We conducted a skills analysis on written expression curriculum-based measurement (WE-CBM) tasks completed by 117 second-grade students. As part of the skills analysis, we scored two WE-CBM tasks (i.e., narrative and expository) for correct and incorrect writing sequences, common writing errors, and sentence structures. Although a majority of students displayed low risk for writing difficulties, they had low accuracy in multiple word- and sentence-level skills: The three most common writing errors were related to spelling, nonend punctuation, and capitalization, and most sentences were incomplete. Furthermore, all students--regardless of risk status (i.e., high or low risk)--displayed similar difficulty with sentence structure and writing errors in nonend punctuation and capitalization. Results highlight the semi-independent nature of writing skills (i.e., word, sentence, and connected text) and the potential for skills analysis to inform instruction.