Centre of Expertise Urban Vitality

Writing Readiness Inventory Tool In Context (WRITIC)

The WRITIC-assessment is an occupation-based assessment to evaluate handwriting readiness in 5-6 years old kindergarten children. It can be administered in the pre-writing phase with children about whom the teachers have concerns regarding their handwriting readiness. We recommend administering the WRITIC-assessment 5-6 months ahead of the start of handwriting education.

Our 2 English WRITIC-courses

The WRITIC-assessment contains three domains and every domain is composed of two subdomains. For the ‘Child’ domain ‘Interest’ and ‘Sustained attention,’ for the ‘Environment’ domain ‘Physical environment’ and ’Social environment’ and for the ‘Paper-and-pencil tasks’ domain ‘Task performance’ and ‘Intensity of performance.’

The WRITIC-assessment has to be administered in the classroom. First, the child’s interests in paper- and pencil tasks are being evaluated by a short interview. After that, the child is encouraged to complete a drawing book with five paper-and-pencil tasks while the assessor observes and scores the performance.

The subdomain ‘Task performance’ (WRITIC-TP) is the norm-referenced part of the WRITIC-assessment and discriminates between children who are ready for instruction in handwriting and children who are not. The other subdomains are criterion-referenced and give directions for intervention to practice paper-and-pencil tasks to enable the child to become more ready for handwriting in first grade.

The WRITIC-assessment is a valid, reliable, predictive assessment. In the Netherlands reference data have been collected in 5 – 6 years old children (n=374). The WRITIC-assessment is translated in English in 2020 and is at this moment translated into Portuguese. Cross cultural validity studies are being performed in Great Britain and Portugal.

When you have interest in the WRITIC-assessment, conducting research with it and/or translating the WRITIC-assessment in your own country, please contact us: writic@hva.nl

The WRITIC-assessment manual can be purchased at this website. Documents needed for assessment can be downloaded here for free.

Scoring form

Total scores can be noted at the scoring form.

Drawing book

The child performs the paper-and-pencil tasks in the drawing book during the WRITIC-assessment. Download drawing book .pdf

Scoring book

Items of the WRITIC-assessment can be scored in the scoring book. Download score book .pdf

Published by  Urban Vitality 3 July 2023