Identifying texts in the Warning Zone: Empirical foundation of a screening instrument to adapt early writing instruction

Abstract

This article addresses the basis for the development of the screening tool Norwegian Early Writers Signal (NEWS). The aim of the study was to develop a tool for teachers in grades 1–3 to identify student texts in ‘the Warning Zone’, i.e., texts that signal insufficient overall text quality associated with students in need of extra instructional support. Text norms were elicited from a panel of 14 experts in a standardsetting seminar. The standard-setting procedure was a benchmarking-like approach in which panelists chose texts that according to their judgement were in the Warning Zone. Additionally, in an online questionnaire, data on experts’ expectation growth pattern for eight text quality aspects in grades 1–3 were collected. Furthermore, student texts in the Warning Zone were marked and then included in the screening tool to concretize the norms, showing that texts in this zone can take several shapes. The article discusses what steps can be taken to further validate and implement the NEWS tool.