The impact of the good behavior game on writing quantity and quality.

Results from research indicate writing is a critical skill linked to several academic outcomes. To promote improvements in writing quantity and quality, intervention might target increasing students' academic engagement during time designated to practice writing. The purpose of this study was to implement an evidence-based classwide behavioral intervention, the Good Behavior Game (GBG), during daily writing practice time in two classrooms. Participants (n = 45) included students in a Grade 1 and Grade 2 class enrolled in an elementary school in a large suburb in the northeast U.S. Findings based on visual analysis and multilevel modeling indicate that students, on average, wrote more words (quantity) and more correct writing sequences (quality) when the GBG was played versus when it was not. Implications include the need for replication studies to extend findings and explore how school psychologists might consider the use of behavioral interventions to promote improved engagement and academic output in the classroom. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Concurrent validity and classification accuracy of curriculum-based measurement for written expression.

The study presents a critical analysis of written expression curriculum-based measurement (WE-CBM) metrics derived from 3- and 10-min test lengths. Criterion validity and classification accuracy were examined for Total Words Written (TWW), Correct Writing Sequences (CWS), Percent Correct Writing Sequences (%CWS), and Correct Minus Incorrect Writing Sequences (CMIWS). Fourth grade students (n = 109) from 6 schools participated in the study. To assess criterion validity of each metric, total scores from writing tasks were correlated with the state achievement test's composition subtest. Each index investigated was moderately correlated with the subtest. Correlations increased with the longer sampling period, however they were not statistically significant. The accuracy at distinguishing between proficient and not proficient writers on the state assessment was analyzed for each index using discriminant function analysis and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves. CWS and CMIWS, indices encompassing production and accuracy, were most accurate for predicting proficiency. Improvements were observed in classification accuracy with an increased sampling time. Utilizing cut scores to hold sensitivity above .90, specificity for each metric increased with longer probes. Sensitivity and specificity increased for all metrics with longer probes when using a 25th percentile cut. Visual analyses of ROC curves reveal where classification improvements were made. The 10-min sample for CWS more accurately identified at-risk students in the center of the distribution. Without measurement guiding decisions, writers in the middle of the distribution are more difficult to classify than those who clearly write well or struggle. The findings have implications for screening using WE-CBM. (PsycINFO Database Record

Incremental and predictive utility of formative assessment methods of reading comprehension.

Formative assessment measures are commonly used in schools to assess reading and to design instruction accordingly. The purpose of this research was to investigate the incremental and concurrent validity of formative assessment measures of reading comprehension. It was hypothesized that formative measures of reading comprehension would contribute more to our understanding of students' overall reading abilities than simply oral reading fluency (ORF). It was also hypothesized that measures could be modeled in a meaningful way to explain student performance on criterion measures of academic competence. Four formative measures of reading comprehension - maze (MZ), retell fluency (RTF), written retell (WRT), and sentence verification technique (SVT) - were used to measure unique aspects of reading comprehension through production-type responses. Results suggested that reading comprehension measures, when combined with ORF, added to the total variance associated with reading ability and were reliable indicators of student performance on a high stakes criterion-referenced assessment of grade-level literacy.