Accounting for levels of language in narrative and expository writing: A skills analysis of second-grade student writing

We conducted a skills analysis on written expression curriculum-based measurement (WE-CBM) tasks completed by 117 second-grade students. As part of the skills analysis, we scored two WE-CBM tasks (i.e., narrative and expository) for correct and incorrect writing sequences, common writing errors, and sentence structures. Although a majority of students displayed low risk for writing difficulties, they had low accuracy in multiple word-and sentence-level skills: The three most common writing errors were related to spelling, nonend punctuation, and capitalization, and most sentences were incomplete. Furthermore, all students—regardless of risk status (i.e., high or low risk)—displayed similar difficulty with sentence structure and writing errors in nonend punctuation and capitalization. Results highlight the semi-independent nature of writing skills (i.e., word, sentence, and connected text) and the potential for skills analysis to inform instruction.