It can be hard to know how to help students who feel “stuck” in their writing. As students progress through the grades, writing demands grow more and more challenging. Many students are able to keep up, whether with or without extra supports, like sentence starters. But sometimes students who have been doing just fine so far suddenly find themselves struggling with writing. So how can we tell if a student is experiencing writer's block or something more concerning?
Writer’s block can look very different from one student to the next. It can last varying amounts of time, from a few minutes to several weeks. Therefore, it can be difficult to identify the root cause. Plus, writer’s block can sometimes resemble a writing disability in that they both result in the student feeling stuck. And while students with disabilities can be more susceptible to getting writer’s block, the two things have nothing to do with each other.
What To Write Vs. How To Write
When a student suffers from writer’s block, they are unable to decide what to write. Sometimes they are unable to come up with any ideas at all, and sometimes they just can't choose one. While this can be a very frustrating experience for any author, especially for an amateur writer, there are ways to tell when this type of roadblock is due to a lack of creativity or a lack of understanding.
While true writer’s block comes from being stuck on what to write, difficulty that stems from a writing disability exists because the student may not know how to write what they are supposed to be writing. Sometimes a student is stuck in their writing because something about the task or writing purpose feels too challenging. This is when a teacher will need to intervene with some explicit teaching in whatever it is the student is struggling with.
Signs of a writing disability
When a child experiences writer’s block for one day, then it will be clear very soon that that’s all it was. But if the student is dealing with a long-term struggle, the best way to determine whether it’s just writer’s block or a writing disability is to carefully observe the student’s habits in other areas of writing. How does he perform when writing for other academic purposes? Is his writing more proficient or does he experience more or less the same struggles? How does he appear to feel about writing for other purposes? If he is motivated and confident in other areas but struggles when it comes to informational writing, then it’s probably writer’s block. But if you notice the same struggles across classes or subject areas, and/or the student’s feelings about writing have gotten more negative and stay that way, it might be worth a preliminary evaluation.