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Identifying Writing Difficulties in First Grade: An Investigation of Writing and Reading Measures
Author(s) -
Ritchey Kristen D.,
Coker David L.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
learning disabilities research and practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.018
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 1540-5826
pISSN - 0938-8982
DOI - 10.1111/ldrp.12030
Subject(s) - fluency , psychology , reading (process) , writing assessment , sentence , at risk students , set (abstract data type) , mathematics education , learning disability , curriculum based measurement , dyslexia , grade level , developmental psychology , pedagogy , linguistics , natural language processing , computer science , curriculum , philosophy , curriculum mapping , curriculum development , programming language
Early identification of students who are at risk for writing difficulties is an important first step in improving writing performance. First grade students ( N = 150) were administered a set of early writing measures and reading measures in January. Sentence Writing Quality and Oral Reading Fluency demonstrated strong classification accuracy when a Teacher Rating was used to identify which students had writing difficulties (AUC > .90), and the combined measures yielded sensitivity and specificity indices exceeding 0.90. The combined reading and writing measures yielded AUCs of a higher magnitude than those associated with individual measures when norm‐referenced writing subtests were used to identify which students had writing difficulties (AUC in .80 range). The findings suggest that it may be possible to accurately identify which students may be at risk for writing difficulties within first grade.