Project Activities
The project co-occurred with a REL-SE evaluation of a new curriculum, called Word Knowledge Instruction (WKI), is designed to enhance the word knowledge of grade 5 students and, thereby, improve reading achievement. This project built off this study by using scores from the writing portion of the Florida Standards Assessment (FSA), examining writing samples from the students, and assessing teacher scores of their students’ writing sample using the FSA writing rubric.
The project team examined the student writing samples for three microstructural aspects of student writing considered proximal to the WKI intervention: (a) lexical diversity with specific attention to the use of academic vocabulary, (b) multimorphemic words, and (c) connectives to connect ideas. In addition, the team used the teacher scores of the writing samples to examine macrostructural level aspects (main ideas, substantiating details, structure, counter arguments, and conclusions) and a global score for accuracy. These macrostructural level aspects are not explicitly targeted in WKI and were, therefore, considered to be more distal measures.
Structured Abstract
Setting
This study took place in elementary schools in Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS), a large district in central Florida that serves a large, increasing number of multilingual families from low resource backgrounds.
Sample
The analytic sample comprised 824 grade 5 students from 38 high-poverty schools in HCPS. The sample included 515 students who received WKI supplemental instruction (along with the business-as-usual ELA curriculum) for 20 weeks and 307 students who received the business-as-usual ELA instruction. Regarding student demographics, 52 percent of students in the sample were female, 77 percent were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, 54 percent reported Hispanic race/ethnicity followed by Black/African American (26 percent) and White/Caucasian (14 percent), 20 percent were classified as English learners and 14 percent as previous English learners, and 13 percent were identified as having language-based disabilities.
Word Knowledge Instruction (WKI) consists of daily 15-minute lessons taught by grade 5 ELA teachers over 20 weeks. The instruction entails explicit code-based instruction, focusing on three core components: a) morphological awareness; b) vocabulary; and c) discourse connectives. Evidence-based strategies are integrated in activities including: a) explanation of the meaning of the target base and affix; b) identification of the targets in oral and written passages; c) discussion of using morphological skills to deduce meaning; and d) small-group games; sentence construction, and completion tasks for active practice integrating written language responses.
Research design and methods
HCPS teachers had been randomly assigned to the Word Knowledge Instruction and business-as-usual ELA instruction as part of the REL-SE study. The REL-SE’s evaluation’s analytic sample included 39 elementary schools from Hillsborough County Public Schools in FL, 92 ELA teachers, and 2,214 grade 5 students during SY 2018-19. Teachers were randomly assigned to use WKI or their business-as-usual (49 teachers and 1,296 students in the WKI treatment group and 43 teachers and 918 students in the business-as-usual control group). Each school in the analytic sample had at least one treatment and one control teacher in the analytic sample.
Control condition
The control condition included teachers and student who were not involved with the intervention and continued with "business-as-usual ELA instruction."
Key measures
The researchers performed systematic coding of students’ written language data, which included the number of different words, multi-morphemic words, and connectives. Additionally, researchers used administrative data of teachers' scores of students writing for cohesiveness, content, and writing conventions using the writing rubric already in place for use district-wide on written language samples collected in the fall and spring.
Data analytic strategy
The research team examined the fall and spring writing samples for the use of academic, multi-morphemic words, and connective words. The investigators examined individual patterns of growth to test for effects of instructional approach. Investigators fit a model that predicted the change in academic word use while considering the nested structure of the data and examined potential predictors of growth (teacher, gender, free or reduced-price lunch eligibility, exceptionality, and English proficiency) using a two-level hierarchical linear model with students nested within teachers and schools.
Key outcomes
- Small but significant increases in academic word use in written responses were seen from fall to spring (Wood & Schatschneider, 2022a). Results from a two-level hierarchical linear model with students nested within teachers indicated that the supplemental instructional approach predicted change in academic word use from fall to spring for students with differential effects by English Learner status. The morphology-focused supplemental instruction was related to larger gains in academic word use in writing than business-as-usual for students with language-based learning disabilities and students with fluent English proficiency. English Learners with limited English proficiency showed similar outcomes in both conditions.
- There were significant increases in teachers’ ratings of writing quality from fall to spring. Teachers’ ratings of written language quality were significantly related to linguistic features including lexical diversity (e.g., number of different words), use of academic words and use of advanced connective words (e.g., although, however). Additionally, results from a two-level hierarchical linear model with students nested within classrooms indicated that there was a significant interaction between free/reduced lunch eligibility and initial performance in predicting the change in quality from fall to spring. After taking initial writing quality into account, proficiency in English and the presence of language-based learning disabilities were significant predictors of students’ gains in writing quality across the school year (Wood & Schatschneider, 2022b).
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Project contributors
Products and publications
Publications:
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
Select publications:
Fumero, K. & Wood, C. (2022). Grammatical Verb Errors: Differences between English Learners with and without Diagnosed Language-Based Learning Disabilities. Language Speech and Hearing in the Schools. 53(1):122-132.
Fumero, K. & Wood, C. (2021). Verb errors in 5th grade English learners’ written responses: Relation to writing quality. Languages, 6(2), 71. doi.org/10.3390/languages6020071
Wood, C. L. (2020). Connective use in academic writing by students with language learning disabilities from diverse linguistic backgrounds. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 43(1):51-60.
Wood, C. & Schatschneider, C. (2022a). Growth in Written Academic Word Use in Response to Morphology-Focused Supplemental Instruction. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 35(2):399-426.
Wood, C. & Schatschneider, C. (2022b). Differential Growth in Writing Quality of Students in Fifth Grade from Diverse Backgrounds. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 38(2):168-183.
Wood, C., Schatschneider, C., & VelDink, A. (2020). The relation between academic word use and reading comprehension. Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 52(1):273-287.
Wood, C., & Schatschneider, C. (2020). Examining Writing Measures and Achievement for Students of Varied Language Abilities and Linguistic Backgrounds Using Structural Equation Modeling. Reading Writing Quarterly, 37(1):65-81.
Available data:
Interested individuals can contact the research team for access to de-identified data.
Supplemental information
Co-Principal Investigators: Timetia Creed (HCPS); Christopher Schatschneider (FSU); Linda Gaughan (HCPS)
Partner Institution: Hillsborough County Public Schools
Questions about this project?
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