Writing Difficulties

Understanding what the skills of good writing are

To help your student with writing difficulties it is important to identify which of the sub-skills are actually causing the problems. Understanding what the skills of good writing are and having a common language to communicate about them with your student is an important first step. Explicitly teaching and practicing these traits of good writing can address many writing difficulties. According to the 6+1 Traits® of Writing model there are six traits (+1) that appear in all good writing. Our job is to help your student learn all of them. They are:

• Ideas: the main message
• Organization: the internal structure of the piece
• Word Choice: the vocabulary a writer chooses to convey meaning
• Sentence Fluency: the rhythm and flow of the language
• Voice: the personal tone and flavor of the author’s message
• Conventions: the mechanical correctness

• Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics
  • Punctuation and capitalization
  • Usage–includes correct usage of commonly confused words such as homophones
  • Grammar–includes using parts of speech correctly

• Spelling

And Education Northwest’s 6+1 Traits writing model adds one more:

• Presentation (the “+ 1” Trait): how the writing actually looks and/or sounds when shared with the audience. Formatting can vary depending on the media being used for presentation.
  • Handwriting
  • Typing
  • Layout on the page

Use this rubric to help assess where your student is currently functioning in each of the six traits of good writing and to help you identify where their specific writing difficulties lie.

Which clusters of descriptions are most similar to your child’s current writing?

Writing Interventions at Wings to Soar

Here are some resources for you:

This article explains how Teaching the Traits of Good Writing through the Writing Process Helps with Writing Problems.

The article overviews Writing Interventions at Wings to Soar including how we teach the writing process and a brief informal assessment of 6 Traits of good writing.

This article overviews our recommendations for Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics and Vocabulary and Spelling Skill Practice that help build underlying skills needed for writing automaticity to allow students to free up working memory to focus on higher level ideas, content, and more sophisticated organization and sentence structures.