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Identifying an Indicator of Growth in Early Writing Proficiency for Elementary School Students

In this study we compared alternative measures of early writing performance to identify an indicator of writing proficiency that teachers could use to monitor student growth and evaluate instructional effectiveness. The participants were 15 second-grade students in a summer school program for students at risk. The performance sampled was word copying, sentence copying, word dictation, and sentence dictation. Two- to three-minute samples of performance were obtained and several different scores were examined. The criterion validity of the early writing measures was examined using both global judgments of competence and quantitative scoring of story writing as criteria. Writing from word and sentence dictation entered into very high correlations with both criteria, showing promise as indicators of early writing proficiency. The results are discussed in terms of desirable features of assessment procedures including technical adequacy, administrative efficiency, and consumer acceptability.