How Can Teachers use CBM to Monitor a Student’s Progress in Written Expression?

Learn how to effectively monitor student growth with CBM-WE. These techniques give teachers a clear-cut and time efficient way to assess writing skills in their students.

Monitor your student’s progress in the mechanics and conventions of writing with CBM…

Tracking student growth in emerging writing skills can be vague and time-consuming for teachers. However, Curriculum-Based Measurement-Written Expression (CBM-WE) is an efficient, reliable method of formative student assessment that yields numeric indicators that are useful when evaluating student progress and instruction plans for teachers. These steps include total words written, correctly spelled words, and correct writing sequences. CBM-WE probes are writing exercises given to multiple students at a time with an administration time of about four minutes, and therefore, a time efficient means to monitor a student’s progress in the mechanics and conventions of writing. The following are the three stages of assessment:

1. Total Words Written (TWW)

To score the first assessment, the examiner totals the number of words in each line written during the three-minute writing probe. This score is recorded, but typically not shared with students as some students will write more words in the next assessment which may not be indicative of real improvement.

Any letter or group of letters separated by a space is defined as a word, even if the word is misspelled or is not a real word. Misspelled words are included in the tally, although numbers written in numerical form (e.g., 5, 17) are not counted. For example: “The sky was blue” (TWW=4) or “The sky was blew” (TWW=4).

2. Correctly Spelled Words(CSW)

The next stage of assessment is the measurement of correctly spelled words written during the CBM-WE assessment. If poor spelling is a blocker to student writing, the teacher may select this monitoring target.

The examiner counts only those words in the writing sample that are spelled correctly. Words are considered separately, not within the context of a sentence.

3. Correct Writing Sequences(CWS)

The last stage of assessment is the scoring of correct writing sequences. The examiner goes beyond the confines of the isolated word to consider units of writing and their relation to one another. Using this approach, the examiner starts at the beginning of the writing sample and looks at each successive pair of writing units (writing sequence). Words are considered separate writing units, as are essential marks of punctuation. To receive credit, writing sequences must be correctly spelled and be grammatically correct. The words in each writing sequence must also make sense within the context of the sentence. In effect, the student’s writing is judged according to the standards of informal standard American English. A caret (^) is used to mark the presence of a correct writing sequence.

These probes will guide students to develop excellent cohesive writing and spelling skills. With Curriculum-Based Measures teachers can monitor their own students’ progress and then make instructional decisions reflecting the results.

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