Writing is an essential literacy skill and under-achievement can have life-long adverse consequences. Effective literacy teaching and intervention strategies early in a child’s education can improve educational outcomes (Berninger & Amtmann, 2003). Researchers have yet to reach consensus regarding how best to measure children’s early writing and what writing components should be assessed (Puranik et al., 2020; Quinn & Bingham, 2019); although there is agreement that writing can be conceptualised as having two essential components: ideation and transcription. Likewise, teachers require a range of valid and reliable assessment tools to inform teaching, monitor progress, and identify children in need of intervention (Allen et al., 2018; Coker & Ritchey, 2010; McMaster et al., 2020). Currently, there are few early writing assessment tools that evaluate both ideation and transcription, using both quantitative and qualitative measures. Few studies have investigated the utility and feasibility of assessment measures commonly used in empirical research within the context of classroom practice, especially with beginning writers. The four studies reported in this thesis examined the key components that facilitate early writing success and investigated a range of writing assessment measures to support teaching and learning within the classroom context.

The first study, reported in Chapter 2, compared 76 six-year-old children’s ability to retell a story in both the oral and written modes. It examined the two essential components of writing: ideation and transcription. A comparative research design was used to evaluate concurrent measures of children’s oral and written narrative retell skills, and to explore relationships between children’s retell performance and other language and literacy skills. Specifically, oral narrative comprehension, phoneme awareness, spelling and reading were examined. Differences in the language and literacy skills of groups based on their performance in each retell task were also analysed. The results of paired sample t tests found that children produced significantly more words, a greater number of adverbs, and better-quality sentences in their oral retells. Hierarchical linear modelling indicated that 79% of the variance in written retell scores was explained by ideation (47%) and transcription measures (32%), and post hoc group comparisons revealed significant differences in the writing performance of children who had lower scores on transcription related measures (e.g., handwriting, nonword spelling).

The second study, described in Chapter 3, addressed the need to provide classroom practitioners with valid and reliable quantitative and qualitative measures of early writing. Using a mixed-methods non-experimental research design, writing assessments were trialled by the researcher and 16 experienced classroom practitioners with 42 Year 1 and Year 2 children. Writing assessment data and practitioner feedback, via an online questionnaire and a semi-structured follow-up interview, were used to evaluate the effectiveness the assessment measures. Results from descriptive analyses indicated that nearly all measures were sufficiently sensitive to measure a range of writing ability. Analyses of repeated measures indicated that foundational skills (i.e., name writing, print concepts, and writing stages) and alphabet tasks (i.e., copying, from memory, allograph, and dictation) were able to demonstrate growth within one school term. All but one scoring measure demonstrated an acceptable level of reliability. Feedback from classroom practitioners indicated strong agreement regarding the utility of the assessment measures, providing evidence of social and ecological validity. Overall, the foundational skills and alphabet copying tasks were considered the most appropriate for emergent writers at school entry, and as progress monitoring measures across the first terms at school. The alphabet from memory, allograph, and dictation tasks, the sentence writing and dictation tasks, and the text writing tasks were most suited to children who had developed phoneme awareness and some letter-sound knowledge.

The third study, reported in Chapter 4, further examined the effectiveness of the writing assessment measures utilised in Chapter 3 by evaluating the writing of 133 five- and six-year-old children over three school terms. This longitudinal comparison study measured children’s writing progress and achievement at the beginning of the school year and at two further time points, over a 28-week period of instruction. This study also evaluated the effectiveness of the assessments in monitoring progress across the key components of ideation and transcription, as well as classification accuracy in identifying children at risk for writing difficulties. Repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) indicated that children made significant progress across the three time points for name writing, alphabet copying and text writing. Group comparisons revealed that children’s gender, age, and oral language ability influenced growth rates and achievement. Results of hierarchical linear regression indicated that name writing and alphabet copying at Time 1 were significant predictors of text writing performance at Time 3. An evaluation of at-risk scores for each time point found that, together, the Time 1 name writing and alphabet copying tasks were the most accurate (83.7%) and that text writing tasks became more accurate screening and monitoring measures after the first term.

The final study, reported in Chapter 5, further examined the effectiveness of the writing assessment measures, including selected measures trialled by classroom practitioners. Utilising a mixed-methods non-experimental case study research design, longitudinal assessment data for 35 Year 1 and Year 2 children and qualitative feedback from seven teachers was analysed. The at-risk classification accuracy of writing measures was compared with measures utilised as part of a structured literacy approach. The relationship between children’s Time 3 writing performance and more advanced measures of children’s transcription skills was also examined. The most accurate at-risk measures were letter-sound recognition, name writing, and the text rubric total for the New Entrant group, and initial phoneme identity, alphabet copying, and nonword spelling for the Year 1-2 group. Significant moderate to strong correlations were observed between children’s Time 3 writing performance and advanced transcription skill measures. Sentence dictation demonstrated the strongest relationship to text writing performance and was the most accurate at-risk measure for the Year 1-2 group. Evidence of social and ecological validity was gained from feedback from teachers, who reported finding the assessment tasks to be effective and appropriate for use in the classroom context and indicated that the sentence and text writing tasks would continue to be part of their literacy program. Comparisons of the writing progress of two children revealed that differences in writing progress and achievement were linked to spelling and key foundational literacy skills.

The research reported in this thesis offers insights into the range of writing skills demonstrated by five- and six-year-old children during their first two years at school. The findings provide evidence of the key language and literacy skills underpinning the ideation and transcription components of writing that influence early writing achievement. Oral language skills were shown to make a unique and significant contribution to early writing. Evidence also highlights the pivotal role transcription skills play in the early stages of writing development. This thesis bridges the gap between research and practice by developing valid and reliable assessment tasks that support teaching and learning in the classroom context and that are valued by educational practitioners.