Natalie Olinghouse

University of Connecticut | UConn · Department of Educational Psychology

We examined the degree to which content of states’ writing standards and assessments (using measures of content range, frequency, balance, and cognitive complexity) and their alignment were related to student writing achievement on the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), while controlling for student, school, and state characte...

Many students do not meet expected standards of writing performance, despite the need for writing competence in and out of school. As policy instruments, writing content standards have an impact on what is taught and how students perform. This study reports findings from an evaluation of the content of a sample of seven diverse states’ current writ...

This white paper describes the Elementary Mathematical Writing Task Force's recommendations for the types of and purposes for elementary mathematical writing. It presents how the group distinguished "mathematical writing" from other kinds of writing that take place in mathematics classrooms and considerations of this work. Download at http://mathwr...

Though writing plays an important role in the academic, social, and economic success of individuals, typical writing instruction in the United States generally does not reflect evidence-based practices. One potential reason for this is limited signposting of such practices in academic standards used to guide teaching and learning. Following review...

Though writing plays an important role in academic, social, and economic success, typical writing instruction generally does not reflect evidence-based practices (EBPs). One potential reason for this is limited signposting of EBPs in standards. We analyzed the content of writing standards from a representative sample of states and the Common Core S...

In this article, we compare the Common Core State Standards in Writing to the Hayes cognitive model of writing, adapted to describe the performance of young and developing writers. Based on the comparison, we propose the inclusion of standards for motivation, goal setting, writing strategies, and attention by writers to the text they have just writ...

Despite the need for writing competence in and out of school, writing has been deemed the neglected "R" in educational practice. Moreover, many students do not meet expected standards of writing performance. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS), adopted by 45 states, provides an opportunity to change the state of writing instruction on a national...

This study examined whether discourse and topic knowledge separately predicted the overall quality and the inclusion of basic genre elements in 5th grade students' stories, persuasive papers, and informational text once the other type of knowledge as well as topic interest, spelling, handwriting fluency, length of text, and gender were controlled....

The current study examines data from students in grades 4-8 who participated in a statewide computer-based benchmark writing assessment that featured automated essay scoring and automated feedback. We examined whether the use of automated feedback was associated with gains in writing quality across revisions to an essay, and with transfer effects t...

This article provides recommendations for teachers to better prepare 3rd through 12th grade students with learning disabilities for large-scale writing assessments. The variation across large-scale writing assessments and the multiple needs of struggling writers indicate the need for test preparation to be embedded within a comprehensive, evidence-...

Although writing plays an important role in the academic, psychosocial, and economic success of individuals, typical writing instruction and assessment in the United States generally does not reflect evidence-based practices. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) place a great deal of emphasis on written expression and may encourage an increased f...

This article presents a cross-case analysis of two fourth-grade teachers' instruction while preparing their students for an English language arts test. Both teachers taught in high-needs urban public schools and were identified as effective teachers of balanced literacy through a multiple nomination process. This article uses situated literacy theo...

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of vocabulary in writing across three genres. Fifth graders (N = 105) wrote three compositions: story, persuasive, and informative. Each composition revolved around the topic of outer space to control for background knowledge. Written compositions were scored for holistic writing quality and several...

This study evaluated large-scale state writing assessments for the inclusion of motivational characteristics in the writing task and written prompt. We identified 6 motivational variables from the authentic activity literature: time allocation, audience specification, audience intimacy, definition of task, allowance for multiple perspectives, and r...

Standards-based reform in the United States relies on challenging academic content standards and accountability methods to assess student progress toward or mastery of these academic content standards. In the area of writing, states frequently use a single-occasion, single-genre, holistically scored writing assessment as the primary accountability...

Writing well is not just an option for young people-it is a necessity. Along with reading comprehension, writing skill is a predictor of academic success and a basic requirement for participation in civic life and in the global economy. Yet every year in the United States large numbers of adolescents graduate from high school unable to write at the...

Reports an error in "The relationship between the discourse knowledge and the writing performance of elementary-grade students" by Natalie G. Olinghouse and Steve Graham (Journal of Educational Psychology, 2009[Feb], Vol 101[1], 37-50). The DOI published was incorrect. The correct DOI for this article is provided in the erratum. (The following abst...

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 101(2) of Journal of Educational Psychology (see record 2009-04640-012). The DOI published was incorrect. The correct DOI for this article is provided in the erratum.] This study examined whether discourse knowledge about various forms of writing predicted young developing writer...

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between measures of written vocabulary and writing quality. Participants included 92 second-grade students and 101 fourth-grade students. Students completed two writing samples: one an experimenter-developed writing task and the other, a standardized assessment of writing quality. Research q...

This study examined the student-level and instruction-level predictors of narrative writing fluency and quality. Participants included 120 third-grade students from 13 classrooms. Student predictors included measures of reading, handwriting, spelling, IQ, grammatical understanding, and gender. Instructional predictors focused on the amount of time...

This study investigated whether 2 different progress monitoring assessments differentially predicted growth in reading skills associated with systematic phonics instruction. Oral reading fluency (ORF) was compared with an intervention aligned word list (LAWL) as predictors of growth in untimed and timed decoding and word identification and text rea...

The authors explored a new means of assessing responsiveness to decoding-skill intervention to model individual differences in the transfer of decoding-skill gains to other aspects of reading acquisition in 35 children, Grades 3 through 5, with reading disabilities. Seven different parameters, representing responsiveness to decoding instruction, we...

Thesis (Ph. D. in Special Education)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2006. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-204).