Measuring Early Composing through Innovative Story Writing Prompts

• In Event: 2-130 - Early Writing Assessment and Intervention

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Early writing skills are important predictors of later writing (Aram, 2005) and reading achievement (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Writing is multifaceted, requiring children to use procedural (i.e., handwriting/spelling), conceptual (i.e., relation between verbal/written language), and generative knowledge (i.e., composing); current writing research focuses on procedural but not generative knowledge. Composing is important; recent research has identified the benefits of composing opportunities (Bingham, Quinn, & Gerde, 2017) and educational standards (e.g., Common Core) primarily target composing in elementary grades (Tortorelli, Goetsch, & Barria, 2016). This exclusion of composing in research may reflect the lack of measures available. Thus, this study examined the validity and children’s development on an innovative composing task.

Hypotheses: Use of the innovative story writing measure will yield data for coding procedural, content, and generative knowledge. Procedural knowledge will reflect that of similar measures: word writing, but not name writing (convergent validity). The measure will capture growth in writing from fall to spring.

Study population: Head Start children (N=332) ages 3-5 years (M=50.2 mos, SD=5.49) participated. Children attended one of five Head Start programs across two US states. The sample included 52% girls and varied in ethnicity: 54% African American, 27% Caucasian, 8% Latinx, 9% multiethnic, 2% other.

Methods: Children were individually assessed by trained researchers in their Head Start center in September and May. Children were asked to write their name and five CVC words both coded as 1=scribbling/drawing, 2=letter-like/letters, 3=beginning invented spelling, 4=advanced invented spelling, 5=accurate. To assess composing, an innovative story writing assessment (i.e., a picture of two penguins and a text bubble, Gerde & Bingham, 2017) was used. Children are instructed, “Text bubbles include words that characters say. What is Mama Penguin saying in this picture?” The administrator writes the child’s composed message and asks the child to, “Write that here in the text bubble.” The administrator then asks the child what they wrote and records the child’s response. Procedural knowledge was coded using the same system as name/words (above). Content knowledge (match between oral/written output) was coded as 0=no match, 1=match. Generative knowledge was coded for relevance to theme, language structure, number of words/tier-two words.

Results: To examine construct validity, children’s name and word writing were compared to the procedural knowledge of story writing. Significant differences existed between story and name writing (t=2.452, p=.012), but not between story and word writing (t=.132, p=.13), indicating that the procedural portion of this composing task captures similar skills as word but not name writing as expected. Regarding development, growth-curve analyses indicate increases in children’s procedural knowledge across preschool (B=2.71, p=.012). Content knowledge changed from not matching to matching. Generative knowledge skills significantly decrease from fall to spring (B=-.56, p=.001), reflecting children’s focus on narrowing their message (i.e., reducing language and advanced language) to meet their transcription skills.

Conclusions: This innovative measure of early writing captures transcription skills similarly as other measures of early writing, but in addition allows researchers to understand more about children’s content and generative knowledge, critical components of early writing development.

Authors

• Hope Gerde, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Gary Bingham, Georgia State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rachel Stadwick, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Jenuwine, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Xiao Zhang, Georgia State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kyla McRoy, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author