Good at maths, struggles with writing: how to help your child write better

Why writing lags behind maths

Maths rewards a child for knowing the method and getting the right answer. Writing asks for many things at once. Your child has to have an idea, put it in order, choose the words, build the sentence, spell it, punctuate it and keep the reader in mind, all while holding a pencil or typing. When any one of those is still slow, the others suffer.

The Education Endowment Foundation makes this point in its guidance on literacy for 7 to 11 year olds. Spelling, handwriting and typing need to become automatic, so the child can think about what they are saying rather than how to form it. Its advice is that the route to that fluency is regular and extensive practice.

There can also be a gap in expectations. Many of us who went to school in Nigeria remember composition being marked mostly for correctness and neat handwriting. UK and North American schools want that too, but they also ask a child to plan, draft, revise and change their writing for a purpose and an audience. A child can be accurate and still lose marks because the piece does not do what the task asked.

What schools expect, by age

In England, the national curriculum sets out what children should be able to do in writing. Here is a simplified view of the stages most parents meet.

At the end of Year 6, writing is judged by your child's teacher against a national framework. To reach the expected standard, a child must write effectively for a range of purposes and audiences, describe settings, characters and atmosphere in stories, use dialogue, build cohesion, use tenses and punctuation mostly correctly, spell most words from the Year 5 and 6 list, and keep joined handwriting legible at speed.

In secondary school the stakes rise. In AQA's GCSE English Language, half the marks on each of the two papers are for writing. Paper 1 asks for descriptive or narrative writing and Paper 2 asks your child to present a viewpoint, in a form the question sets out, along with the audience and purpose. In each writing question, 24 marks are for content and organisation and 16 for technical accuracy. Strong ideas with weak grammar lose marks, and so does clean grammar with no structure.

In the US, the Common Core standards used in many states ask fifth graders to write three main types of text: opinion pieces supported by reasons, informative pieces that explain a topic clearly, and narratives. Students are expected to plan, revise, edit and rewrite with help, and to write routinely. In Canada, expectations are set by each province, so check with your child's school or board.

Find out which part is weak

"Weak at writing" covers very different problems. Before you do anything, sit with two or three recent pieces of your child's school writing and ask which of these sounds most like them.

• Ideas. The writing is short, or says the obvious, or stops after one point.
• Structure. The ideas are there but in no order, with no paragraphs and no clear opening or ending.
• Vocabulary. The same plain words again and again. Nice, good, big, said.
• Sentences. Every sentence starts the same way, or sentences run on with and, and, and.
• Accuracy. Spelling, punctuation, capital letters and tense keep slipping.
• Form. A letter that does not read like a letter, an essay that reads like a story.

Ask the class teacher which one they see most. The answer tells you where to spend your time. A child with good ideas and poor spelling needs very different help from a child who spells perfectly but writes three lines.

Practical steps at home

1. Talk before writing. Ask your child to tell you what they plan to say, out loud, in order. If they cannot say it, they cannot write it yet. The national curriculum asks children to rehearse sentences orally for exactly this reason.
2. Plan on paper, briefly. Five minutes, a few boxes or bullet points: opening, two or three main points, ending. For a letter, who it is to, why, and what you want them to do.
3. Read good examples first. Before your child writes a formal letter, read one together and point out how it opens, how it is laid out and how it closes. Schools call this learning from the structure of similar writing.
4. Write little and often. A short paragraph four times a week does more than one long essay on Sunday. Fluency comes from regular practice, not marathons.
5. Fix one thing at a time. When you read their work, pick one habit to improve this week, such as full stops or paragraphs. Correcting everything at once teaches a child only that writing is painful.
6. Use the school's terms. If the teacher talks about fronted adverbials or a subordinate clause, look up the meaning on the school's materials and use the same words. It stops your child hearing two different languages for one idea.
7. Make them reread aloud. Children hear missing words and runaway sentences far better than they see them. Proofreading is a skill schools expect from Year 2.

Reading is where vocabulary comes from

Children who write well are almost always children who read a lot. The national curriculum says that reading and listening to whole books, not just extracts, helps children build their vocabulary, and that older pupils should read widely and often, outside school as well as in it. A child who meets a word in five different books starts to use it without being told.

Mix the diet. Stories build description and dialogue. Newspapers and non fiction build the formal, explaining voice that essays and letters need. When your child likes a phrase in a book, ask them to borrow it in their next piece of writing. That is not copying. That is how writers learn.

When to get extra help

If you have tried short regular practice for a term and the school still reports little change, or a big exam is coming in Year 6 or Year 11, it is reasonable to look for focused support. The Education Endowment Foundation recommends structured, high quality support for children who are struggling with literacy, targeted at their actual needs.

At Masani, one to one Reading and creative writing and English lessons are taught online by carefully vetted Nigerian teachers, with only the top 3% of applicants accepted, across UK, US and Canadian curricula. You get a written report after every lesson and can follow progress skill by skill in the parent portal. A free 15 minute call is a simple way to talk through where your child is.

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