taught and frequently practised, not as features to spot in some arcane ‘I-spy book of language devices’ but as ‘cognitive levers’ that actually structure complex thought. The section outlining how specific syntactical devices shape the ability to think is utterly brilliant and one I will be referring to again and again.”

Clare Sealy, Head of Education Improvement States of Guernsey

“Leaving nothing to chance, this book walks educators through the process of building a student writing practice step by careful step, from sentences to essays. The result is something wholly transformative for students, and I imagine teachers as well. You'll never look at teaching writing in the same way again. I found myself wishing my own kids had access to this kind of writing instruction.”

Holly Korbey, Education Journalist at The Bell Ringer and author of Building Better Citizens

“Writing Fitness: From Beginner to 5K is a rare combination of clarity, rigour, and practicality. Drawing on robust cognitive science, David Didau and Rikki Cole offer a deeply intelligent yet accessible roadmap for turning hesitant, overwhelmed students into confident, fluent writers. Their step-by-step approach dismantles the myths of ‘just get them writing’ and replaces them with precise, cumulative instruction that actually works – especially for those who need it most. This is the book I wish every English department had on its desk: evidence-informed, classroom-tested, and utterly focused on what helps students succeed.”

Dr Carl Hendrick, Professor of Applied Sciences, Academica University of Applied Sciences

“Mastering the written word opens hidden doors for students. It allows them to think more deeply and durably than they otherwise might; it affords them the pleasure of creating something tangible—an argument, an idea brought to life. But accessing the world of writing is difficult. It requires diligence, patience and the mastery of a disparate set of complex skills. This can make it a daunting challenge for teachers. With detail and precision, this powerful book maps the path teachers can follow to unlock the joy and the power of the written word for students. It is an outstanding guide made doubly important by the fact that without it, students are less and less likely learn to craft of slow and careful writing in an increasingly fast and digital world.”

Doug Lemov, author of Teach Like a Champion

“This book made me punch the air. Anyone who has observed students slithering all the way to Year 11 still finding writing a chore, still jigsawing a kit of exam-friendly phrases into paragraphs devoid of meaning, still grinding through joyless assessed exercises, wondering what this tedious algorithmic procedure is even for, will recognise Didau and Cole’s straight-talking solutions. This book is not only the result of the authors' wonderful literary erudition, their wide knowledge of how prose works and their determination to share the liberating thrill of producing it, but it oozes his keen observation of the suffering student, the student who just can’t succeed because they’ve not been taught. The intense curricular thoroughness that this book advocates is born of ambition for equity. No student should leave school lacking the confidence of a clear writer who has something to say, who wants to be understood, and who has been taught to feel the impact of their prose, piece by piece, as it lands with their reader.”

Dr Christine Counsell OBE, Director, Opening Worlds

“As we get towards that final assessment or summative piece of writing, we sometimes know deep down that we haven’t spent enough time taking students through the challenging process of writing. Didau and Cole have crafted a text beneficial for all teachers wanting to improve extended writing, that takes students from mastering sentences to producing thoughtful essays. The text continues with a preposition that I fundamentally agree with: Skill = knowledge + practice as, ‘Knowledge and skill are two sides of the same coin.’ We see far too often in final pieces of writing that our students simply don't ‘know’ enough. Therefore, the two are inextricably linked, however, not always balanced accordingly. The Couch to 5k metaphor works brilliantly, as this ‘training program’ takes students through: Gapless instruction, Success before struggle and Perfect practice which elevates students of all abilities and backgrounds. A pleasure to read that will ensure progress having gone through the The Deconstructed Essay sequence. Teach them the knowledge which they need to practice and only then will skill emerge.”

Paul Bell, English Teacher and Senior Leader

“Writing Fitness: From Beginner to 5K has been long in the gestation (and all the better for it) and long in the test phase in actual schools, in workshops and in open peer-2-peer blogging, rather than in distant ivory towers. The ideas in it are finely judged and the solutions to the question of how to get children writing better, innovative and replicable. “You too can do this!”, the writers seem to say on each page. Children will begin to write with crisp and telling paragraphs and not hackneyed or tired verbiage. The “bits” that make up long writing are made self-evident here. Indeed, it is a riposte to any unschooled and prying management eyes in classrooms that demand to know why there is so little essay writing this term.

But, Writing Fitness is so much more than a How to…Guide. It is a manifesto for becoming an author. And it is a radical manifesto at that. But it is one that is proven in challenging schools. Writing Fitness demonstrates deep knowledge of the history of writing, combining clarity of thought and expression with apposite diagrams and scholarly notes that lend the work both speed of reading and intellectual cogency. Writing Fitness makes complex ideas around authorial fluency become straightforward for all teachers. It will be a boon to all schools from headteacher to trainee because nurturing writing and developing childen’s style will stop being a lottery.

Imagine a world where children understand how writers write and how to cope with the blank page in front of them. It is a book that promotes innovation in word selection and range of sentence sophistication and is knowingly aware of how writers make prosaic step by step decisions even when they create sublime outcomes. Crucially it helps children understand that sometimes plainer words convey authority more cleanly.

One way Writing Fitness achieves this is through grounded, practical routines for writing; in others, through extended metaphor and analogy. The book reminds me of Thomas Tuchel in his early days managing Mainz in Germany. Rather than allowing 11v11 practice matches, Tuchel was seen by some as eccentric. Yet what he did was transformative: he honed his players’ ability to control games by focusing on mini-scenarios, restricting pitch space, and sharpening the non-verbal signals players sent with every pass. In doing so, he broke with tradition, turned an unfashionable club into a coherent unit, and enabled the