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Designing Features of a Measure of Composing for Young Children

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Title: Designing Features of a Measure of Composing for Young Children
Language: English
Authors: Hope K. Gerde (ORCID 0000-0001-7783-7771), Gary E. Bingham, Ryan P. Bowles
Source: Early Childhood Education Journal. 2025 53(6):1973-1986.
Availability: Springer. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail: customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: https://link.springer.com/
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 14
Publication Date: 2025
Sponsoring Agency: Institute of Education Sciences (ED)
Contract Number: R305A150210
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Descriptors: Emergent Literacy, Beginning Writing, Childrens Writing, Young Children, Preschool Children, Writing Evaluation, Writing Skills, Handwriting, Alphabets, Concept Formation, Writing (Composition)
DOI: 10.1007/s10643-024-01810-w
ISSN: 1082-3301
1573-1707
Abstract: Early writing is an important early literacy skill related to later reading and writing development. Writing assessment and instruction, however, tends to focus on just part of early writing development, transcription (i.e., handwriting and spelling), whereas composing (i.e., text generation) is an essential component of early and later writing. In fact, several assessments of early writing do not include items that elicit composing and others provide composing items that are too challenging for early writers, yielding floor effects. This study provides evidence for a new approach for eliciting and scoring both transcription and composing from preschool age children. Study 1 provides evidence that within a structured and contextualized assessment in which children compose their own messages, young children can demonstrate transcription skills aligning with the skills they demonstrate on traditional writing assessments (e.g., letter and word writing). Study 2 provides evidence that the structured and contextualized assessment can elicit and score children's transcription and composing skills such as relevance to the theme, idea generation, genre features, verbal-text match. These two studies provide evidence of item functioning for both transcription and composing items important for research and instructional practice.
Abstractor: As Provided
IES Funded: Yes
Entry Date: 2025
Accession Number: EJ1479594
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0187189985;5mx01aug.25;2025Aug11.03:06;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0187189985-1">Designing Features of a Measure of Composing for Young Children </title> <p>Early writing is an important early literacy skill related to later reading and writing development. Writing assessment and instruction, however, tends to focus on just part of early writing development, transcription (i.e., handwriting and spelling), whereas composing (i.e., text generation) is an essential component of early and later writing. In fact, several assessments of early writing do not include items that elicit composing and others provide composing items that are too challenging for early writers, yielding floor effects. This study provides evidence for a new approach for eliciting and scoring both transcription and composing from preschool age children. Study 1 provides evidence that within a structured and contextualized assessment in which children compose their own messages, young children can demonstrate transcription skills aligning with the skills they demonstrate on traditional writing assessments (e.g., letter and word writing). Study 2 provides evidence that the structured and contextualized assessment can elicit and score children's transcription and composing skills such as relevance to the theme, idea generation, genre features, verbal-text match. These two studies provide evidence of item functioning for both transcription and composing items important for research and instructional practice.</p> <p>Keywords: Early writing; Assessment; Preschool; Transcription; Composing; Education Specialist Studies In Education</p> <p>Copyright comment Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-2">Introduction</hd> <p>Early writing theories clearly position the importance of children's ideas and the oral language they use to express these ideas as a core component in children's writing development (Berninger et al., [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref1">4</reflink>]; Kim, [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref2">22</reflink>]; Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref3">28</reflink>]). After all, the purpose of writing is communication. Research documents that even young children have ideas and the skills to verbally compose messages. In fact, these skills begin to develop even before they have strong fine motor skills for handwriting and letter-sound knowledge for spelling (Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref4">32</reflink>]). The sophistication of young children's writing grows substantially during the preschool period, with researchers documenting increases in both intentionality (what they want to write) and conventionality across this period (Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref5">27</reflink>]; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref6">37</reflink>]). Researchers have also noted variation in preschool children's oral and written attempts to communicate their ideas to others, with a recent study by Rowe et al. ([<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref7">35</reflink>]) identifying a developmental progression in how children link what they say orally to print related writing. Children's intentional attempts to link their ideas/oral language with marks, scribbles, or letters that have meaning to them suggests that they are developing text generation or composing skills even at a young age.</p> <p>Despite the central importance that text generation (Berninger et al., [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref8">4</reflink>]) or composing (Gerde & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref9">13</reflink>]) skills play in writing development, our ability to capture children's composing development is considerably underdeveloped in comparison to our understanding of transcription focused skills (i.e., writing concept knowledge, handwriting, and spelling). One reason for a more limited understanding of composing related skills relates to the fact that there are few assessments that are specifically designed to capture children's composing development (Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref10">31</reflink>]). Formal assessments that attempt to capture composing report extreme variation in children's capacity for composing with some studies identifying floor effects (e.g., Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref11">27</reflink>]) and others showing ample writing production (e.g., Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref12">37</reflink>]). One differing yet critical factor across these studies is the variation in features of the elicitation materials and scoring of composing. Thus, the purpose of this study is to describe a developmentally appropriate approach for effectively and efficiently capturing and scoring children's composing and transcription skills in preschool.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-3">Importance of Studying Early Composing</hd> <p>The importance of research designed to examine how to elicit and score young children's early composing development is illustrated by multiple factors. First, it is important to acknowledge the presence of composing focused indicators in US early learning standards or the Head Start outcomes framework that are intended to guide teacher planning and instructional practices (Tortorelli et al., [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref13">39</reflink>]). Second, composing focused indicators are also part of many widely used curricula in the United States, although curricular focus on composing varies widely from curriculum to curriculum (Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref14">17</reflink>]). Finally, researchers have identified that early childhood teachers provide fewer instructional opportunities focused on helping children generate and share ideas through their writing in comparison to instructional practices designed to support writing mechanics, such as handwriting skills or letter knowledge (Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref15">7</reflink>]). This is despite professional recommendations to engage in meaning-making or composing practices (Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref16">15</reflink>]; Rowe et al., [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref17">36</reflink>]) and research demonstrating that teachers who engage in composing focused writing practices positively promote preschool children's writing (Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref18">7</reflink>]). Taken together, these three factors suggest that composing is, or should be, a focus of teachers' daily writing-based interactions with preschool aged children.</p> <p>Despite knowledge that writing contains multiple component processes, with composing squarely featured in conceptual models and professional standards, current understandings of early composing skills and how they should be assessed lags significantly behind the knowledge base of transcription focused early writing skills, such as handwriting and spelling (Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref19">31</reflink>]). As articulated in a systematic review examining 30 years of early writing research, Quinn and Bingham ([<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref20">31</reflink>]) note that only 23% of studies within this time span focused on composing as part of their conceptualization of early writing skills or processes. They argue that clearer conceptualization of early composing skills is needed and for the importance of aligning these conceptualizations to measures intended to elicit composing skills and document children's development of these skills. Their analysis also reveals the need for researchers to consider more expansive views of composing processes that include oral language for what children want to write.</p> <p>Early writing is a multicomponental set of skills comprised of transcription skills including handwriting (i.e., the formation of letters and mechanics of writing) and spelling (i.e., putting letter sounds together to form words) as well as composing (i.e., idea generation). Unlike early composing, we have extensive research that articulates in detail the developmental trajectory of early handwriting and spelling skills (e.g., Bear et al., [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref21">3</reflink>]; Bloodgood, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref22">8</reflink>]; Ehri, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref23">12</reflink>]; Treiman, [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref24">40</reflink>]) from early marks on a page to applying formal spelling rules, sentence structure, syntax and more. Moreover, research has identified the significant contribution transcription skills have to later composing skills (e.g., Kim et al., [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref25">23</reflink>]; Malpique et al., [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref26">24</reflink>]; Puranik & Al Otaiba, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref27">26</reflink>]). As such, teachers, when invited to describe children's development from child writing samples, provide detailed descriptions of children's transcription skills and articulate extensive guidance for supporting these skills (Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref28">6</reflink>]; Quinn et al., in press). However, when asked about children's composing skills, teachers provide limited or less detailed information (Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref29">6</reflink>]; Quinn et al., in press). The rather limited knowledge that teachers of young children possess of composing is not surprising because a clear developmental trajectory of early composing skills is not readily available to teachers or informing curriculum in a systematic way (Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref30">16</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref31">17</reflink>]). Ultimately, to provide teachers guidance to use when examining children's writing samples (e.g., portfolio, work sampling formative assessment) it is essential to understand more about how we can elicit and code the composing skills of very young children.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-4">Current Approaches for Assessing Early Composing</hd> <p>Research within the last 10 years has begun to address the need to study not only the scribbles, marks, or letters that children produce but also the oral language and ideas they share when making such marks. Researchers have designed a number of early writing tasks that can be used to elicit children's composing skills, including a picture description task (Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref32">27</reflink>]; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref33">37</reflink>]), a story writing task (Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref34">32</reflink>]), and a birthday invitation task (Aram et al., [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref35">2</reflink>]; Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref36">32</reflink>]). Quinn et al., ([<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref37">33</reflink>]), Puranik and Lonigan ([<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref38">28</reflink>]), and Rowe and Wilson ([<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref39">37</reflink>]) have employed picture description tasks to assess composing by showing children a picture and asking them to provide writing that captures information about what is occurring. For example, using a picture description task where children see a photo of themselves engaging in play in their classroom, Rowe and Wilson ([<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref40">37</reflink>]) prompted children to provide an oral response about what they are doing and to use "kid writing" to capture their ideas (Rowe et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref41">35</reflink>]). Similarly, Quinn and Bingham ([<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref42">32</reflink>]), used a variety of composing focused tasks to elicit children's composing by focusing on their oral responses and writing. In one of the picture description tasks, children were shown four pictures about a girl riding her bike, having an accident, receiving help from her mother, and then riding her bike again. In this study, children worked with an examiner to sequence the pictures to allow for planning time before they were prompted to write about each picture. It is important to note that in both of these examples, assessors explicitly prompt children to share their ideas about what is happening in the picture in addition to encouraging children to "write" their ideas to share with the assessor. This approach is different from Puranik and Lonigan ([<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref43">28</reflink>]) and Campbell et al. ([<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref44">9</reflink>]) who used picture description tasks but only examined children's writing without attending to their oral language (i.e., coding transcription focused skills and not composing skills).</p> <p>Related to the varied tasks that researchers have used to elicit children's early composing skills, researchers also developed coding rubrics to examine and score composing skills (Puranik et al., [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref45">29</reflink>]; Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref46">32</reflink>]; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref47">37</reflink>]). Although such rubrics focus on slightly different composing related constructs, often as a function of the theoretical orientation that researchers draw from and how they define composing (see Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref48">31</reflink>]), studies examining both oral and written composing tend to emphasize (a) number and types of ideas that children share, (b) relevance of children's responses to the prompt, and (c) the match or coherence between verbal and written composing. Examining both the quantity of children's ideas and the language they use in responding to a prompt are suggested as good indictors of productivity and complexity of written composition in both preschool and kindergarten (Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref49">34</reflink>]; Puranik et al., [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref50">30</reflink>]). Examining the relevance of children's responses to the writing prompt provides another indicator about the quality of children's oral and written composition. Although researchers name this construct slightly differently (e.g., task adherence, Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref51">33</reflink>]; task-message match, Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref52">37</reflink>]), they conceptualize relevance to include a child's ability to produce oral language and writing that are related to the task requirement. For example, if a child is shown pictures of a girl riding her bike and getting hurt, the child's response should relate to what is happening in the bike story illustrations (Quinn & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref53">32</reflink>]). The final area that researchers examine is how cohesive oral-written responses are or how what they say orally "matches" what is produced in writing (Gerde & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref54">13</reflink>]). For example, a child who is shown a picture of themselves while playing with blocks may describe what they are doing by saying "I'm building a tower" and then writing their name while drawing a few squares to represent blocks (Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref55">37</reflink>]). These three early composing constructs/skills are believed to be important foundational elements to children's ability to develop more complex composing skills, such as idea organization (Gerde & Bingham, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref56">13</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-5">The Current Study</hd> <p>In order to better align the understanding of early writing skills to comprehensive theoretical models of early writing, we designed two studies to elicit (Study 1) and score (Study 2) young children's transcription and composing skills. Recognizing that some previous research has identified floor effects when engaging young children in open-ended composing tasks such as writing a picture description (e.g., Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref57">27</reflink>]) and other work has found young children to be successful at writing captions for very familiar pictures or topics (e.g., Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref58">37</reflink>]) we examined children's writing skill across composing tasks with different levels of demand. To understand which contexts successfully elicited composing from early writers, in Study 1, we examined children's writing output when they engage in two different composing tasks: (a) an open-ended story about their family, a very familiar topic, and (b) a scaffolded story writing task in which the images are provided and children are invited to provide the dialog for the characters. We considered what writing each task elicits from young children and how children's writing on the two different composing tasks relates to children's writing on other, well-established writing tasks including letter and word writing to ensure the writing reflects the child's true writing capacity.</p> <p>Building from the findings of Study 1, in Study 2, we examined the writing children produce in a scaffolded story writing task designed based on the findings of Study 1 to consider what features of the construct of composing could be scored from children's oral and written outputs. We describe children's composing and transcription to examine item functioning for coded items reflecting both transcription as well as several composing features including the number of ideas and type of language children use, the relevance of their ideas and their match between the verbal and written language outputs. The end goal of this set of studies is to demonstrate that these approaches to eliciting and scoring children's writing can capture their composing and transcription skills effectively and comprehensively.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-6">Study 1: Elicitation of Composing</hd> <p>In Study 1, we asked two research questions:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> What type of writing will an open-ended or scaffolded story writing task elicit from children?</item> <p></p> <item> How will children's writing elicited from the open-ended or scaffolded story writing task compare to their letter and word writing?</item> </ulist> <p>We expected both the open-ended and scaffolded story writing tasks to elicit both composing and transcription skills from young children. However, based on previous research suggesting a fully open-ended composing task yielded floor effects from young children (e.g., Purnaik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref59">28</reflink>]), we expected the writing children provided on the scaffolded writing task to better reflect the type of writing they produce on other, widely used, writing tasks such as writing dictated letters or simple words.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-7">Participants</hd> <p>Participants included 124 children (53% female) in a Midwestern US state who were enrolled in early childhood programs serving preschool aged children. Children were on average 60.45 months (<emph>SD</emph> = 4.3, range 43–68 months) and represented diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds, including 14% Black, 15% Asian, 65% Caucasian, 5% Latine, and 1% biracial. Children were enrolled in half day (3.5 h) of educational programming 4 days a week.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-8">Procedures</hd> <p>After obtaining University Institutional Review Board approval for the study, the first author invited their partner preschool directors to participate in the study. Researchers then met with families to invite their participation, answer questions, and enroll interested families into the study. Trained research assistants assessed children individually in their preschool centers in a quiet place in the hallway outside of their classroom. Researchers were graduate and undergraduate students in child development or elementary education with experience working in a preschool classroom.</p> <p>Child assessment training included reviewing the measures and watching a video of the assessments being administered by an expert, scoring 100% on a quiz about administration procedures, in-person training to review the assessment and practice assessing an adult with each measure, and finally scoring over 95% on a practical evaluated for accuracy of administration and scoring when assessing a child. Children were assessed on two different days at the end of the school year in April/May. Children were invited to engage in a letter writing task, a word writing task, and two different story writing tasks. On day one, children were randomly assigned to complete either the letter writing and story writing using a Family Book or the word writing and the story writing with a Racoon picture page. On day two, typically 2–3 days after assessment day one, the other two assessments were completed.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-9">Measures</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0187189985-10">Letter Writing</hd> <p>Children were asked to write 10 English letters strategically chosen as commonly known but ranging in form and difficulty T, B, H, M, S, A, D, J, C and P on a blank 8.5 × 11 piece of paper using a marker (Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref60">14</reflink>]). The administrator dictated the letters as children wrote, always presenting the letters in the same order; no visual stimuli of the letters was provided. Produced letters were scored using a scale ranging from 0 (refusal), 1 (scribbles), 2 (drawing), 3 (scribble writing), 4 (letter-like form), 5 (letters and letter-like forms), 6 (correct letters). Internal consistency for this measure was α = 0.90, consistent with previous research (Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref61">14</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-11">Word Writing</hd> <p>To assess children's word writing, administrators asked children to write five CVC words: sad, hug, lip, net, job (Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref62">14</reflink>]). The words intentionally included each vowel and non-repeating consonants. Each word was scored on a scale (Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref63">7</reflink>]; Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref64">14</reflink>]) ranging from 0 (refusal), 1 (scribbles), 2 (drawing), 3 (scribble writing), 4 (letter-like form), 5 (letters and letter-like forms), 6 (correct letters), 7 (estimated spellings), 8 (accurate spellings). A composite word writing score was created by averaging the scores across all five words. There was high internal consistency across all five words in the sample (α = 0.99).</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-12">Family Book Story Writing</hd> <p>Children were given a marker and a booklet made of two 8.5 × 11 paper pages folded in half and stapled on the left side. The first ½ page included a printed title "My Family Book" across the top. The administrators gave children the booklet and said, "Today you will write a book about your family. This says, 'My Family Book.'" as they pointed to the text on the first page. Children were asked to "Write a story about your family. You can write anything you want about your family." After the child wrote, the assessor asked the child what they wrote and recorded the child's oral language response. Children's written productions were coded on the same scale used for word writing and to assess composing, coders noted whether children's oral language reflected the theme of the writing task (related to family 1, not related 0).</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-13">Racoon Picture Page Story Writing</hd> <p>Assessors provided children with a printed cartoon image of a little racoon in a tree and a mother on the ground with a speech bubble between the two characters. The assessor provided instructions, "In books, speech bubbles include words the characters are saying. Write what you think mama racoon is saying to little racoon." The child wrote their response in the speech bubble on the page. Then the assessor asked the child "Tell me what you wrote so I can remember." The assessor recorded the child's verbalization of their writing. Children's written productions were coded on the same scale used for word writing. In addition, coders noted whether the children's verbalization reflected the theme of the writing task (related to the images 1, not related 0).</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-14">Coding Reliability</hd> <p>Three coders with extensive knowledge of child development and early writing were trained to reliability in the coding system by reviewing all of the codes and training manual which included multiple writing samples master coded by the lead author. Then each coder completed five sets of reliability training writing samples (previously master coded) to meet 90% reliability for the coding system. In addition, interrater reliability was conducted across 20% of the writing samples wherein the coders met acceptable levels across all three coders (Cohen's <emph>k</emph> = 0.91).</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-15">Results Study 1</hd> <p>To answer the first research question, <emph>what type of writing will an open-ended or scaffolded story writing task elicit from children,</emph> we used descriptive statistics to analyze children's transcription and composing skills produced during children's writing of each task.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-16">Family Book Writing</hd> <p>Children tended to produce multiple writing samples when writing their family book story. On average, children produced 4.5 writing samples (range 1–8) across three to four pages of the family book booklet. The highest form of writing children produced when asked to write the open-ended family book story varied widely (see Fig. 1 for frequencies of children producing each type of writing). In general, children used drawing (60.2%) to communicate their family story. Fewer children used letter-like forms (9.5%) or letters (23.1%) to write their family story. In terms of composing, nearly all children (88%) verbally described or told a story about their family, demonstrating thematic alignment with the task.</p> <p>Graph: Fig. 1 The number of children producing each type of writing as the highest form of writing produced for the family book and the racoon picture page writing tasks</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-17">Racoon Picture Page Writing</hd> <p>Children tended to produce one writing sample when writing their message on the Racoon picture page writing task. In the speech bubble, 46.8% of children used letters as the highest form of writing to convey their message (see Fig. 1 for frequencies). In fact, 8.8% of children demonstrated estimated spelling or word writing skills. Few children used drawing to convey their message on the Racoon picture task (2.4%). Similarly, 82% of children's responses thematically aligned with the racoon picture page task.</p> <p>While both the family book writing task and racoon picture page writing task elicited both transcription and composing skills from children, the form children used for transcription on each task varied dramatically. Figure 1 demonstrates the stark contrast in the highest form of writing children produced on both tasks. Most children (i.e., 60.2%) produced drawing as the highest form on the family book while approximately half (i.e., 46.8%) produced letters to convey their message on the racoon picture page.</p> <p>To answer the second research question, <emph>how will children's writing elicited from the open-ended or scaffolded story writing task compare to their letter and word writing,</emph> we used descriptive analyses to examine the distributions of skills children demonstrated when writing dictated letters, words, and the two story writing prompts. While children's skills for writing letters varied, children primarily (77.6%) used letters to write letters and just 4.8% (6 children) used drawing when they were asked to write letters. Similarly, 67.3% of children used letters when they wrote words while just 5.6% (7 children) used drawing when asked to write words. These percentages align with children's writing within the context of the racoon picture page. The majority of children (46.8%) used letters to write their story while only 9 children (7.25%) used drawing. In contrast, for the family book story writing, 23.1% used letters and 60.2% used drawing. Figure 2 displays the frequency distribution of children's skills for writing letters, words, and the racoon picture prompt composing task.</p> <p>Graph: Fig. 2 Distribution of children's skills for writing letters, words, and the racoon picture prompt composing task</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-18">Discussion Study 1</hd> <p>Children wrote at a more sophisticated level when asked to write within the context of the scaffolded story prompt as compared to the open-ended story writing prompt. In addition, the writing produced during the scaffolded story prompt aligned with the highest form of writing children produced when they are invited to write dictated letters and words. Thus, the scaffolded story prompt better captured young children's transcription skill compared to a fully open-ended prompt. Limitations existed within the racoon picture pages prompt, of course. In particular, children provided multiple writing samples when invited to write the family book story, perhaps because they had more space to write. Offering children more than one picture page may better support their ability to demonstrate oral and written composing skills by allowing them more opportunity to talk about the story and link their oral and written language.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-19">Study 2: Assessing Composing and Transcription</hd> <p>In Study 2, we leveraged the findings of Study 1, that a scaffolded story prompt can accurately capture children's transcription skills, to design and evaluate an approach to elicit and code for both transcription and composing skills to ensure that we can capture both transcription and composing effectively and efficiently. The design process took into account a range of factors, including multiple story panels, narrative story format, and story characters. First, unlike the family book which often elicited multiple writing samples from children, the Racoon Story page elicited typically one sample. Thus, multiple picture panels were designed to create a simple story. We selected a narrative style for the design of the story pages because (a) narrative is the most common format of children's books in their preschool classrooms (Crisp et al., [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref65">10</reflink>]) and (b) the four components of a narrative (setting the stage, problem, solution, resolution) provide opportunities for children to produce multiple writing samples. To construct a narrative, children must have sufficient background knowledge and an understanding about the characters, setting, and problem to be solved. While many children were familiar with the racoons from Study 1, over a third of children labeled the racoons as bears. Thus, we adjusted to a more familiar animal. Many of the most familiar animals are not acceptable candidates for this writing task context which invites children to generate and write the dialog of the story, because these animals have a common call (e.g., What does mama cow say? Moo). Given their presence in children's books, television, and movies, we determined that penguins are a familiar and visually recognizable animal that does not have a common call, thus, children could provide words to capture dialog of what mamma and little penguin say to each other in the story without reverting to animal sounds. Finally, while narrative structure in general is familiar to children (Pentimonti et al., [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref66">25</reflink>]) it is important that children are familiar with the events of the narrative to access their background knowledge when composing. Therefore, we designed an event and problem that were familiar to children, that is, separating from a familiar adult and reuniting. Whether they have attended school or stayed with a non-parental caregiver, young children have experience with this event and thus, can leverage their background knowledge to create dialog for this narrative story. The Penguin Story Writing task (described below) was designed and used in Study 2 to examine whether it is effective for the elicitation and coding of children's transcription and composing skills.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-20">Research Question</hd> <p>Study 2 examined one research question:</p> <p>How will a scaffolded assessment of writing using a narrative story with dialog boxes capture and facilitate coding of children's composing and transcription skills?</p> <p>We expected that the Penguin Story Writing task would elicit multiple writing samples from children and facilitate the coding of both transcription and multiple components of composing including idea generation, language skills, relevance, and match/cohesion.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-21">Methods Study 2</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0187189985-22">Participants</hd> <p>Children (<emph>N</emph> = 496; 230 female, 46 not reported), age 3–6 year (<emph>M</emph> = 57.74 months, <emph>SD</emph> = 6.27 months) from two US states participated. All children were enrolled in a Head Start program. As reported by parents, children reflected diverse ethnicities: 68.7% Black, 15.2% White, 8.0% Multiracial, 2.8% Asian, and 2.8% Latine. English was the primary language spoken at home for 86.5% of children, with another 3.8% reported as speaking English along with another language. No other language was the primary language spoken at home for more than 1.9% of the children.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-23">Procedures</hd> <p>For Study 2, after obtaining University Institutional Review Board approval for the study, the first and second authors connected with their partner Head Start directors to invite participation into the study. Researchers then met with families to invite their participation, answer questions and enroll interested families in the study. Following similar procedures to Study 1, children were assessed in spring (April/May) of the preschool year in a quiet hallway outside their classroom in their Head Start centers by trained research assistants reliable in administering the assessments. While our research assistants were diverse in racial, cultural, and linguistic background, reflecting that of our child participants, all children were assessed in English as this was the language of instruction for all classrooms.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-24">Measures</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0187189985-25">Early Writing</hd> <p>Children were assessed for transcription and composing skills using the Penguin Story Writing task (Authors). The assessment is a structured, contextualized task including four panels of a story depicting mama and little penguin with a text box between them for writing the dialog of the story. Narrative structure was used such that panel 1 depicts Mama and Little penguin standing on the ice with a crack forming (setting the stage), panel 2 shows little penguin floating away on the ice (the problem), panel 3 shows little penguin jumping into the sea (the solution), and panel 4 shows Mama and Little penguin reunited on the safe ice (reunification).</p> <p>During the assessment, children were shown all four picture pages and asked to "Look at these four pictures. They go together to make a story. Today you will write what the characters in this story are saying." Then the assessor shows the child panel 1 and instructs, "In books, speech bubbles include words characters are saying. First, you will say and then write what you think Mama penguin is saying in this picture." The assessor records the child's verbal composing. Oral outputs are a particularly important component of young children's composing because they provide a context for the messages children produce in writing and help to identify children's understanding of the relation between oral and written language (Dyson, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref67">11</reflink>]; Rowe et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref68">35</reflink>]). Then the assessor instructs the child to, "Write down your ideas in the text box." The assessor notes the direction and order of units produced. When the child is finished writing, the assessors asks, "Now tell me what you wrote so I can remember." The assessor records the verbal response. Then the assessor and child move on to panel 2–4 using the same verbal instructions.</p> <p>Children's oral and written outputs were coded for a range of transcription and composing features. The highest form of children's transcription was coded from name writing, drawing/scribbling, letter-like forms/letters with no representative sounds, letters with beginning/salient sounds represented, letters with advanced phonological spelling, or accurate spelling of words (Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref69">14</reflink>]). Children's writing was coded for linearity (1 = linear, 0 = non-linear) and directionality (2 = left to right orientation, 1 = right to left orientation, 0 = scattered around the page).</p> <p>To code composing we examined variables previous research has identified to reflect foundational composing skills (Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref70">33</reflink>]; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref71">37</reflink>]). Idea generation was the number of ideas a child represented in their pre-writing verbalization. Children's pre-writing verbalization was coded to identify the quantity of each part of speech used including nouns, verbs, adjectives/adverbs. In addition, the type of speech children produced in their pre-writing verbalization was coded as 1 = label, 2 = statement, and 3 = dialog. Thematic relevance was coded as (1 = related to the themes of the story provided in the images, 0 = not relevant). Finally, the match between pre and post-writing oral outputs and writing was examined using a match/does not match code (Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref72">37</reflink>]). For examples, see Table 1.</p> <p>Table 1 Examples of coding for children's verbal-text match from the penguin story writing task</p> <p> <ephtml> <table frame="hsides" rules="groups"><thead><tr><th align="left"><p>Code</p></th><th align="left"><p>Pre-writing and post-writing verbalization match</p></th><th align="left"><p>Writing and post-writing verbalization match</p></th><th align="left"><p>Pre-writing verbalization, writing, and post-writing verbalization match</p></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td align="left"><p>Pre-writing verbalization</p></td><td align="left"><p>"Don't go down there, it's cold"</p></td><td align="left"><p>"I'm out the water"</p></td><td align="left"><p>"Don't dive in the water"</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Writing</p></td><td align="left"><p><inline-graphic href="MediaObjects/10643_2024_1810_Figa_HTML.jpg" /></p></td><td align="left"><p><inline-graphic href="MediaObjects/10643_2024_1810_Figb_HTML.jpg" /></p></td><td align="left"><p><inline-graphic href="MediaObjects/10643_2024_1810_Figc_HTML.jpg" /></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Post-writing verbalization</p></td><td align="left"><p>"Don't go in there, it's cold"</p></td><td align="left"><p>"U"</p></td><td align="left"><p>"Don't dive. D Di"</p></td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0187189985-26">Reliability Training</hd> <p>Six coders, three at each research site, were trained by the lead author in the same reliability training process used in Study 1. As in Study 1, 20% of all writing samples were double coded with high reliability (Cohen's <emph>k</emph> = 0.92).</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-27">Results Study 2</hd> <p>Throughout the results, unless otherwise stated, we combine results across panels, as there were minimal differences across the four panels. Descriptive statistics and zero order correlations were used to examine the research question, <emph>how will a scaffolded assessment of writing using a narrative story with dialog boxes capture and facilitate coding of children's composing and transcription skills.</emph></p> <hd id="AN0187189985-28">Elicitation of Transcription and Composing Skills</hd> <p>Children demonstrated transcription skills as well as verbal and written composing skills when engaging in the Penguin Story Writing task. Combining across all 4 panels, 82% of children provided a verbal composing response prior to writing, 73% of children provided a post-writing verbal response. Also, 86% of children provided a written response to the Penguin Story Writing task.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-29">Coding of Transcription and Composing Skills</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0187189985-30">Transcription Skills</hd> <p>Children ranged in their transcription skills across the entire coding system from drawing and scribbling to writing words spelled correctly (see Table 2). Children demonstrated high consistency in the highest form of transcription they provided across the four story panels: on average between any two panels, children received the same score 78% of the time and a score within one point 96% of the time. Children tended not to follow standard writing conventions; only 35% of the writing could be considered as written horizontally (regardless of direction) and only 40% of the writing was written from left to right (regardless of whether the writing remained horizontal).</p> <p>Table 2 Proportion of children producing each highest form of transcription during the penguin story writing task across each of the four story panels</p> <p> <ephtml> <table frame="hsides" rules="groups"><thead><tr><th align="left"><p>Highest form</p></th><th align="left"><p>Penguin story panel 1</p></th><th align="left"><p>Penguin story panel 2</p></th><th align="left"><p>Penguin story panel 3</p></th><th align="left"><p>Penguin story panel 4</p></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td align="left"><p>Name writing</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.005</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.002</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.005</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.002</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Drawing/scribbling</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.479</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.459</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.509</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.496</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Letters and letter-like forms; no sounds</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.075</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.096</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.083</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.073</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Beginning/salient sounds</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.369</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.355</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.323</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.348</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Phonological spelling</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.038</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.035</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.042</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.033</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Accurate spelling</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.035</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.052</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.038</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.047</p></td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0187189985-31">Composing Skills</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0187189985-32">Oral Language Quantity and Type</hd> <p>Use of varied parts of speech reflects the quality of children's composing. The Penguin Story Writing task elicited a range of language from children. In general, children used 1.42 nouns (range 0–12), 1.97 verbs (0–14), and 0.76 adjectives/adverbs (0–6) in their composing. These values were similar across all panels of the story.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-33">Type of Verbalization</hd> <p>The Penguin Story Writing task permitted the elicitation and coding of children's initial understanding of genre knowledge, a key feature of writing. Children were asked to verbalize and write "What Mama penguin is saying on this page," thus, they were asked to compose/write dialog within the context of this task. During pre-writing verbalization, most children provided dialog (69.7%), consistent with how speech bubbles work. For example, dialog included "Be careful, baby!" "Hold my hand so you don't fall," or "Don't dive in that water, you can't swim!" The remaining types of verbalization were statements (24.6%) such as "The ice is cracking" or "The penguin dived in the water" or labels (5.6%) including "Baby penguin" or "crack."</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-34">Idea Generation</hd> <p>The number of ideas is a typical marker of quality in children's composing. The number of ideas during pre-writing ranged from 0 to 8 and during post-writing from 0 to 5. However, in general, children included 1 or 2 ideas in each panel of the penguin story: in pre-writing, 81% contained 1 idea and 14% contained 2 ideas, and in post-writing, 83% contained 1 idea and 11% contained 2 ideas. Examples of children's pre-writing verbalizations including one idea are, "Help me, Mama," "Don't dive in the water," "Crack!" "I'm out the water," "I love you, baby." Examples of pre-writing verbalizations reflecting more than one idea include, "Don't dive in, it's cold," "You can't swim. Don't jump," "Don't jump, there's sharks," "Be careful, the ice is cracking."</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-35">Thematic Relevance</hd> <p>Thematic relevance was coded as relevant when the child's writing and/or post verbalization was generally related to the theme of the image. For example, the verbal response "Mama, help!" for Panel 2 in which the little penguin is floating away on the ice was counted as relevant. A child's writing was coded as not thematically relevant when no relation was found. For example, a child drew a race car and verbally stated, "I made a race car." Overwhelmingly, children's pre-writing verbalizations reflected the theme of the story for all four panels: Panel 1 (96%), Panel 2 (96%), Panel 3 (94%), and Panel 4 (95%).</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-36">Match/Coherence</hd> <p>Previous studies have noted that a child's match between their written text and post-writing verbalization is a reflection of their early composing (Rowe et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref73">35</reflink>]). Of those who provided both, only 20% of children matched their post-writing verbalization with their writing, with no difference across panels. New to this study, we examined children's pre-writing verbalized composing reflecting their idea generation, their writing, and their post-writing verbalizations. 53% of children had matching pre- and post-writing verbalizations. Of those, 16% also matched with their writing. Overall, among children who provided writing and both pre- and post-writing verbalization, 36% had no matching, 46% matched their pre- and post-writing verbalization but not writing, 11% matched their writing and post-writing verbalization but not pre-writing verbalization, and only 0.1% matched their pre-writing verbalization with their writing. Finally, 7% of children matched all three.</p> <p>Using correlation analysis, we examined the relation between children's match between their pre-writing verbalization, writing, and post-writing verbalization and their transcription skills. Here we report results only from panel 1 to eliminate issues of non-independence of observations; results for the other three panels were identical. There was a strong relation between transcription skills scores and match, <emph>X</emph><sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref74">15</reflink>) = 340, <emph>p</emph> < 0.001, see Table 3. In general, children tended to use more sophisticated transcription when they had more matches.</p> <p>Table 3 Frequency of children producing each verbal-text match category by transcription skill</p> <p> <ephtml> <table frame="hsides" rules="groups"><thead><tr><th align="left" /><th align="left"><p>Child name</p></th><th align="left"><p>Drawing and scribbling</p></th><th align="left"><p>Letters and letter-like forms</p></th><th align="left"><p>Beginning and salient sounds</p></th><th align="left"><p>Phonological spelling</p></th><th align="left"><p>Accurate spelling</p></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td align="left"><p>No match</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>105</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>10</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>26</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Pre/post match</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>68</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>17</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>98</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>3</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Writing/post match</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>15</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>3</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>24</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Pre/writing match</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>All match</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>2</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>10</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>12</p></td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0187189985-37">Discussion</hd> <p>To better align the assessment of early writing skills to comprehensive theoretical models of early writing, we designed two studies to elicit and score young children's composing and transcription skills. Findings of these two studies provide initial evidence that a structured and contextualized assessment, like the Penguin Story Writing task, can be used to measure children's early transcription <emph>and</emph> composing skills. Such a writing assessment appears to not only reflect a developmentally appropriate way of eliciting children's early writing skills, but it also reflects the multicomponental nature of early writing identified in theoretical frameworks of early writing (Berninger et al., [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref75">4</reflink>]; Kim, [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref76">22</reflink>]; Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref77">28</reflink>]), namely to include transcription skills such as handwriting and spelling and text generation or composing skills. In addition, this approach aligns with US state/national learning standards for early writing designed to inform early writing instruction (Tortorelli et al., [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref78">39</reflink>]). Importantly, children enjoy creating the dialog for the Penguin Story as reflected by the very few refusals to engage in writing the penguin story.</p> <p>The Penguin Story Writing task elicitation materials appear to be working as intended. In fact, it is an efficient writing task such that as children write their four-panel story, they are providing evidence of multiple transcription and multiple composing skills. The Penguin Story Writing task elicited transcription skills that align with the level of sophistication children provide when writing other tasks identified in common assessments of transcription skills including dictated letters and words. Moreover, the skills children demonstrated on this Penguin Story Writing task were more advanced than the highest form they provided on a fully open-ended task like writing a family book as noted in Study 1. This finding is similar to results from previous research using a picture description task (e.g., Puranik & Lonigan, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref79">27</reflink>]) in which floor effects were found as many children refused the task or scribbled/drew only. On the Penguin Story Writing task, however, children demonstrated a range of transcription skills including writing letter-like forms, letters, and even using estimated/phonological spelling as they wrote words. Additionally, the writing products provided the opportunity to examine children's use of writing mechanics such as linearity and directionality. Some children even provided full sentences so spacing, and punctuation could be examined as indicators of more sophisticated transcription skills in future work with older children.</p> <p>In terms of composing, the Penguin Story Writing task allowed children to demonstrate a range of foundational skills that reflect quality of writing compositions for older children such as number of ideas, quality of language, thematic relevance, and verbal-text match (Kim, [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref80">22</reflink>]; Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref81">33</reflink>]; Rowe et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref82">35</reflink>]). The items presented in Study 2 are capturing some important ideas about composing identified by other research on young and older writers that are relevant to later writing quality (Puranik et al., [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref83">30</reflink>]; Troia et al., [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref84">41</reflink>]). For example, the Penguin Story Writing tasks invites children to generate their own ideas and thus, the coding captures the number of ideas generated. While most children provided 1–2 ideas per panel, variation existed and the four panels permitted multiple opportunities for extended ideas. Beyond the ideas generated, the Penguin Story Writing task elicits a range of language from children including nouns, verbs, and adjectives/adverbs. While children tend to provide a similar number of ideas per panel, they do provide more words when Mama Penguin is talking compared to when Little Penguin is talking. In addition, the vast majority of children demonstrated thematic relevance on the Penguin Story Writing task noting their familiarity with the themes; most children provide thematically relevant language such that the vocabulary children use to compose their messages varies by panel. Children's responses use vocabulary such as ocean/sea, iceberg, crack, shark, diving, drowning, swimming and safety. This opportunity to provide varied vocabulary and details to their story dialog lays the foundation for important productivity and quality indicators of composing in later years (Hand et al., [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref85">18</reflink>]; Sarmiento et al., [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref86">38</reflink>]).</p> <p>The Penguin Story Writing task allows the examination of another important skill for early composing: verbal-text match in children's ideas (Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref87">33</reflink>]; Rowe & Wilson, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref88">37</reflink>]). Building on the work of Quinn and Bingham ([<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref89">32</reflink>]), an important innovation introduced by the Penguin Story Writing task is the inclusion of the pre-writing verbalization akin to planning, an important predictor of later composing skills (Agha et al., [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref90">1</reflink>]). Previous research has examined children's writing and post-writing verbalization reflecting children's understanding of the relationship between written and spoken language (Quinn et al., [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref91">33</reflink>]; Rowe et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref92">35</reflink>]). However, by adding this pre-writing verbalization as well as capturing children's writing and post-writing verbalization we were afforded a window into children's thinking about and development of this relation. For example, for the youngest children their pre-writing and post-writing verbalizations matched, for older children their pre-writing and post-writing verbalizations did not match but children's writing and post-writing verbalization aligned. For even older children, their pre-writing verbalization and their writing matched. This finding may suggest that young writers are more adept at reflecting on what they have written before they are skilled at planning verbally and executing in writing a similar message.</p> <p>Another innovation of the Penguin Story Writing task is that both transcription and composing skills are captured from the same task. This facilitates the ability to draw relations between these skills. As such, we are beginning to examine relations between composing items and items reflecting spelling and handwriting which are more traditionally assessed. For example, when we aligned children's verbal-text match skills with their transcription skills we could see the developmental progression of children's verbal-text match skills. That is, children with less developed transcription skills (i.e., scribbling/drawing) were more likely to match their pre and post-writing verbalizations but not their writing and they produced longer verbalizations than children with more advanced transcription skills. Children with more developed transcription skills (e.g., phonological spelling) were more likely to provide a shorter pre-writing verbalization, perhaps to better align their verbal composing message with their burgeoning spelling skills. It seems as though that as children begin to match their verbal and written outputs their verbal composing reduces, perhaps to better reflect their transcription skills. This finding may reflect some planning on children's behalf, an important line of investigation for future research. These composing item findings reinforce the importance of capturing both verbal and written composing (Rowe et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref93">35</reflink>]) for young writers and generate new knowledge for the importance of eliciting both pre-writing and post-writing verbalizations to fully understand children's composing.</p> <p>Two critical concerns remain before the Penguin Story Writing task can be used as a direct assessment of children's early writing skills. First, identifying the developmental progression of early composing is necessary to understand how a child's overall composing skills are reflected in the scores on the composing items. Using the findings from Study 2, we are beginning to identify this developmental progression. For example, it was clear that some composing skills are mastered earlier than others. Composing skills like relating their verbal or written composing to the theme of the task was executed by far more children than their ability to voice dialogue to capture what the characters were saying. Younger children tended to label pictures, whereas older children were more likely to produce language that was more sophisticated and that appeared to capture the character's points of view. It was much more challenging, and thus, far fewer children were successful at verbal-text matching in their composing. However, as we noted above, there is no monotonic relationship between early writing skills and pre-writing verbalization. Thus, lower scores associated with pre-writing verbalization do not necessarily reflect lower overall writing skills. Much more work is needed to understand the full developmental trajectory of composing skills so that recommendations and curriculum guidance can be provided to early educators. This work is essential for moving forward early writing curriculum and instructional practices that support both transcription and composing skills in meaningful and developmentally appropriate ways.</p> <p>Second, more research is needed to understand how the items can work together, along with items on other methods for assessing writing such as word writing, to yield overall scores on multiple aspects of early writing (i.e., transcription skills and composing skills). Complex analytical methods for measurement, such as factor analytic methods for categorical outcomes, are needed to establish how the items are related to each other. Indeed, our own research (Zhang et al., [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref94">42</reflink>]) indicates that multiple aspects of early writing can be identified, but only while also considering the method of assessment with a multi-trait multi-method approach. Only after the structure of early writing skills is identified can accurate and precise methods for combining the item scores to yield overall writing skill scores be established. Substantially more research is needed in this area.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-38">Limitations and Future Research</hd> <p>While this set of studies provides important guidance for how to design measures of composing and transcription, we briefly note limitations of these studies and recommendations for future scholarship. First, while we have identified several important items reflecting early transcription and composing, there are other features of composing that need to be examined. Specifically, approaches for assessing composing should include opportunities to examine children's planning before they write (Agha et al., [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref95">1</reflink>]) and the complexity of their ideas as they organize their thoughts about what they intend to communicate to others (Sarmiento et al., [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref96">38</reflink>]; Troia et al., [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref97">41</reflink>]). In addition, future research should more carefully examine the association among transcription and composing skills and how children's performance may vary across these skills both concurrently and longitudinally. While the Penguin Story Writing task has the potential to grow with children as they begin to compose and transcribe full phrases, sentences, and paragraphs for their story, the current studies examined children ages 3–5 years only. In addition, while the sample size for Study 1 and the focus of Study 2 on children from low income backgrounds limited examination of variation in children's skills by demographic background variables (e.g., SES, home language), future research should examine children's writing performance with attention to child demographic factors. Although it was beyond the scope of this study to examine children's skills demonstrated on the Penguin Story Writing task and other measures of language and literacy development, identifying these relations will be important next steps for providing further evidence for the validity of the assessment and the developmental nature of the items.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-39">Conclusion</hd> <p>Historically, early literacy assessments have included very few items for writing and, when they did exist they were focused on transcription skills only. For example, the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening for Preschoolers (PALS-PreK: Invernizzi et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref98">21</reflink>]) assessment included name writing and the PALS-K included estimated spelling of assessor dictated CVC words (Invernizzi et al., [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref99">20</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref100">21</reflink>]). The Test of Early Written Language (TEWL: Hresko et al., [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref101">19</reflink>]) does not include opportunities for children younger than age 5 years to compose. These approaches provide a narrow assessment of this multicomponental skill. Moreover, this narrow portrayal of writing in widely used assessments results in educators, administrators, and families maintaining a limited definition of early writing as handwriting and spelling, leaving out the critical component of composing which is a key feature of early writing and an accessible skill even for young children (Bingham & Gerde, [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref102">5</reflink>]; Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref103">16</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref104">17</reflink>]).</p> <p>The importance of measuring both composing and transcription skills in early writing assessments is essential to supporting teachers' knowledge and beliefs about the importance of providing children with instructional experiences that support their code and meaning making early writing skills. Recent research points to the association between teachers' knowledge of children's composing and transcription skills and their early writing practices (Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref105">6</reflink>]). Hence, providing early childhood teachers with a writing assessment that emphasizes both transcription and composing draws their attention to the importance of composing, which is often ignored in preschool classrooms (e.g., Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref106">7</reflink>]; Gerde et al., [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref107">16</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref108">17</reflink>]). The lack of support for composing in early childhood classrooms is problematic because children in classrooms where teachers provide opportunities for and support children to engage in composing have higher writing skills at the end of the preschool year (Bingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref109">7</reflink>]). Findings from these studies provide guidance on how to design assessments, using features included in the Penguin Story Writing task, that both elicit and code for transcription and composing skills for young children.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-40">Acknowledgements</hd> <p>We would like to thank the children and families who participated in these studies. The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A150210 to Michigan State University. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-41">Declarations</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0187189985-42">Conflict of interest</hd> <p>The authors are the developers of writing tasks used in this study including the Family Book, Raccoon Picture Page, and the Penguin Story Tasks. The authors have received funding from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department Education to support the development of the writing tasks.</p> <hd id="AN0187189985-43">Publisher's Note</hd> <p>Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.</p> <ref id="AN0187189985-44"> <title> References </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref90" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Agha AA, Truckenmiller AJ, Fine JG, Perreault M. A preliminary investigation into the role of planning in early writing development. Assessment for Effective Intervention. 2022; 48; 1: 3-12. 10.1177/15345084211073601</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref35" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> Aram D, Skibbe L, Hindman A, Bindman S, Atlas YH, Morrison F. Parents' early writing support and its associations with parenting practices in the United States and Israel. 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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Hope+K%2E+Gerde%22">Hope K. Gerde</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7783-7771">0000-0001-7783-7771</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Gary+E%2E+Bingham%22">Gary E. Bingham</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Ryan+P%2E+Bowles%22">Ryan P. Bowles</searchLink>
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  Data: Springer. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail: customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: https://link.springer.com/
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Emergent+Literacy%22">Emergent Literacy</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Beginning+Writing%22">Beginning Writing</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Childrens+Writing%22">Childrens Writing</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Young+Children%22">Young Children</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Preschool+Children%22">Preschool Children</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Writing+Evaluation%22">Writing Evaluation</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Writing+Skills%22">Writing Skills</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Handwriting%22">Handwriting</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Alphabets%22">Alphabets</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Concept+Formation%22">Concept Formation</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Writing+%28Composition%29%22">Writing (Composition)</searchLink>
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  Data: 10.1007/s10643-024-01810-w
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  Data: Early writing is an important early literacy skill related to later reading and writing development. Writing assessment and instruction, however, tends to focus on just part of early writing development, transcription (i.e., handwriting and spelling), whereas composing (i.e., text generation) is an essential component of early and later writing. In fact, several assessments of early writing do not include items that elicit composing and others provide composing items that are too challenging for early writers, yielding floor effects. This study provides evidence for a new approach for eliciting and scoring both transcription and composing from preschool age children. Study 1 provides evidence that within a structured and contextualized assessment in which children compose their own messages, young children can demonstrate transcription skills aligning with the skills they demonstrate on traditional writing assessments (e.g., letter and word writing). Study 2 provides evidence that the structured and contextualized assessment can elicit and score children's transcription and composing skills such as relevance to the theme, idea generation, genre features, verbal-text match. These two studies provide evidence of item functioning for both transcription and composing items important for research and instructional practice.
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