Identifying and addressing children’s writing needs

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Why do some pupils find it more difficult to learn to write than their peers?

Learning to write is one of the most cognitively demanding yet personally fulfilling and socially rewarding things children undertake while they are at school. Some children find it more difficult than others. The reasons behind this are complex (see our article: Visualising The Science Of Writing: The Writing Map Explained for more details). 

Pupils can also struggle more than others to develop writing skills due to persistent absence, undiagnosed medical issues, and factors beyond the classroom that impact their ability to learn. Crucially, inadequate instruction is another common reason why pupils struggle (see our article: The Writing Map & Evidence-Informed Writing Teaching for more on this). We must ensure classroom teaching is effective, not least because this reduces the number of pupils needing support through intervention, allowing us to focus more attention on those who need it most. What are some of the most effective things a teacher of writing can do for all their pupils, but particularly for those who find writing especially challenging?

• Plan your writing units so children move through all of the writing process slowly and systematically (the writing process typically includes: establish a publishing goal, reading as writers, planning, drafting, revising, proof-reading, publishing or performing).
• Study mentor texts which realistically match the type of writing you’re expecting the children to produce for themselves.
• Spend time generating, discussing, drawing, and planning your ideas before starting the draft.
• Explicitly model the one craft move you want the children to use in their own writing that day (a craft move can be a grammatical, sentence-level, literary or a rhetorical device or technique. Alternatively, it can be a writerly process like how to use a graphic organiser or how to proof-read your writing for capital letters).
• Set a small and very manageable process goal for that day’s writing time. This process goal should match what you just modelled to the class.
• Make sure you’re putting aside time (outside of writing lessons) for explicit handwriting and spelling sessions.
• Make sure that any assistant teachers are writing alongside the pupils they are working with. They should model how they are applying what the teacher taught that day to their own writing. 
• Children should be receiving live verbal feedback during writing time. This feedback should be looking to move the child’s writing forward.

All of the above are evidence-informed writing practices for children in general education. They just happen to be evidence-informed writing practices for children who attend special needs schools too. For more, see our publication: Supporting Children With SEND To Be Great Writers.

How can we best support pupils experiencing difficulties in learning to write?

Support for struggling writers begins with identifying their barriers to writing development. Primarily, this involves teachers informally assessing pupils as an ongoing part of handwriting, spelling, and writing instruction and providing timely help. This might mean: 

• In-the-moment scaffolding
• Additional group instruction
• Extra time in the school week to help pupils keep up with the class
• Interventions designed to help pupils catch up

It’s important to emphasise that the pace at which a class progresses is an arbitrary measure that may not reflect the individual learning needs of all students. While the challenge of teaching large groups means that we aim to help as many students as possible, we must remember that some students will learn at significantly different speeds compared to their peers. Providing additional support to those who struggle with writing is essential, but we must ensure that this does not prevent students from engaging with other important areas of the curriculum in our efforts to help them ‘catch up.’ This is particularly relevant in the early stages of education, where a child’s development in areas such as spoken language, physical skills, and social-emotional growth should take precedence. As a general rule, interventions should focus on increasing the time struggling students dedicate to writing, but extending this time beyond a certain point may result in diminishing benefits or even have negative impacts on their overall school experience. At any one time, a pupil might have barriers that relate to multiple aspects of writing. For example, a pupil might struggle with letter formation, spelling, sentence construction, or the ability to generate and organise ideas. In this situation, it can be hard to know what support to prioritise. The short answer to this question is that we should target the most foundational aspect of a struggling pupil’s writing development, something that will be described in more detail below.

How can we identify which pupils require support and which writing barriers to target?

There is a wide range of assessments that might be used to identify pupils’ writing barriers. In the hands of a special educational needs and disabilities coordinator (SENDCO), these assessments can be employed to identify bespoke support for the minority of pupils who require it. However, beyond this, what is required is a systematic approach to assessment that can be employed with all pupils. One way to achieve this is to use a combination of: 

• Handwriting assessments (including evaluating fine motor control and letter formation)
• Encoding/spelling assessments
• Composition assessments

In Reception and KS1, assessment and intervention should focus on pupils’ letter formation and handwriting development – something undertaken as a consistent part of classroom instruction – and their spoken language development – something informally observed by teachers with additional help from the school’s SENDCO where required. In Year Three and beyond, the approach to assessment should involve regular checks on children’s handwriting and spelling alongside writing assessments.

How does a handwriting assessment work?

Handwriting assessments work by giving pupils structured tasks to complete, such as copying sentences, writing dictated words or sentences, or spending some time working on a personal writing project. These tasks allow teachers to observe letter formation, spacing, and overall legibility. Fine motor control may also be assessed through activities that require precise pencil control, such as tracing or pattern copying. If difficulties are observed, additional support will include providing a pencil grip (or an adjustment), and additional handwriting instruction and practice. For more, see our Handwriting Provision Checklist.

How does a spelling assessment work?

A spelling assessment typically involves pupils writing words from memory, either in isolation or within sentences. Ideally, these words should include a mix of high-frequency words and phonically regular words to assess a pupil’s ability to apply phoneme-grapheme correspondences through encoding. A spelling assessment is likely to be included in your school’s phonics or spelling programme. Standardised spelling tests can be used to get a sense of the following:

1. A pupil’s ability to encode the sounds (phonemes) they can hear in the word they want to write and transcribe those sounds to paper (graphemes). 
2. A pupil’s ability to spell polysyllabic words (words with more than one syllable), use their morphological knowledge (the smallest meaningful units of language e.g. un- help -ful), and apply spelling rules (e.g. there, their and they’re).

To differentiate between (1) and (2), the pupil can be asked to sound out words before writing them. If they struggle with spelling polysyllabic words, additional instruction targeting syllable division and morphology may be necessary.

How does a handwriting assessment work?

Handwriting assessments work by giving pupils structured tasks to complete, such as copying sentences, writing dictated words or sentences, or spending some time working on a personal writing project. These tasks allow teachers to observe letter formation, spacing, and overall legibility. Fine motor control may also be assessed through activities that require precise pencil control, such as tracing or pattern copying. If difficulties are observed, additional support will include providing a pencil grip (or an adjustment), and additional handwriting instruction and practice. For more, see our Handwriting Provision Checklist.

How does a spelling assessment work?

A spelling assessment typically involves pupils writing words from memory, either in isolation or within sentences. Ideally, these words should include a mix of high-frequency words and phonically regular words to assess a pupil’s ability to apply phoneme-grapheme correspondences through encoding. A spelling assessment is likely to be included in your school’s phonics or spelling programme. Standardised spelling tests can be used to get a sense of the following:

1. A pupil’s ability to encode the sounds (phonemes) they can hear in the word they want to write and transcribe those sounds to paper (graphemes). 
2. A pupil’s ability to spell polysyllabic words (words with more than one syllable), use their morphological knowledge (the smallest meaningful units of language e.g. un- help -ful), and apply spelling rules (e.g. there, their and they’re).

To differentiate between (1) and (2), the pupil can be asked to sound out words before writing them. If they struggle with spelling polysyllabic words, additional instruction targeting syllable division and morphology may be necessary.

How does a composition assessment work?

A composition assessment usually involves reading a sample of a pupil’s writing. This allows teachers to assess their sentence construction, cohesion, and their grammar and punctuation use. Alternatively, teachers can give children a blank picturebook of about 4-8 pages and ask the child to write a book for children who are younger than them. Each page should provide an opportunity to draw a picture and write underneath. This will assess a child’s ability to organise their ideas, translate their ideas into a plan (through their drawings) and transcribe those ideas to paper quickly and happily. We can call this their writing fluency. 

Pupils who struggle with organising their writing ideas benefit from:

drawing what they plan to write -> using their drawing to orally rehearse what it is they are going to write -> transcribing a single sentence underneath their picture.

Once children achieve a level of mastery, they can be asked to write two sentences, before moving onto writing multiple sentences or a paragraph per a page. We call this our ‘book-making approach’. It’s the approach recommended for all children in EYFS and KS1 and is incredibly effective in building up children’s writing fluency. Indeed, if children can receive such an apprenticeship early on in their writerly lives, the need for such an intervention later on becomes increasingly uncommon. 

For children who are beyond the need for our book-making approach, sentence starters and graphic organisers will support children’s writing.

Those who struggle with grammar use and sentence structure may need to increase the frequency in which they engage in writing. Such children should attend ‘writing club’ where children can write alongside a teacher and receive live verbal feedback, quality modelling and additional instruction. For more information on the ‘book-making approach’ and our ‘writing club’ intervention, download our book: Supporting Children With SEND To Be Great Writers. For more on our sentence-level intervention projects, see our book: Sentence-Building Mini-Projects.

What data can help inform interventions?

For struggling writers, assessment data should guide any interventions. 

• Pupils whose handwriting is illegible will need additional explicit handwriting instruction and practice (see our provision checklist for more details – LINK). 
• Pupils who make frequent spelling errors may need additional intervention in learning common encoding strategies (see our publication: Getting Children Up & Running As Writers for such strategies). 
• Pupils who struggle with composition may benefit from a structured book-making approach, graphic organisers (see our publication: No More: ‘I Don’t Know What To Write Next’) and interventions delivered at the sentence-level (see our publication Sentence-Building Mini-Projects).

Writing development is multifaceted, and by systematically identifying and addressing barriers, we can better support all pupils in becoming confident and capable writers.

How does a standardised writing assessment work?

Fortunately, we already have a nationwide standardised writing assessment produced by the STA. These are the Teacher Assessment Frameworks. For teachers in the Early Years, we have the Early Learning Goals. We recommend using these frameworks to assess children’s writing throughout the academic year. Because these assessments are standardised, children who are regularly failing to evidence certain statements of the framework in their writing are likely candidates for additional support.

It is important to remember that assessing a single piece of writing against the assessment framework only ever provides an approximation of a pupil’s current writing ability, as factors such as knowledge of their writing topic, familiarity with the success criteria, and individual motivation and genre preferences can influence children’s outcomes. However, multiple assessments, collected over time, can offer useful insights for teachers and parents/carers. On its own, a writing assessment offers a broad overview of a pupil’s writing skills but has limited diagnostic value. However, when combined with other teacher assessments, it can sometimes highlight pupils whose writing fluency is unexpectedly weak. These pupils often benefit from targeted support to develop their planning strategies and sentence construction. As always, classroom teachers should consult their school’s SENCO when a pupil displays unusual difficulties with an aspect of writing. They can then look up the difficulty, and our evidence-informed recommendations, in our book Supporting Children With SEND To Be Great Writers.

How can we identify the interventions that are likely to be most beneficial for pupils using these assessments?

Using the figure above, let’s consider some example pupils to illustrate how we can identify appropriate interventions:

• Pupil A is a boy in the spring term of Year 3. His most recent writing assessment was disappointing compared to his peers. His handwriting fluency is also slower than his peers during handwriting lessons. A follow-up spelling assessment suggests that he is a good encoder. However, he struggles with sentence structure and organising his ideas. As a result, he is added to the ‘writing club’ intervention group focusing on book-making at the sentence-level. He is also monitored regularly to track improvements in his handwriting fluency.

• Pupil B is a girl in the autumn term of Year 4. Her writing fluency is not a problem. She regularly writes plenty. However, her spelling is often unconventional and difficult to decode. An assessment of her segmenting and encoding skills suggests she is a weak encoder. As a result, she attends an encoding intervention. By summer term, it’s decided she should attend a spelling intervention.

• Pupil C is a girl in the autumn term of Year 5. Her recent writing assessment is in keeping with the rest of her class. Her handwriting fluency suggests no significant issues with speed or legibility, but her organisation of ideas in class writing projects is inconsistent. Based on this, she meets with her teacher in a small group the day after their first planning lesson. Alongside her teacher and peers, she refines her plan in preparation for the drafting phase of the class writing project.

• Pupil D is a boy in the summer term of Year 6. His teacher believes his handwriting fluency is strong. However, his most recent writing assessment shows he is producing writing that is significantly weaker than his peers. He is given additional classroom support focused on planning (extra small group session), revising (small-group revision checklist session) and proof-reading (works through an editing checklist one item at a time) his writing. His teacher gives him a personal writing project book and encourages his parents to help him write at home. This should hopefully reinforce the strategies he uses in class. 

What might spelling interventions look like?

The structure of spelling interventions depends on available resources. At a minimum, pupils with significant difficulties should be taught encoding strategies (see our book Getting Children Up & Running As Writers for more details). 

For pupils with significant gaps in spelling knowledge, they should receive focused instruction on high-frequency spelling patterns and rules, using structured practice sessions (for example see Spelling For Life by Lyn Stone).

What might letter formation and handwriting fluency interventions look like?

The ideal handwriting intervention provides pupils with structured opportunities to develop fluency and legibility. Strategies may include:

• One-to-one handwriting support sessions that reinforce correct letter formation and spacing.
• Small group interventions where pupils practice copying structured passages to improve speed and accuracy.
• Progressive handwriting exercises that move from letter formation to sentence and paragraph-level writing.

For more information on this, see our Handwriting & Spelling Provision Checklist [LINK].

What might writing structure interventions look like?

Most pupils develop writing structure through classroom instruction, but some benefit from additional targeted support. Effective interventions may include:

• Using the book-making approach to writing (see Supporting Children With SEND To Be Great Writers for more details).
• Explicit modelling of planning strategies (see No More: ‘I Don’t Know What To Write Next’ for more details).
• Pupils struggling with grammar and punctuation should receive support in sentence construction, particularly focusing on subject-verb agreement, punctuation, and complex sentence structures (see our sentence-level intervention projects for more details LINK).
• Additional small group instruction and feedback with children who could use a little bit of extra time and guidance (LINK for more details on organising small group instruction).

Are these the only ways to undertake spelling, handwriting or writing interventions?

The interventions described above represent reasonable approaches to addressing barriers to writing development. As long as an intervention is designed to target a specific writing difficulty and includes explicit modelling and guided application, it is likely to be effective. Schools should adapt interventions to meet the needs of their pupils and ensure that writing development remains a central focus of literacy instruction. For more, see our reference book Supporting Children With SEND To Be Great Writers which covers every aspect of writing difficulty with supporting advice and strategies. 

Offering small-group or one-on-one interventions for students demands careful allocation of limited resources and adjustments to the timetable, which inevitably limits their exposure to other areas of the curriculum. This is a decision that must be made with great consideration. However, there are few concerns more urgent than ensuring students develop strong literacy foundations, including the ability to write proficiently. As such, making adjustments in this area is often essential.

It is imperative that the impact of any writing intervention is evaluated. Such evaluation should involve assessment of the component of writing addressed in the intervention. It makes sense to use the same type of assessment that was used to identify the barrier to writing development in the first place. For example, if a pupil were assigned to a spelling intervention because a spelling assessment suggested they struggled with encoding, then a similar spelling assessment should be used to see if progress has been made. Equally, the impact of a writing fluency intervention is likely to be best evaluated using assessments of writing ease and speed. 

Finally, be cautious in assuming that slow progress means a pupil needs a completely different approach. If assessment has identified a specific barrier to writing, be confident that addressing this barrier directly is the best way forward. Instead of automatically changing tack, consider how the intervention might be supplemented by the two suggestions described in the next section.

How can we adapt our classroom teaching to meet the needs of all pupils in writing?

Naturally, not all pupils will be able to easily ‘keep up’ or ‘catch up’ with their peers through extra support. These pupils will benefit most from sensitive, persistent support that takes into account additional challenges to their motivation and confidence. There is no single ‘correct’ way to achieve this because it will be specific to the needs of the pupil in question. However, here are some adaptations that can be used to support struggling writers while they are in class:

• Alter the teacher-pupil ratio at key moments in a writing unit. Small-group instruction can be particularly powerful when you want to give some children some extra time and attention at the planning stage. We can also recommend undertaking ‘revision checklist sessions’, where you can meet with children in small groups to check their writing against the co-constructed success criteria for your class writing project. Finally, breaking proof-reading down into small manageable daily chunks can ensure that all children have ample time to proof-read their manuscripts. For the children who finish their proof-reading early, they can work on a personal writing project, freeing the teacher up to work with the most vulnerable or least experienced writers in the class. For more on this, see our book: How To Teach Writing.

• Alter the amount of modelling undertaken by adults. Struggling pupils often require significantly more modelling than is typically seen in writing lessons. If you are lucky enough to have an assistant teacher in your class, they should write alongside your least experienced writers during daily writing time. They should undertake the same task that the children have been asked to do. In the process, children can watch how their ‘writer-teacher’ untakes the task while they do it too.

How can we best support pupils with written expression difficulties and other writing-related special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND)?

Written expression difficulties (also known as ‘disorder of written expression’) is a specific disorder that encompasses challenges in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and organising ideas coherently in writing. These difficulties often persist over time, emerge during the developmental years, and are not solely attributable to inadequate instruction or other external factors. 

Children with written expression difficulties often exhibit:

• Limited writerly knowledge compared to their peers.
• Reduced understanding of the writing process.
• Gaps in genre knowledge.
• Negative perceptions about writing and their identity as writers.

They may believe that writing is primarily about mechanics – such as spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, and penmanship – and feel dependent on external assistance to write.

There is no qualitative difference between the writing instruction required for those with written expression difficulties and their peers. However, there is a quantitative difference: these pupils will require significantly more time, scaffolding, and practice than others, often necessitating small-group or one-to-one support. Teachers should also be mindful of the potential impact of writing struggles on a pupil’s confidence and motivation too. Ensuring that support is structured to build both the skill and the will is crucial in helping pupils develop as competent and independent writers.

How might we support pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities relating to spoken language in writing?

Speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN) encompass a range of difficulties that can impact writing. Pupils with language disorders may struggle with sentence construction, word choice, and coherence in writing.

Language disorders show themselves in a variety of ways. Pupils may struggle to translate their thoughts and ideas into written words, use immature language structures for their age, or have difficulty organising their ideas. Additionally, their writing may reflect difficulties in retrieving words from memory or understanding certain grammatical conventions. Not every instance in which a pupil struggles with writing is a result of a significant, ongoing language difficulty. Some pupils will overcome their struggles through brief, targeted support. However, others might need ongoing intervention beyond the classroom. Early writing interventions, like our ‘book-making approach’ (LINK for more details) and our What is a sentence? and What is end punctuation? intervention projects can be highly effective (LINK for more).

What data should be tracked by teachers and leaders responsible for writing across a school?

All data collection and analysis should have a clearly defined purpose and should be minimised wherever possible. The reasons to gather data relating to pupils’ writing include:

• To inform classroom teaching or interventions. Writing assessment data can highlight areas of need, such as audience awareness, development of voice, organisation, sentence-structure and adherence to conventions. This allows teachers to tailor their instruction accordingly.
• To assess the impact of teaching approaches. Long-term tracking can reveal the effectiveness of interventions and curriculum adjustments.
• To inform parents/carers of their child’s progress. Assessment data can help communicate strengths and areas for development to families in a meaningful way.

Beyond formal assessment data, teachers may also track qualitative aspects of pupils’ writing, such as engagement, writing stamina, and confidence in expressing ideas. By doing so, they can ensure that interventions are tailored to both skill development and motivation. For more on this, download our Children’s Writing Survey.

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Ross Young & Felicity Ferguson