Writing is an important skill, both in and out of the classroom. It can be both a window into our children’s minds and a spotlight they can use to illuminate their perspectives for others. For kids with disabilities, writing can be a unique challenge – and a unique gift. When our children learn to write, they open the door for us to better understand their world and unlock new ways of relating with others. Writing is more than just putting words on paper — it takes a mix of skills. Kids need to organize their thoughts, use grammar and punctuation, and physically write or type. For children with disabilities, this can be especially challenging because it involves both cognitive and motor skills working together.
To learn more about how kids with disabilities can most effectively learn to write, we spoke to Occupational Therapist Kelsie Olds, MOT, OTR/L and Los Angeles Unified School District Special Education Specialist Toby Tomlinson Baker, PhD, author of The Traveling IEP and professor at California State University, Los Angeles.
In general, children learn to write in stages. It takes years for fine motor skills to reach the point that allows writing, but the process can be traced back to such early activities as a baby learning to eat with a spoon or even pointing to an object across the room. Prior even to that, however, core strength has to develop. In general, learning to write has three major physical milestone steps: core strength, gross motor skills, and finally, fine motor skills.
Core strength is vital for a child’s development. The muscles in the back, abdomen, chest, and sides create core strength, and as a child grows, their ability to build their equilibrium, coordination, and balance depends on those muscles. Core strength can even impact a child’s ability to sit still at a desk.
Occupational Therapist Kelsie Olds explains how important it is for children to build core strength naturally during play and how lack of core strength can be linked directly to lack of fine motor skills later.
“[Core strength is] the first strength that humans develop. And it’s the first step in fine motor skills, even though it’s all the way back to your core,” Olds says. “Humans develop from the inside out. So the muscles in your trunk, and then the muscles and joints at your shoulder, and then the muscles and joints at your elbow, and then your wrist, and then your fingers. And same for your legs with those progressive ones. So when a baby is learning how to grab something or reach for something, that’s cool. The first thing that they do is fling their whole entire arm at it because they don’t know how to stabilize at each successive joint and reach for something with any kind of dexterity yet.”
To know whether your child is struggling with core strength, be on the lookout for some key signs:
Of course, some of these are just part of growing up. But if your child is exhibiting a few of these signs consistently, lack of core strength could be a factor. Additionally, having a disability could make core strength more difficult to build, so the focus on developing core strength should increase accordingly, if possible.
To build core strength, Olds often helps kids engage in free play. Even something like swinging a stick, she explains, can build the muscles and dexterity that eventually help children use a pencil. “If you watch a kid who is struggling to write, they might be moving their whole entire arm as they do it... And that can make huge letters, that can make just really sloppy letters, that can make you fatigue really fast because it just uses more body energy to move a bigger part of your body than a smaller one,” Olds says. “The counter to most of [that] is hours and hours of unstructured free play in the ages from zero to five to seven years old.”
Along with free play, occupational therapists suggest the following exercises to build core strength:
The good news is, most physical activities involve the core, so any exercise you pick is likely to have benefits and build strength. This is a vital first step because, according to Olds, other occupational therapists, and research conducted at the University of Dayton, core strength directly impacts the next step in a child’s ability to write — gross motor skills.
The “inside-out development” that Olds talked about — starting in the core and moving to the fingers — takes time. “People learn things first in gross motor with their whole body moving,” Olds explains. “Then they learn things in fine motor with their hands…which is why first you learn how to swing around a stick and then you learn how to move around a pencil.” The process is designed that way for a reason. It’s supposed to be slow and step by step. In fact, Olds points out that generally before kindergarten, kids are better off when they aren’t even expected to trace letters or grip pencils correctly.
“People skip ahead to wanting fine motor skills, the skills of using your fingers to do things. People in three-year-old preschools and even two-year-olds will be trying to teach them how to trace their name or how to hold a pencil or how to write the letters of the alphabet,” Olds explains. “That is like trying to build a roof on top of a concrete foundation without having any walls in there first. It’s not going to make anything.”
To build that foundation, here are recommended exercises for creating and refining gross motor skills related to hands, arms, and coordination:
Eventually, after core strength and gross motor skills are acquired, fine motor skills begin to become available to kids. That’s where the writing starts to come in. However, some kids experience roadblocks to writing that exist beyond physical core strength and gross motor skills. Although it is vital for kids with disabilities to develop those skills, it is also important to understand how specific disabilities can impact children and their ability to learn to write.
Focus on core strength first. Before expecting your child to hold a pencil correctly, encourage activities that build their core muscles, like climbing, crawling, and swinging. A strong core supports posture and stability, making fine motor skills easier later. Also be aware of signs of weak core strength.
Prioritize play. Free play, such as running, jumping, and balancing, naturally develops gross motor skills. Avoid rushing into writing too soon — kids need time to refine their movements before mastering a pencil grip.
Build skill step by step. If your preschooler struggles with tracing or holding a pencil, don’t worry. Strengthening their larger muscle groups first will set them up for success when they’re ready.
Kids develop writing skills at different rates and ages. Many toddlers and preschoolers begin with holding crayons and making scribbles. Olds explains that writing should be child-led and play-based in the early stages. While some parents may want their child to get a headstart on writing, and it may even come earlier for some kids, Olds generally doesn’t suggest that writing be pushed too early on children (not before kindergarten).
She also adds that this doesn’t mean we don’t teach explicit writing, because writing (similar to reading) is not a skill just organically learned, it has to be taught. She just suggests holding off until kids are capable of the physical demands of the thing that parents and teachers want them to do “because otherwise you took a body that was incapable of physical demands and made them believe that it was their fault.” She explains more here:
According to the National Institutes of Health, up to 30% of children have a writing disability. That doesn’t mean they can’t learn how to write, but it does mean that process might look different for them. To better understand the different types of challenges that impact writing for kids with disabilities, we’ve broken those disabilities down into categories — primary, secondary, and tertiary. To determine the best accommodations or strategies for your child, it’s important to first consider which type of writing disability might be impacting them.
Any disability can impact writing, but some disabilities influence it directly, whether physically or cognitively. These are called primary disabilities. Generally, a primary writing disability is categorized as dysgraphia. There are five dysgraphia subtypes: dyslexic dysgraphia, motor dysgraphia, spatial dysgraphia, phonological dysgraphia, and lexical dysgraphia. The manner in which your child struggles with writing will dictate their subtype diagnosis — for example, if they struggle to properly space their letters and words when writing, they would be diagnosed with spatial dysgraphia. If they struggle with writing because of underdeveloped fine motor skills, they would be diagnosed with motor dysgraphia. Additionally, it is possible to be diagnosed with multiple dysgraphia subtypes. Dysgraphia is considered a Specific Learning Disorder in the DSM-5, like other learning disabilities including dyslexia and dyscalculia. You can read more in our article Specific Learning Disabilities 101.
Early signs of dysgraphia and other learning disabilities usually begin before children start learning to read. The disability often first manifests in messy handwriting, including poorly formed letters or difficulty writing in a straight line. However, because dysgraphia is a processing disorder, its true influence goes beyond just fine motor skills and impacts thought processes as well. Other signs include frequent erasing, poor spelling, cramped grip, and unusual wrist, body, or paper position while writing. Other common writing challenges for kids with primary writing disabilities include letter formation, organization of thoughts on paper, omission of words from sentences, grammar, syntax, and spatial planning.
Dr. Baker understands the challenges and opportunities dysgraphia presents well, in part because she herself has dyscalculia — the numbers equivalent to dysgraphia.
“I am not a math person, and that’s okay. I’m able to do math. I don’t like it. It’s hard for me. It’s a struggle, but I persevere,” Dr. Baker explains. “So for students who have dysgraphia, they may never be superior writers, but we want them to be able to have a product that they can feel proud of and that they can show that can be published and put up on the wall and not feel fearful of others.… They want to feel proud of that. So if they have to write one paragraph or four paragraphs or five paragraphs, how do they do that? How do they master getting the right word and learning the vocabulary? How do we use the vocabulary? How do we put it correctly?”
According to Dr. Baker and decades of research, immediate, positive correction or reinforcement is one of the most effective responses. “You get a lot of the negative role in your head instead of, you know, what would make your story really great? Why don’t you add this in? And then it becomes, flip it so that it’s a positive thing that they’re going to want to take ownership of and not something they want to get away from,” Dr. Baker says. “I found that when you use a more positive verbiage towards students, they don’t see that as an attack.”
In tandem with positivity, here are some common classroom strategies that help kids with dysgraphia learn to write:
Phonics: teaching kids to write using not only letters, which can be especially difficult to master for kids with dysgraphia, but also sounds. Memorizing letter combinations and the sounds they represent instead of just individual symbols can make a big difference.
Chunking: breaking information down into component parts is an important teaching tool for those with dysgraphia. An essay all at once can be overwhelming, but starting with a topic sentence or even an introductory clause can make the task feel possible.
Modifications: often, essays or stories don’t need to be as long as the norm would suggest. Instead of a five-paragraph essay, try a four-paragraph essay — or even a single paragraph with a topic sentence, supporting evidence, strong analysis, and a compelling conclusion. These sentences are representative of what a five-paragraph essay teaches, so the same skills can be learned in a less cumbersome way.
Say-Trace-Write model: for this exercise, a student says a letter or word out loud, traces the letter or word with a stencil or outlined paper, and then writes the word themself. This allows for repetition while also changing and increasing the difficulty level of each step just enough to avoid boredom or frustration.
Assistive technology: a variety of assistive technologies exist to help kids with dysgraphia. Check out the end of the article for more information about those options.
Unlike dysgraphia, which impacts a student’s ability to write directly, secondary writing disabilities generally impact motor skills, executive function, or cognitive ability rather than writing processes specifically.
Some common secondary writing disabilities include:
ADHD: ADHD impacts a child’s ability to focus on one task at a time. It can lead to students being easily distractible and having a hard time sitting still. It can also make it tricky for a student to write because, by definition, writing requires specific, prolonged focus.
Autism: kids with autism might experience sensory issues when holding pens or pencils. They might also face organizational challenges when it comes to translating their thoughts onto paper. They also sometimes hyper-fixate on details without considering larger themes or theses. Many kids with autism also have co-occurring hyperflexibility (and hyperflexibility conditions like Ehlers-Danlos syndrome), so they more frequently have difficulty with pencil grasp, experience pain or fatigue when writing, etc. Because autism can manifest in many ways, it’s best to come up with an individual plan with your child, teacher, and therapist to see how autism could be impacting the writing process for your child.
Down syndrome: children with Down syndrome can have motor skill issues, trouble retaining information due to short-term memory concerns, or generalized language learning delays, all of which can impact their ability to write.
Other specific learning disabilities: any generalized learning disability could influence writing skill and ability.
Because secondary writing disabilities don’t necessarily impact a student’s ability to write directly, they can be harder to spot. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing that can be done to help students with these disabilities learn to write. In fact, many of the same strategies used for primary writing disabilities can be used for secondary ones as well. When crafting an IEP, it’s important to take writing into specific consideration, even if your child’s disability is not specific to writing. We’ll zoom in on IEPs later in this article.
Executive function challenges and disorders such as OCD, anxiety, and depression can also impact writing. Often, if a child is feeling unmotivated due to depression or stressed out because of anxiety, the added pressure of writing can be difficult. In the case of tertiary writing disabilities, often if the initial disorder is addressed, then the writing difficulty is addressed as well.
For example, if a child’s depression is treated through therapy or medication, then their ability to write will likely increase along with their mood and executive function. Interestingly, writing is sometimes used as a treatment method for depression. Inversely, studies have found that difficulty with learning and writing can be a cause of depression in children and adolescents.
Of course, if your child has a primary, secondary, or tertiary writing disability, then the specific accommodations and teaching strategies will change. However, the principles of positivity, patience, and an individualized action plan will stay the same. A holistic approach – one that addresses the whole child, not just their writing ability – is generally the most effective.
Look for early signs. Messy handwriting, difficulty spacing letters, frequent erasing, or an unusual grip may signal dysgraphia. Identifying these struggles early can help you find the right support for your child.
Customize supports. Whether it’s using fidget tools for ADHD, speech-to-text for motor challenges, or breaking writing into smaller steps for executive function difficulties, tailor writing support to your child’s unique needs.
Collaborate on their IEP. Work with teachers and therapists to ensure your child’s IEP includes writing accommodations, even if their disability isn’t specific to writing.
Whether a child is writing by hand or on a keyboard connected to a screen, what matters is the ability to translate and organize thoughts into words and sentences. Some children are naturally more inclined toward a pencil than a keyboard or vice versa. Either way, it’s important to understand the learning process and how to make it easier for children.
When testing a child for dysgraphia, one of the first things a health care professional will look at is handwriting. The assessor will evaluate inconsistent letter size and spacing, legibility, spelling, rate of writing, and other similar factors. Of course, messy handwriting is common for young kids. But, for the 5%–20% of children in the United States with dysgraphia, it’s often a cocktail of ongoing symptoms that lead to a diagnosis.
Although handwriting for children with dysgraphia might never be easy, there are ways to improve it both mentally and physically. On a physical level, Olds explains the importance of sequence in order to achieve fine motor skills. If a student is struggling to form letters, it could be partially because they haven’t developed their core strength or gross motor skills to an adequate extent.
Additionally, assistive technology can be a game-changer for children. Apps such as Writing Wizard help children learn the shapes of letters and numbers. To play, a child simply traces the shape on the screen. But Writing Wizard and other similar apps allow an adult to download information after the game is played to provide data for parents, educators, and therapists about where a child might be experiencing difficulty. For more information on assistive technology, check out our article on AT tools for writing.
As important as handwriting is, however, it can also be a major and largely unnecessary stumbling block. In today’s world, it’s possible for most students to learn to write without constantly having to put a pen or pencil to paper.
Gone are the days of children learning to type in a single class in seventh grade. For most kids growing up now, typing is ubiquitous. It uses a different set of skills than handwriting, and it can often be easier for children than gripping a pencil and writing on paper. Both Dr. Baker and Olds point out the value of children being able to type — or even talk to text — their writing. This technology can provide a confidence boost and help children understand that storytelling and writing can be fun instead of burdensome.
Learning the keyboard can often be a challenge, but it is recommended that kids with dysgraphia and other writing difficulties learn to type sooner rather than later. This allows children to complete homework assignments and learn through writing rather than spending all of their energy learning to write by hand. If handwriting takes longer than typing, that can cause kids to fall behind not just in writing but in other subjects as well. If they can become proficient typists first, then they can stay caught up with school and practice handwriting with lower stakes.
One way to incentivize that learning is by allowing children to type from wherever they want — and Olds recommends getting creative with what that looks like and ensuring that kids have access to wireless keyboards.“I have some kids who want to take the keyboard and go sit on the swing and do it while they’re getting some vestibular sensory input, and then some kids who want to lie in a beanbag,” Olds says. “And you can do that because it’s an external keyboard.”
One idea that Olds has found effective is taping the outline of a large QWERTY keyboard on the floor of a recreation area so kids can practice and play on it during recess or free time. That way, their mind and body are both in motion as they learn the placement of each letter of the alphabet. As Olds explains, the main reason for this is to help them learn through gross motor first before fine motor. Whether they’re typing or writing by hand, though, what kids are writing about is just as important to their learning process as how they’re writing about it.
Support both ways of expression. Handwriting is important, but for kids with dysgraphia, typing can be a game-changer. Encouraging both skills helps them stay on track academically while reducing frustration.
Use assistive technology. Apps like Writing Wizard can help kids practice letter formation while giving parents and educators useful feedback on their progress.
Make typing fun and accessible. Let kids practice typing in comfortable environments, like on a swing or beanbag with a wireless keyboard. Creative approaches, such as taping a giant keyboard on the floor, can make learning engaging.
For kids to learn how to write, they have to understand what storytelling is and develop or nurture a desire to engage in it. Dr. Baker recognizes the importance of flexibility and creativity because she knows what it feels like to experience the opposite: “We don’t want students to feel like they’re being attacked because, again, that attack takes me back to my second grade teacher, where she crumpled up my paper and said, ‘Okay, redo it. You have to do it this way,’” Dr. Baker continues. “And when you’re writing something creative, you want to do it your way. It’s your creation. So I think that’s something to convey to the students — that they have ownership of their own writing.”
That ownership can be especially important for kids with disabilities who might lack a sense of control in other areas of their lives. Still, in her classroom, Dr. Baker teaches her special education students the same writing steps as general education students learn. They’re the same basic steps recommended by the U.S. Department of Education. They can be adapted or modified for accommodation purposes by either breaking them down into smaller parts or simplifying the prompt. Most importantly, they’re simple and effective.
Prewriting: the brainstorming step — this entails coming up with ideas for the story or the essay and creating an outline. Graphic organizers can be a helpful tool at this stage.
Drafting: this is where the writing starts. Whether the student is physically writing the letters by hand, typing them, or using assistive speech-to-text technology, this is the stage where the ideas get put down on paper and formed into sentences and paragraphs. No first draft is perfect — the goal here is simply to have a complete essay or story on paper.
Revising: writing is rewriting, and this is most true in the revising stage. In this step, students go back through their draft and clarify, simplify, or rearrange their thoughts.
Editing: after the main content of an essay or story is locked in, it’s time to make sure all the rules are being followed. Look for typos or misprints, check grammar, and fix punctuation mistakes. AI and Grammarly can help with this.
Evaluating: the teacher checks in and makes sure that the student has completed the assignment to the expected standard. Of course, the teacher has likely been helping all along, but this is their official grading period.
Publishing: put the story or essay up on the classroom wall! Present it to parents and the other students. It’s ready to be seen and should be celebrated. This validates the student’s efforts and shows them that they can complete a difficult task well.
The steps are necessary, but they’re also cyclical. Flexibility is important. “There’s six actionable steps, but those have to be broken down,” Dr. Baker explains. “So, when you think about strategies for writing, I think about students. What do they come in with? What is their story? What do they have? What are they trying to accomplish by the piece of writing? Everybody’s writing can be a little bit different.”
An awareness that learning comes in steps is vital as well. “Of course, everybody gets hung up on the grammar and the spelling and the syntax and those parts of writing. I don’t get hung up on that in the first stages of writing,” Dr. Baker explains. “That’s okay. If students misspell words, they may still be working on phonemic awareness, depending on their age.”
Those age differences and developmental differences are what make the students — and their stories — unique. Which means that often the writing process for each student needs to be unique as well. “A lot of it is, how does the teacher approach the student? Also, how large is your class? I had 15 students. I didn’t have 25. So I was able to figure that out,” Dr. Baker says. “I used to say I had 15 students, but I really had 15 different lesson plans. So every student is different.… I taught kindergarten, first, second, and third [grades], all in one classroom, for 10 years. And they would say, ‘Oh, you have four grades.’ And I’d say, ‘No, I have 15 grades.’ So every student was just a little bit different. And that’s okay. So I did a lot of small group, a lot of one-on-one.”
Part of that individualized attention means taking the time necessary to get to know each student and their individual needs. Dr. Baker and other special education teachers often use visual aids, graphic organizers, and other tools to break down large assignments into their component pieces. That way, they can see where each student might be struggling and help them with a particular concept by giving immediate, positive, concrete feedback.
In addition to that feedback, other common classroom tools that help kids with disabilities learn writing skills include the following:
Sensory stimulus: depending on the stage of the writing process, teachers can incorporate creative ways for kids to brainstorm, such as crafting the story out of clay, acting it out in the classroom, or recording it into a microphone and playing it back as a sort of “audiobook” before writing it down.
Self-correction: a teacher can give a short, simple spelling test or grammar exercise and then provide the students with a key or flashcards for the answers. The student then grades their own work before having it checked by the teacher. This reinforces accountability but also exposes the student to the information from multiple perspectives, which increases learning outcomes and targets different areas of the brain.
Sentence combining: a teacher begins with one or more short, simple sentences. The teacher asks the students to add words to or take them away from the sentence to change the meaning. Eventually, the students can also combine the initial sentence with another simple sentence. This can be done as a whole class or in small groups.
Those are just a few examples of what teachers do in their classrooms to encourage and teach students with disabilities to write. There are myriad methods, but they all come back to the same underlying principles of consistency, flexibility, and positivity. Dr. Baker emphasizes that in the end, as long as the student achieves their goals and meets the teacher’s expectations, that’s what matters. The “how” matters less than some people assume.
Much like the content of the writing itself, the motor process of learning to write works best when it is based on natural movement and fun. Olds points out that although she is not against screens, unstructured free play that is not only confined within the world of a screen is important for childhood development.
“Kids need to move their whole entire bodies, and a lot of times they’re born instinctually decently good at that most of the time. And over time, that gets kind of eroded because in a lot of aspects of our society it’s not welcome. And it might even be seen as if it’s a moral failing to be wiggly or to be moving all over the place. Or even if it’s not seen as a moral failing, it might be seen as inconvenient or annoying or things like that. And so, depending on the kid and depending on their personality, they may be more likely to take that to heart,” Olds explains. “And it just depends on the kid, but you might squish out the innate ability that they have to do what their body needs, to hear what their body needs, and to follow that in their own development.”
Sometimes, it can be hard for adults to remember how different the world looks as a child. But it’s important to keep things in perspective. For example, for most of us, a pencil is light and easy to wield. But, as Olds points out, if we were to use a pencil that had the same ratio to us as a standard pencil does to our children, we’d be writing with an eleven-and-a-half inch Snickers bar.
Some common teaching tricks that address motor processes include:
Both Dr. Baker and Olds agree that learning to write is a complex process that requires patience, flexibility, and communication. And that applies to teaching writing as well. Using that approach, Dr. Baker is able to cater her lessons to her students’ needs. But, of course, she and all educators are also teaching to a standard. And for Dr. Baker and others like her, that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it can be an opportunity.
Many accommodations and classroom modifications to help kids who are struggling to write. However, for all kids, a key component is learning to have fun doing it. Olds builds fun into her occupational therapy with methods including unstructured free play. For Dr. Baker, the fun comes from fostering a love for stories in children in order to build an intrinsic motivation to tell them, read them, and eventually, write them.
At its core, writing is both practical and personal. Studies have shown that expressive writing has many positive effects on well-being and working memory in children. Olds suggests promoting both to children through teaching by example.
“I like to write poetry by hand in a notebook, but I wasn’t doing it in front of my kids,” Olds explains. “So I got us all little journals, and I was like, ‘I really like to walk outside and then if I see anything that's beautiful, then I might write about it.’ I wasn’t actually planning on writing any good poetry at this time, which is good because I didn’t, but we did walk around and look.… My kids were taking it super seriously. It was so cute, and they were like, ‘This flower is beautiful,’ and then they like opened [the notebook] and wrote ‘“flower’” and then they like walked to the next thing, and they’'re like, ‘This tree is so beautiful,’ and they opened [the notebook] and wrote ‘tree.’ That's how you plant those seeds.… You do it for love and delight. You take the thing that you care about and you see how creating that is part of humanity, and I love it with all my heart.”
While expressive writing may be more difficult for kids with disabilities, especially those with specific learning disorders, encouraging creativity and storytelling through a variety of mediums other than just writing can be another way to reinforce the fact that dysgraphia is not in any way synonymous with lack of intelligence. By allowing kids to learn through painting, film making, voice recording, sculpting, or other creative outlets, you can show them that just because writing can be difficult doesn’t mean they’re not capable communicators. This can, in turn, give them more confidence to write even when it’s hard because they know they have stories worth telling.
Understanding why a child struggles with writing isn’t always straightforward. It could be fine motor challenges, sensory differences, anxiety, or even frustration built up over time. But figuring out the exact cause isn’t always the first step. Occupational therapy (OT) encompasses a wide range of treatments and interventions to help people adapt to physical and neurological disabilities that affect their ability to go about their daily life, such as with writing. A child may benefit from occupational therapy if they have difficulties with:
Occupational therapists (OTs) focus on observing, building trust, and following the child’s lead. Over time, they gather clues — like difficulty coordinating both hands or avoiding writing tasks—that help them tailor support. OT can be both school-based and clinic-based. Olds explains how OT can be a helpful tool when approaching challenges in writing:
The Common Core curriculum was officially launched in 2009 in an effort to standardize and improve the American education system. While the Common Core does not contain a list of accommodations or a set of separate standards for students with disabilities — it is designed to be relevant for everyone — there is an option for kids with significant cognitive disabilities: California’s alternate achievement standards. For more information, here is a PDF of the California Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts (ELA) and a link to explore the California Alternate Assessments in ELA.
Let’s dive deeper into students taking the alternative pathway to a diploma. For these students who aren’t able to meet the regular CCSS in writing, special education teachers can provide specially designed instruction to focus on the Core Content Connectors (CCCs) and Essential Understandings (EU) (in both an inclusive class or in a separate setting) instead. These EUs are aligned with the CCSS standards that all students learn but they were created for students who are using Alternate Assessments and need a modified general education curriculum.
Let’s explore how CCCs and EUs come into play. Here are some examples of how students can work on writing using alternative achievement standards.
Example #1:
The state standard for Text Types and Purposes (argument) W.8.1 is “Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.”
The core content connector a student can instead work on is 8.WP.k2, “Create an organizational structure in which ideas are logically grouped to support the writer’s claims.”
Or, they can work on the essential understanding, “Given a writer’s claims, identify the writer’s perspective on the topic (e.g., pro or con).”
Example #2:
The state standard for Text Types and Purposes (informative/explanatory) W.4.2 is “Write informative/ explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.”
The student can work on the matching core content connector 4.WI.q1, “Provide a concluding statement or section to support the information presented.”
Or, they can work on the essential understanding, “Identify a concluding sentence that signals a close of a paragraph (e.g., In conclusion…, As a result..., Finally…).”
“I love standards,” Dr. Baker says. “They give me a guide. I can follow exactly what the student needs to learn and how it’s going to be crafted, delivered, modeled. Then once I have that structure, that’s when teachers really, and myself included, can be creative. That’s the fun part of writing — how can you be imaginative and creative, but still have the structure?” And for kids with disabilities, she emphasizes meeting them where they are:
Your child’s writing ability may be part of your initial assessment for an IEP or your triennial assessment every three years, depending on their needs. Olds explains, “Writing ability can be part of an assessment for an IEP if teachers or parents bring it up as a concern, but it's not part of it by default. Some districts will have an OT do an informal observation first (i.e., they might look at a kid's writing samples) and tell the team whether they think a referral for a full evaluation is appropriate.” Keep in mind that this is assessing writing from an OT perspective (e.g. motor challenges). Your child may struggle with writing for many different reasons and need an assessment to determine those areas and what IEP supports are appropriate.
As WrightsLaw explains, not all tests for written expression are the same: “Writing tests reflect different views of how children learn to write. Some tests ask children to fill in parts of a story; others measure performance on isolated tasks. Some authorities believe that spelling is part of written expression; others feel that an emphasis on spelling detracts from creativity. Some tests measure writing skill apart from background knowledge; others incorporate higher-level thinking skills.”
A few common standardized assessments for writing include the Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Achievement (WJ IV), the Test of Written Language, Fourth Edition (TOWL-4), the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, Third Edition (KTEA-III), and the Oral and Written Language Scales (OWLS).
But Dr. Baker says many writing assessments don’t always capture the full picture of a child’s strengths, or needs: “I’ve done Woodcock-Johnson assessments, which are academic assessments for reading, writing and math, and in the writing area, we always look at their writing fluency, and can they put together sentences, and how much language acquisition do they already have, etc. If you have an English language learner combined with a learning disability or dysgraphia or something like that, that is twofold. You've kind of got both, and they're kind of together in a triangle, where, when you assess them or you even do an informal assessment — I'm not even talking about state tests, and I'm talking about anything — when you evaluate it as a teacher and you can see, well is this because they have a disability or because they're an English learner, or is it a combination of both? That makes it very hard for teachers to sort of just breathe, step back and be okay with it… How do we support students who are English language learners also, and then have dysgraphia, or some sort of writing disability?”
Parents cannot insist on or limit their consent to evaluation to specific assessments, but it may be helpful to talk to your child’s teacher about the tools and measures they plan to use and share your concerns about testing.
Another form of assessment is curriculum-based measures, or progress monitoring. Here are a few ways curriculum-based progress monitoring can help:
Tracking your child’s progress in writing is essential, especially if they have a disability, so make sure there is a clear plan for monitoring progress. Talk to your child’s teachers and their IEP team. Learn more about progress monitoring and reporting in our article here.
For a writing accommodation to be included in an IEP, the assessment must show that a student has a specific learning disability that is impacting their ability to learn through written expression. That result will create a responsibility for teachers to shift their approach toward the student in order to best meet the student’s learning needs. The shift happens in two ways — modifications and accommodations.
A modification is a change to the curriculum itself. The Common Core standard does not change, but the way a student achieves that standard does. An accommodation is an adaptation to the curriculum or assignment that does not inherently change the task.
For example, let’s say a sixth grade class is reading Wilson Rawls’s classic novel Where the Red Fern Grows in part to meet the Common Core standard RI.6.6, which states, “Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and explain how it is conveyed in the text.” If your child had a modification in their IEP, they might be allowed to read a completely different novel to meet the standard. If your child had an accommodation, on the other hand, they would still have to read the book like everyone else in the class, but they might be given a vocabulary list with word definitions or be allowed more time to finish each chapter.
Here are a few more writing accommodations:
So, if your child has an education assessment and it’s discovered that they would benefit from a writing accommodation or modification, how are those written into the plan itself? According to IEP expert Dr. Baker, most plans are structured to help students succeed in meeting the state standards. “When I write writing goals, I look at where are they right now? What can they actually do?” she says. “We don’t want to give them something that’s too high.… We want them to be successful. I want to feel successful. Everybody wants to feel like they can achieve their goal.”
Part of achieving that goal is using precise, specific language in the plan. “IEPs are really very simple,” she explains. “Where the student is right now and where you want them to be. That’s it.” After writing hundreds of them herself, she has some quick and easy tips for crafting a helpful, effective IEP.
IEP goals should be regularly updated, focused on progress, and broken into small, achievable steps that lead to bigger ones.
For example, an IEP goal might state, “Toby will write three complete sentences using the 5W’s (who, what, where, when, why) in a small group setting as measured weekly with 80% accuracy in 4/5 trials.”
Dr. Baker tells us that this IEP writing goal would be formulated and written by a special education administrator or the child’s teacher and parents would review it in their child’s IEP. Parents should ask the question: how is the goal measured and is it realistic and achievable for their child? She adds that parents do have the legal right, as members of the IEP team, to propose a goal in any subject, even if it is not part of the district’s goal bank in their IEP computer system.
If, by the end of the reporting period, the student has achieved this goal, the next goal could be adapted to be slightly more challenging. However, if the student has not achieved the goal, then it can either carry over into the next reporting period or be modified to be more specific and achievable when the student tries again.
Create writing goals that are standards-aligned and strength-based.
Like assistive technologies and occupational therapy exercises, IEPs are a tool. They’re important, but checking off all the boxes isn’t the point — they’re meant to be fashioned to help the individual student thrive. That’s where strength-based (and standards-based) goals come in. This means that it’s important that standards-based goals tie at least some of the IEP goals to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Note that the goals themselves should not match the CCSS because those standards apply to all students, regardless of whether they have an IEP. The idea of standards-based goals is to identify the skills students need as a step up to achieving the common standard. Dr. Baker also reminds us that strength-based, positive, realistic, goals are vital.
Inclusion in a special education context means that children with disabilities are able to work side by side with the other children in a general education class. It’s important because it increases diversity in the classroom, which boosts creativity, social skills, and confidence.
For writing in particular, many of the modifications and accommodations specified in an IEP would not require students with disabilities to be taken out of a general education classroom. For example, if a student has an IEP that allows them to type their worksheet instead of writing it by hand, they could do that sitting next to a student without an IEP who is filling out the same worksheet using a pencil.
Every student in a gen ed class can struggle with writing.
When working in a classroom environment, Olds recognizes that often the best way for children with disabilities to be included is by recognizing that every student in the classroom — not just those with disabilities — has individual needs and strengths. For instance, if Olds has a client who has difficulty holding a pencil, she has some simple, inclusive solutions.
“A lot of times I will bring 20 pencil grips to the teacher and suggest letting everybody in the class try a pencil grip that [they] think looks like it might be cool,” Olds explains. “If the teacher will let me, I will show them how [the pencil grips] are used appropriately because I don’t want to single out that one kid and be like, ‘You need a [piece of] weird equipment because you can’t do stuff’ — that’s not helpful to anyone. Everyone in the world whose hand is uncomfortable on this thing wants to be able to do it in a comfortable way, so here’s a thing that anyone in your room could try.”
Similarly, Dr. Baker, who has ADHD herself, understands that writing is personal, which means that teaching it needs to be personalized. She tells us a story about a student who was assigned to write an essay about Christmas traditions. However, this student’s first language was Spanish, and their emotions about Christmas were conveyed better in their native language. So, Dr. Baker allowed the student to write the essay in Spanish. “I couldn’t understand it until I had it translated,” she says. “And that’s okay. That’s what they produced.”
On top of personalized responses from teachers and parents, there are multiple assistive technologies that can help level the playing field for students. Text-to-speech apps, which are common and often free, can be very helpful. Tools such as Grammarly can be another boost. But, as with all tools, they should be catered to the student and not vice versa.
“I do so much figuring out which tool works for which kid,” Olds explains. “[Some kids work so slowly and methodically] that I know autocomplete will be a blessing for them, and then I test it out. And if it is [then I leave it on], and if it's not, I turn it off. Some kids are so fast and speedy [that autocomplete] is more distraction because you typed a letter and then a new word popped up, and that’s not helpful.” Learn more about AT for writing in our article Assistive Technology (AT) for Writing.
Although a variety of factors impact inclusion, one thing that always helps is building up essential skills that all students need. Often, that starts with reading.
While reading and writing may seem like different skills, they’re actually connected and draw on shared knowledge and skills, such as vocabulary. But reading doesn’t always get the same attention as writing, with less assessments for writing, less teacher training, and less year-long curriculums.
If you’re wondering what reading has to do with writing, let’s zoom in on structured literary instruction with Scarborough’s Reading Rope. One way for students to be successful is for parents and teachers to understand how skilled reading develops. As single words interconnect to form a sentence, single skills weave together to form reading itself. Dr. Hollis Scarborough, a psychologist and literary expert, crystallized the complex ability to read by breaking it down into its component parts. First, she identified reading’s two major arteries: language comprehension and word recognition. Then, she broke down those categories into their individual strands. The other half of the equation focuses on word recognition, or the ability to read automatically. This includes phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition. You can learn more about the reading rope in our article here.
Although Dr. Baker doesn’t specifically employ Scarborough’s Reading Rope with her students, she has naturally incorporated principles from it into her teaching methods.
“Writing to read” is an approach which means that “when a student is writing to read, they are using writing as a tool to truly understand the reading. For example, writing an essay about a book’s themes. “Reading to write,” on the other hand, is when students “are using reading as a tool to improve their writing,” and this often happens “when students first learn how to imitate their favorite authors, historians, scientists, or researchers.” For example, reading about women in science to prepare to write an essay about them. Other methods include:
If students are practicing a reading skill such as recognizing sounds or decoding, they can write the sounds down on paper at the same time.
If listening to a book being read out loud, students can write about what they heard or learned.
“There’re many things for strategy, as far as writing,” she explains. “When you’re told to read a book, a lot of [students] are auditory learners. They’re better when they hear it on tape. Same goes for writing. They can use a dictation device and then be able to write, and then go back and edit their writing that’s already been recorded and then rerecord it, or go back and do share-and-pair with a peer. I found that that’s a very effective strategy, working in groups. I’m just throwing out strategies that I’ve used. There are so many strategies.”
Regardless of which strategy, or combination of strategies, works best for your child, the goal is for them to become more skilled readers and more capable writers.
In many ways, helping kids with writing disabilities at home looks similar to helping them at school. Here are some quick tips for fostering a positive, educational, productive environment at home.
Craft time: let kids shape letters with clay or build them out of Legos. Understanding letters’ shapes and sounds is just as important to the learning process as being able to physically write them down. By taking away the pressure of writing, kids can sometimes have easier access to the information.
Positive reinforcement: make sure that your child feels supported when they write. Read their work and instead of focusing on errors or potentially messy handwriting, point out what they’re doing well and what interesting points or funny narratives they’ve crafted.
Listen: most children know what they have a hard time doing and what helps them do it more easily or efficiently. Ask them about what they do at school or which apps they enjoy. Then take action on what you hear and recreate those experiences together — whether it’s reading aloud, writing down their story for them while they tell it, or playing a game.
Learning to write is complicated for everyone. For children with disabilities, it can be especially daunting. However, by focusing on the component parts in Scarborough’s Reading Rope and by incorporating fun and flexibility into lesson plans and daily life, reading can go from a challenge to a chore to a choice. Writing can become a practical tool or an expressive outlet.
Finally, if you can, remember to talk to your child about what their hopes and goals are for reading and writing. They often know which parts feel difficult and which feel easy, even if they can’t identify why. In the end, the communication process is essential for all of us, and writing is one important way to open the channel.
In the words of Dr. Baker, “Your student, your child, has a disability, [and] no matter what, you want them to be successful. They’ve got to feel a little bit successful at least or they’re going to be devastated. You want them to be successful, always be successful.”
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