Writing is not just a contextual skill but a procedural one. As students develop their written materials including planning, drafting, revising, and reevaluating written text they engage in a constructive process that can give us insight into their communication skills, their understanding of source materials or topics, and their skills in argumentation and evaluation. Writing Observer is the product of collaborative research between the Educational Testing Service and North Carolina State University. The focus of this work is on the development of tools to support monitoring, analyzing, and scaffolding student writing processes and classroom orchestration for writing instructors. This work is part of the larger Learning Observer ecosystem.