Simple ways to assess the writing skills of students with learning

disabilities
A teacher's first responsibility is to provide opportunities for writing and encouragement for
students who attempt to write. A teacher's second responsibility is to promote students' success in
writing. The teacher does this by carefully monitoring students' writing to assess strengths and
weaknesses, teaching specific skills and strategies in response to student needs, and giving
careful feedback that will reinforce newly learned skills and correct recurring problems. These
responsibilities reveal, upon inspection, that assessment is clearly an integral part of good
instruction. In their review of the existing research on effective instruction Christenson,
Ysseldyke, and Thurlow (1989) found that, in addition to other factors, the following conditions
were positively correlated to pupil achievement:
The degree to which there is an appropriate instructional match between student characteristics
and task characteristics (in other words, teachers must assess the student's prior knowledge and
current level of skills in order to match them to a task that is relevant and appropriate to their
aptitudes);
The degree to which the teacher actively monitors students' understanding and progress; and
The degree to which student performance is evaluated frequently and appropriately (congruent
with what is taught).
Assessment, therefore, is an essential component of effective instruction. Airasian (1996)
identified three types of classroom assessments. The first he called "sizing-up" assessments,
usually done during the first week of school to provide the teacher with quick information about
the students when beginning their instruction. The second type, instructional assessments, are
used for the daily tasks of planning instruction, giving feedback, and monitoring student
progress. The third type he referred to as official assessments, which are the periodic formal
functions of assessment for grouping, grading, and reporting. In other words, teachers use
assessment for identifying strengths and weaknesses, planning instruction to fit diagnosed needs,
evaluating instructional activities, giving feedback, monitoring performance, and reporting
progress. Simple curriculum-based methods for assessing written expression can meet all these
purposes.
Process, product, and purpose
Curriculum-based assessment must start with an inspection of the curriculum. Many writing
curricula are based on a conceptual model that takes into account process, product, and purpose.
This conceptual model, therefore, forms the framework for the simple assessment techniques that
follow.
Simple ways to assess the process
The diagnostic uses of assessment (determining the reasons for writing problems and the
student's instructional needs) are best met by looking at the process of writing, i.e., the steps
students go through and strategies they use as they work at writing. How much planning does the
student do before he or she writes? Does she have a strategy for organizing ideas? What seem to
be the obstacles to getting thoughts down on paper? How does the student attempt to spell words
she does not know? Does the student reread what she has written? Does the student talk about or
share her work with others as she is writing it? What kind of changes does the student make to
her first draft?
In order to make instructionally relevant observations, the observer must work from a conceptual
model of what the writing process should be. Educators have reached little consensus regarding
the number of steps in the writing process. Writing experts have proposed as few as two (Elbow,
1981) and as many as nine (Frank, 1979). Englert, Raphael, Anderson, Anthony, and Stevens
(1991) provided a model of a five-step writing process using the acronym POWER: Plan,
Organize, Write, Edit, and Revise. Each step has its own substeps and strategies that become
more sophisticated as the students become more mature as writers, accommodating their style to
specific text structures and purposes of writing. Assessment of the writing process can be done
through observation of students as they go through the steps of writing.
Having students assess their own writing process is also important for two reasons. First, self-
assessment allows students an opportunity to observe and reflect on their own approach, drawing
attention to important steps that may be overlooked. Second, self-assessment following a
conceptual model like POWER is a means of internalizing an explicit strategy, allowing
opportunities for the student to mentally rehearse the strategy steps. Figure 1 is a format for both
self-observation and teacher observation of the writing process following the POWER strategy.
Similar self-assessments or observation checklists could be constructed for other conceptual
models of the writing process.
Simple ways to assess the product
An effective writing process should lead to a successful product. A writing product fulfills its
communicative intent if it is of appropriate length, is logical and coherent, and has a readable
format. It is a pleasure to read if it is composed of well-constructed sentences and a rich variety
of words that clearly convey the author's meaning. When various conceptual models of writing
are compared side by side (Isaacson, 1984) five product variables seem to emerge: fluency,
content, conventions, syntax, and vocabulary. Too often teachers focus their attention primarily
on surface features of a student's composition related to the mechanical aspects of writing, or
conventions. A balanced assessment should look at all five aspects of a student's writing. The
following are simple methods for assessing each product variable. In some instances quantifiable
measures are used; in others, qualitative assessments seem more appropriate.
Fluency
The first writing skill a teacher might assess with a beginning writer is fluency: being able to
translate one's thoughts into written words. As concepts of print and fine motor skills develop,
the student should become more proficient at writing down words and sentences into
compositions of gradually increasing length. The developmental route of very young writers
involves trying to understand what written language is about as they look at books, become
aware of environmental print, and put pencil to paper (Clay, 1982). Then children try to relate
their experiences in writing using invented spelling. As they begin to construct little stories they
explore spelling patterns and develop new language patterns. Clay (1979, 1993) recommends a
simple rating scale for emerging writing skills that focuses on language level (from only letters
to sentences and paragraphs), message quality, and directional principles (Figure 2).
A simple curriculum-based measure of fluency is total number of words written during a short
writing assignment. When fluency is the focus, misspellings, poor word choice, and faulty
punctuation are not considered. Attention is only directed to the student's facility in translating
thoughts into words. A baseline of at least three writing samples should be collected and the total
number of words counted for each. For the purpose of evaluation, this total can be compared
with those of proficient writers of the same age or grade level. However, total words may be
used best in monitoring the student's progress, comparing performance with his or her own
previous fluency.
A resulting IEP objective might be written like this: After a group prewriting discussion with the
teacher, Daniel will write original narrative compositions of [40] words or more. A rough
guideline for setting the criterion can be established from research reported by Deno, Mirkin, and
Wesson (1984) and Parker and Tindal (1989):
If the total number of words is less than 20, aim for doubling it by the end of the school year.
If the number of words is between 25 and 30, aim for a 50% increase.
If the number of words is between 35 and 45, aim for a 25% increase.
If the number of words is greater than 50, choose another objective.
Content
Content is the second factor to consider in the writing product. Content features include the
composition's organization, cohesion, accuracy (in expository writing), and originality (in
creative writing). General questions the classroom teacher can ask regarding a composition's
organization include:
Is there a good beginning sentence?
Is there a clear ending?
Is there a logical sequence of subtopics or events?
Cohesion questions include:
Does the writer stick to the topic?
Is it clear what words like it, that, and they refer to?
Does the writer use key words that cue the reader to the direction of the discourse (First… ,
Then… , Therefore… , On the other hand… )?
Originality is assessed through questions like:
Did the writer attempt humor?
Did the writer present a unique point of view?

Analytical scales are the best way to lend some objectivity to evaluation of content. One can
choose from a general rating scale, appropriate to almost any writing assignment, or one tailored
to a specific genre or text structure. Spandel and Culham (1993) developed an analytical trait
scoring guide for six aspects of writing, three of which address content: Ideas and content,
organization, and voice. (Voice refers to the author's own unique personality, style, and honesty
reflected in the writing.) Each of these traits is scored on a five-point scale. For example,
organization is scored using the following guidelines:
5 The organization enhances and showcases the central idea or storyline. The order, structure or
presentation of information is compelling and moves the reader through the text.
3 The organizational structure is strong enough to move the reader through the text without
undue confusion
1 The writing lacks a clear sense of direction. Ideas, details or events seem strung together in a
loose or random fashion-or else there is no identifiable internal structure. (Spandel & Culham,
1993)
To promote agreement between raters, each of the guidelines above is further defined by specific
criteria (or rubrics). A rating of 3, for example, requires these attributes:
The paper has a recognizable introduction and conclusion. The introduction may not create a
strong sense of anticipation; the conclusion may not tie up all loose ends. Sequencing is usually
logical, but may sometimes be so predictable that the structure takes attention away from the
content.
Pacing is fairly well controlled, though the writer sometimes spurts ahead too quickly or spends
too much time on details that do not matter.
Transitions often work well; at other times, connections between ideas are fuzzy.
The organization sometimes supports the main point or storyline; at other times, the reader feels
an urge to slip in a transition or move things around. (Spandel & Culham, 1993)
A composition that is somewhat better organized than described by the guidelines for 3 but does
not quite fit the descriptors for 5 would receive a rating of 4. Similarly, a rating of 2 falls
between the descriptors for 1 and 3.

Analytical scoring guidelines such as these are used in many state writing assessments. There are
two limitations to scales such as these. First, teachers must spend many hours learning the
rubrics and discussing student compositions in order to establish any degree of integrater
reliability. Second, these scales may not be sensitive enough to measure growth in students with
emerging literacy skills who are unable to achieve a rating above 1 or-at the most-2.
For many students, writing instruction begins with smaller units of discourse, such as a
paragraph. Welch and Link (1992) recommended an informal paragraph assessment that focuses
on each of a paragraph's three parts: topic sentence, supporting sentences, and clincher sentence
(Figure 3). Each part can receive a point for its existence, its form (grammatical correctness), and
its function (relevance to the topic). Both topic sentence and clincher sentence can earn only one
point for each of the three criteria, but up to three supporting sentences can be scored for
existence, form, and function. This scale could be used to evaluate almost any kind of paragraph.
Writing Road: Reinvigorate Your Students' Enthusiasm for Writing
By: Regina G. Richards
The road to writing consists of two distinct but related paths. Students who successfully travel
these paths often have had teachers and/or parents assisting them to safely navigate their way.
Successful navigation frequently results in reinvigorating students' enthusiasm for writing even if
they struggle with learning disabilities.
The path of enthusiasm and self-confidence
Students on this path approach writing with an excited feeling and interest in the topic. While
they know the task has many components, they also have confidence that they have tools to use
in dealing with each component, one small part at a time (chunking). If they have learning
disabilities, they have learning strategies to get around each challenge they face.
Students not on this path approach a writing task with the feeling that it is boring, uninteresting,
and/or overwhelming. These students have difficulty establishing a purpose and consequently
struggle to develop and organize their ideas. They may be coping with inadequate language skills
or writing expectations that are beyond their automatic skill level or difficulties such as
dysgraphia.
The path of multiple tools
Students' feelings of self-confidence, or its lack, greatly influence their ability to manipulate
multiple components simultaneously and successfully. The task of writing places many demands
on a person's working memory system: one must constantly switch attention between multiple
goals and subtasks. Mel Levine in his book for teenagers describes writing as "the awesome
juggling act". Under a picture of a boy juggling eight balls, each containing a necessary
component for writing, he states, "To juggle, he has to keep all of these balls in the air at the
same time. To write well, you have to keep all of the parts of writing in your memory while you
are writing." Efficient writers need good working memory, patience, persistence and
flexibility.”3

Students successfully navigating The Path of Multiple Tools perform these processes effortlessly
and painlessly. They are able to coordinate the multiple demands required, using tools, i.e.,
strategies. They systematically move through each of the subskills required for written
performance, often simultaneously.

Struggling to progress down this path is a result of having incomplete tools, or being inefficient
in using tools already developed. They sometimes need learning strategies or accommodations to
overcome their learning disabilities. These inefficiencies greatly interfere with the higher order
aspects of written expression, the integration of ideas and clear expression. For many, this
decreased effectiveness leads to avoidance of writing. A student must write to progress because
practicing writing contributes to greater automaticity in the subskills. As a consequence, students
who actively avoid writing miss out on critical practice of many subskills. However, it is also
relevant to realize that practice without a feeling of success, or rote practice without feedback,
leads to frustration rather than skill development.

Avoiding the avoidance of writing

If a student has not yet developed competence using one or more writing subskills, it is necessary
to provide explicit instruction, examples, and practice before expecting the student to use those
skills in an integrated manner while writing. Multisensory techniques encourage a student to
simultaneously use visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic strategies and help reinforce the
connectedness between the subskills. If skill development is difficult or delayed, the use of
compensations may be appropriate, and in many cases essential.
Three basic skills clusters are essential for efficiency in written expression.
Use of letter form, spacing and lines
A student needs to easily and automatically place letters efficiently on the page. Struggles in
these areas require remedial assistance and/or compensations.
Remedial assistance may include reteaching manuscript or cursive letter form, using well
sequenced multisensory instruction. Use of a vertical plane, such as a whiteboard, is valuable to
assist initially with directionality.
Compensations may include keyboarding skills.
Use of writing mechanics within the process of written expression
Such skills include, but are not limited to, spelling, capitalization, punctuation, sentence
structure, and grammar.
Because the process of writing places great demands on a student’s active working memory
system, any subskill which lacks automaticity may drop out when the student focuses on content.
This leads to frustration for students, parents, and teachers because the student may be able to
perform that same subskill in isolation.
To enhance active working memory, each individual subskill needs to be as strong as possible:
the more automaticity, the less demand on active working memory. Conversely, the less
automatic the skill, the greater demand on active working memory.4
Organized use of content: clearly expressing basic ideas, with elaboration
Writing efficiency and elaboration of ideas depend upon a student’s ability to integrate the basic
mechanical skills with foundational processing skills related to letter form and space, thus
allowing the student to focus on content.
Organizational strategies can help minimize the student’s tendency to approach writing as an
erratic and impulsive activity. These include pre-organization plans and strategies as well as
visual organizers.
"The atmosphere that is most conductive for this journey of learning to write well is one that is
free: Free of undue pressure, sustained or high stress, and instead, suffused with a degree of
pleasurable intensity."5
Leading students down the path of enthusiasm and self-confidence
As teachers and/or parents, we need to help students learn the joy of producing good sentences
that represent their ideas and feelings. The challenge is being able to convey that writing can be
fun even though it involves many demands. Because practice and repetition are critical, we need
to encourage students to write, regardless of their skill level or comfort with language. To do so,
we provide background experiences related to the concepts and vocabulary while also
stimulating enthusiasm related for the topic.
Priming
Providing students with background information and experience with the concepts prior to
beginning the writing task "primes" the brain to anticipate critical features or ideas that will be
forthcoming. Examples of priming are presenting the objective of the lesson in advance, reading
a fun related story or enjoying role playing a related situation.
Some priming strategies to use prior to a writing activity include:
Place a humorous or thought provoking notice on your bulletin board to elicit a discussion.
Use a prop to introduce the concepts within the topic.
Create experiences/activities related to the topic so that students develop some prior knowledge.
Develop a group or individual KWL chart. This is a large chart with three columns: K for "What
do you know?" W for "What do you want to know?", and L for a "What have you learned?" The
L column is completed after discussion or research.
Provide a picture prompt, role-playing situation, or song, integrated with any of the above
strategies.
Ask for expectations related to what students expect to discover about the concept or events.
Develop a group visual organizer identifying specific components of the task or brainstorming
concepts related to the activity.
Vocabulary
Our brains are biologically programmed to first attend to information that has strong emotional
content. Providing hooks to create excitement, identify key information, and provide experience
with the topic help set the stage and prime the student to focus on the critical aspects.6
Understanding the relevant related vocabulary is critical to being able to successfully express
one's ideas. Also, providing experience with critical vocabulary related to the topic is another
aspect of priming.
Estimates indicate that students learn "approximately 3000 to 4000 words each year,
accumulating a reading vocabulary of approximately 25,000 words by the end of elementary
school and approximately 50,000 words by the end of high school."7 "Children with learning
disabilities tend to have lower vocabularies mainly through lack of exposure to challenging
books and not through differences in abilities."8 Therefore, students who avoid reading and
writing activities are at a significant disadvantage.
Children with learning disabilities need to work on vocabulary in group activities with their
peers. When students experience difficulty, the vocabulary tasks and instruction should be
restructured, presented in a different matter and/or different contextual format. Effective
instruction, especially for these students, involves both direct instruction and direct teaching of
words as well as vocabulary acquisition through incidental learning.
Key principles characterizing effective vocabulary instruction include:
Emphasizing both definitional and contextual information about a word.
Engaging the child in deep processing about each word, including generating information that
ties the new word to already known information. It is critical that students learn to generate rich
connections that help them relate new vocabulary words to knowledge they already have.
Teaching words in clusters or themes rather then in isolation: learning vocabulary requires
repetition and rich support (connectedness with meaning and different contextual situations).
Ensuring that vocabulary instruction is interactive, multisensory, and that students are actively
engaged.
Putting it all together
Students need to develop strategies that give them power to succeed in written expression tasks.
As they enhance their automatic use of subskills and develop motivation and enthusiasm for the
task, their writing will be reinvigorated. A useful mnemonic to remind students to use an
organized process is the word, POWER.
POWER: P is plan
This stage includes a variety of priming activities and development of an experiential
background, with the goal of establishing enthusiasm for the topic. It also involves discussing the
basic format and type of writing required by the task, followed by determining the steps needed
to complete the task. The student plans the focus of the task.
POWER: O is organize
The goal of this stage is to dissect and describe the parts of the task. Visual organizers are
extremely valuable at this stage. Younger students may focus on three primary parts: beginning,
middle, and end. Older students may add components such as characters, setting, identification
of a problem, development of the solution, and a theme.
The basic criteria for teachers to consider are:
Begin in a more concrete mode and progress to more abstract.
Begin with fewer components to include and progressively add more.
Begin with a smaller task or chunk and progressively increased the size.
POWER: W is write
Students write their paragraph/ paper, elaborating the ideas developed in the stage above.
Younger students may start with pictures. It is critical to include both teacher feedback and self-
feedback at this stage.
POWER: E is edit
In the editing stage, students focus on a single component at a time. They proofread the paper
multiple times, each time with a different focus. This is an area that is often the most difficult for
many students with learning challenges because they tend to "read" what they intended rather
than what they actually wrote. A great deal of scaffolding, modeling, and directed instruction is
necessary to help students develop appropriate skills.
POWER: R is revise
Many students attempt to avoid the revision stage. However it is critical that they learn this is a
valuable component of the written expression task. Again, scaffolding, modeling, and directed
instruction are very useful in helping them understand how to enhance their writing. Encouraging
them to use their self-feedback form to record the number of changes they have made provides a
concrete record of their progress in revising and enhancing their written products. Of course,
changes need to be appropriate and add to the quality of the paper.
Conclusion
Encourage students to practice writing
Ensure that students practice the appropriate subskills to a level of automaticity
Encourage students to use a staging or process approach, focusing on small chunks at a time
Encourage students to have fun with their writing
Encourage students to double check that their writing communicates their message effectively
And be sure to accommodate their learning disabilities if they have them