Reading Isn’t Enough: Why Writing Is the Missing Lever for Literacy Growth

Reading Isn’t Enough: Why Writing Is the Missing Lever for Literacy Growth

Across the country, states have invested heavily in evidence-based reading instruction and have already seen some promising results. Education leaders recognize that students need explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. But if literacy instruction stops there, students will still lack critical skills they need to bridge the gap between reading and writing.

In 2025, the average NAEP Long-Term Trend reading score for 9-year-olds rose four points from 2022, but was not significantly different from 2020. For 13-year-olds, the average reading score showed no significant change from 2023 and remained below the 2020 score. The Long-Term Trend assessment reports results by age and differs from main NAEP in its assessment design, questions, and level of difficulty; however, the message is clear: literacy growth remains unfinished work.

Explicit reading instruction itself is not enough. Students need explicit instruction in both reading and writing because the two skills are distinct, interconnected, and mutually supportive. Focusing on writing instruction may be the missing lever that helps turn reading gains into broader literacy growth.
 

Why Should Reading and Writing Be Taught Together?

Reading and writing should be taught together because students must master many of the same language skills that underpin each, including sound-symbol relationships, vocabulary, syntax, spelling, and knowledge of written language.

• When students read, they decode print: they see letters and letter patterns and connect them to sounds, words, and meaning.
• When students write, they encode: they hear or think of sounds and ideas and determine how to represent them with letters, words, and sentences.
• Every time a student writes a letter, spells a word, constructs a sentence, or responds to a text, that student must retrieve and apply language knowledge.

Research reflects this close relationship. In the Kim et al. (2024) meta-analysis, the correlation between word reading and spelling was .82, which was stronger than the relationship found between broader measures of reading comprehension and written composition.

Writing also requires students to pay close attention to meaning. When students write, they choose words, put them in a meaningful order, apply syntax, and decide whether a sentence communicates what they want to say.

Writing about reading can also strengthen comprehension. Graham and Hebert’s (2011) meta-analysis found that when students wrote about what they read, their comprehension of that material improved. The review also found positive effects on reading when students received writing instruction and wrote more frequently.

The goal is not to choose between reading and writing instruction. Students need intentional, explicit instruction in both.
 

Why Is Writing Difficult for Beginning Writers?

Writing is difficult for beginning writers because it requires them to coordinate multiple cognitive, linguistic, and motor processes at the same time.

Imagine asking a young student to write a sentence about a pet.

First, the student has to think of the pet they want to write about. Then the student must hold that idea in mind long enough to choose words to describe it. The student has to remember how to spell those words, form letters correctly, and apply spacing, capitalization, and punctuation. In the end, the sentence still has to make sense.

Even a simple sentence can place significant demands on a beginning writer.

Students must move from transcription, including the foundational processes of handwriting and spelling, to composition, which involves generating and organizing ideas, constructing meaningful sentences and text, and making decisions about purpose, audience, organization, and craft.

When foundational skills require too much attention, students have fewer cognitive resources available for communicating their ideas. Writing automaticity does not simply appear with age. Students need explicit instruction, guided practice, useful feedback, and repeated opportunities to apply what they are learning.
 

What Are the Four Priorities for Effective Writing Instruction?

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) practice guide, Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers, offers four recommendations for elementary writing instruction:

1. Provide daily time for students to write.
2. Teach students to use the writing process for a variety of purposes.
3. Teach students to become fluent with handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, typing, and word processing.
4. Create an engaged community of writers.

Together, these four priorities help schools address both the skills students need to write and the instructional conditions that allow those skills to develop.

They also shift attention beyond students’ final writing products to the processes, routines, and instructional choices that support writing development.
 

1. Give Students Time to Write Daily

Students should have regular, ideally daily, opportunities to write because frequent practice helps them apply the skills and strategies they are learning. Daily writing does not mean students need to produce a multi-paragraph composition every day.

In practice, teachers might ask students to:

• Respond to a text.
• Explain a science observation.
• Take notes in social studies.
• Summarize an idea.
• Write a few sentences about their learning.
• Apply recently taught spelling or sentence skills.

Short, purposeful writing experiences across the school day can help students develop fluency and see writing as a tool for thinking and learning.

Oral language can support writing by giving students an opportunity to generate, rehearse, and clarify an idea before putting it on paper. At Learning Without Tears®, we encourage routines such as Think, Talk, Write because some students benefit from saying an idea aloud before they are asked to write it.

Teachers can:

• Model how an idea moves from thinking to speaking to writing.
• Give students opportunities to rehearse ideas or sentences aloud before writing.
• Build writing into reading, phonics, science, social studies, and other parts of the day.
• Give students opportunities to write for different purposes and audiences.
• Make student writing visible and valued in the classroom.

Students can:

• Write before, during, and after instruction when writing supports the learning goal.
• Use conversation to develop or clarify ideas before writing.
• Begin writing with increasing independence.
• Use classroom tools and resources without always waiting for teacher direction.
• Gradually develop stamina for more sustained writing.
   

2. Make the Writing Process Visible

Students need explicit instruction in planning, drafting, revising, and editing because strong writers rarely produce a polished piece from beginning to end on their first attempt.

The IES practice guide recommends explicitly teaching strategies for different parts of the writing process, modeling how those strategies work, gradually releasing responsibility, and helping students use strategies flexibly rather than treating writing as a rigid series of steps.

For young writers, much of the thinking involved in writing is invisible.

Teacher modeling makes that thinking visible.

A teacher might say:

“I know what I want my reader to understand, but this sentence does not quite say it yet. Let me try it another way.”

That kind of modeling helps students understand that revision is not evidence that they “got it wrong.”
 

What Is the Difference Between Revising and Editing?

Revising focuses on meaning, clarity, organization, and detail. Editing focuses primarily on conventions such as spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar.

When editing, students might ask:

• Did I use punctuation correctly?
• Is this word spelled correctly?
• Did I use capitalization correctly?

When revising, students might ask:

• Does this say what I mean?
• Is my idea clear?
• Does my reader need another detail?
• Could I organize this differently?

Students need explicit instruction in both processes so they understand that improving ideas and correcting conventions are related but different parts of writing.

Teachers can:

• Model decisions during planning, drafting, revising, and editing.
• Use exemplars and discuss what makes them effective.
• Provide targeted supports such as sentence frames, planning tools, and modeled examples.
• Make the writing process visible through shared writing.
• Provide feedback to students.
• Address ideas, organization, clarity, and conventions.

Students can:

• Plan their ideas before and during drafting.
• Use classroom resources and exemplars.
• Revisit sentences and ideas rather than assuming the first draft is the final draft.
• Apply feedback from teachers and peers to improve their work.
• Learn to explain the choices they make as writers.
• Shift coaching conversations from “What did students produce?” to “Where are students getting stuck?”
   

3. Build Fluency With Foundational Writing Skills

Students need explicit instruction in handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, and, as they progress, keyboarding and word processing. Fluency in these foundational skills helps students devote more attention to communicating their ideas.

Students cannot direct their full attention to sentence writing if writing individual words takes most of their effort.

For beginning writers, handwriting is still a developing motor and transcription skill. Students have to learn what letters look like and how to produce them efficiently and consistently.

• Spelling requires students to connect sounds with letters and letter patterns.
• Sentence construction requires students to combine words into complete, meaningful thoughts.

Sentence-level instruction serves as an important bridge between learning to write individual words and composing longer pieces of text.

Teachers can:

• Teach handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, and keyboarding explicitly and systematically.
• Give timely, specific corrective feedback.
• Connect handwriting and encoding practice to phonics and word study.
• Explicitly teach students how to construct, expand, and combine sentences.
• Use assessment information to identify specific areas of need.

Students can:

• Apply handwriting skills beyond the handwriting lesson.
• Use taught spelling patterns during authentic writing exercises.
• Learn to write increasingly complete and complex sentences.
• Use classroom resources independently to help guide them.

The goal of foundational writing instruction is greater automaticity. When handwriting, spelling, and sentence construction become more fluent, students can focus more attention on what they want to communicate.
 

4. Create a Community of Writers

An engaged writing community gives students meaningful reasons to write, opportunities to receive useful feedback, and chances to see their own growth over time.

The IES practice guide recommends creating a supportive classroom environment in which writing is valued. Teachers participate in the writing community, students have opportunities to choose topics when appropriate, and students share their writing with others.

Because writing makes students’ thinking visible, it can also make students feel vulnerable if they struggle with spelling, handwriting, sentence construction, or language.

Teachers can:

• Give students meaningful purposes and audiences for their writing.
• Display and celebrate student work when appropriate.
• Establish routines for peer collaboration and feedback.
• Provide accessible anchor charts, exemplars, spelling resources, and other supports.
• Celebrate revision, improvement, and persistence.

Students can:

• Share their writing with peers and other audiences.
• Give and receive constructive feedback.
• Make meaningful choices about their writing when appropriate.
• Take reasonable risks with ideas and language.
• Reflect on their own growth over time.
   

Helping Students Move From Words to Sentences—and Beyond

For educators looking to strengthen sentence-level writing without adding another major initiative to an already full literacy block, Learning Without Tears offers Building Writers: Cornerstones™ as a practical way to apply these principles.

Designed for grades K–3, Cornerstones explicitly teaches the foundational skills students need to move from oral language and written words to complete, grammatically correct sentences and, ultimately, clear paragraphs.

Short 10–15-minute lessons use a consistent progression of modeling, guided practice, and independent application, giving teachers a manageable way to teach sentence construction and grammar in context while complementing their existing ELA curriculum.

In this way, Cornerstones addresses an often-overlooked instructional space between learning to write individual words and being expected to compose extended text.

Early adopters report that Building Writers: Cornerstones is already helping them build skills and save time.
 

“I LOVE this writing program - Building Writers: Cornerstones! It is helping the kids not only to write, but it is helping their speech as well! The students are so engaged during the lesson, and we are enjoying implementing it! We just finished unit 2 and moved on to unit 3 just yesterday! So far [it] has been absolutely wonderful!”

— Morgan K., First Grade Teacher, Obion County School District, TN

“We have been using the new curriculum, Building Writers: Cornerstones, in my first-grade classroom. I absolutely love it. My students seem to as well. I feel like I am teaching them so much more during our allotted writing time than I was before we started this curriculum. They love how interactive it is.”

— Ashley B., First Grade Teacher, Obion County School District, TN

Help students build stronger sentences with explicit, manageable instruction—explore Building Writers: Cornerstones™.
 

Frequently Asked Questions About Reading and Writing Instruction

Does teaching writing help students become better readers?

Writing instruction supports reading development. Research has found that writing about texts can improve comprehension and that writing instruction and increased writing opportunities can have positive effects on reading.

Should reading and writing be taught at the same time?

Reading and writing should both be intentionally taught in literacy instruction. They are distinct skills, but they draw on overlapping knowledge such as vocabulary, syntax, spelling, sound-symbol relationships, and understanding of written language.

How often should elementary students practice writing?

Students should have daily opportunities to write. Practice can include short responses, summaries, notes, sentence writing, and writing in subjects such as science and social studies. Students do not need to write extended compositions.

Why do some students read well but struggle to write?

Reading and writing place different demands on students. A student may be able to decode text successfully while still needing explicit instruction in handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, planning, revision, and other writing processes.

What are the most important foundational writing skills?

Foundational writing skills include handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, and, later, keyboarding and word processing. Building fluency in these skills helps students devote more attention to meaning and composition.

Does handwriting instruction still matter?

For beginning writers, handwriting remains an important transcription skill. Students benefit from learning to form letters efficiently and consistently so that handwriting places fewer demands on their attention during composition.

What is sentence-level writing instruction?

Sentence-level writing instruction explicitly teaches students how to construct, expand, and combine meaningful sentences. It can serve as a bridge between learning to write words and producing longer, more complex pieces of writing.

How can schools improve writing instruction without adding another major initiative?

Schools can strengthen writing by protecting writing time, integrating writing into existing content instruction, explicitly teaching foundational skills and the writing process, and providing teachers with professional learning and instructional resources.
 

References

• Graham, S., Bollinger, A., Booth Olson, C., D’Aoust, C., MacArthur, C., McCutchen, D., & Olinghouse, N. (2012). Teaching elementary school students to be effective writers: A practice guide (NCEE 2012-4058). National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.
• Graham, S., & Hebert, M. (2011). Writing to read: A meta-analysis of the impact of writing and writing instruction on reading. Harvard Educational Review, 81(4), 710–744. doi:10.17763/haer.81.4.t2k0m13756113566.
• Graham, S., McKeown, D., Kiuhara, S., & Harris, K. R. (2012). A meta-analysis of writing instruction for students in the elementary grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(4), 879–896. doi:10.1037/a0029185.
• Graham, S., & Santangelo, T. (2014). Does spelling instruction make students better spellers, readers, and writers? A meta-analytic review. Reading and Writing, 27(9), 1703–1743. doi:10.1007/s11145-014-9517-0.
• Kim, Y.-S. G., Wolters, A., & Lee, J. (2024). Reading and writing relations are not uniform: They differ by the linguistic grain size, developmental phase, and measurement. Review of Educational Research, 94(3), 311–342. doi:10.3102/00346543231178830.
• López-Escribano, C., Martín-Babarro, J., & Pérez-López, R. (2022). Promoting handwriting fluency for preschool and elementary-age students: Meta-analysis and meta-synthesis of research from 2000 to 2020. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 841573. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.841573.
• Myhill, D., & Jones, S. (2009). How talk becomes text: Investigating the concept of oral rehearsal in early years’ classrooms. British Journal of Educational Studies, 57(3), 265–284. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8527.2009.00438.x.