1 Profiling Writing Challenges in children with English

Literacy education includes both learning to read and write, and while considerable advances have been made in understanding the development of reading comprehension, our understanding of writing development is far less advanced. Many children struggle with the production of written text (Graham, 2008; Hooper, Swartz, Wakely, de Kruif, & Montogomery, 2002). Indeed, primary school children’s writing performance is a national concern. In the 1990s, OfSTED identified writing as an area in need of improvement (Beard, 2000). Statutory Programmes of Study were established in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and in the National Curriculum and Assessment Guidelines in Scotland as a result. In 1997, a national expectation that 80 percent of 11 year olds in England would achieve level 4 by the year 2002 was established (DfEE, 1997) and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA, 1998) reported the need for action to be taken on a national scale if this target was to be met. Writing and EAL children. Despite this agreement that there is a need to do more to help children improve their writing skills there is still a marked contrast between the amount of research being carried out focused on children’s reading relative to their writing skills. This contrast in research effort i