Child Reading & Writing Lab (CRAWL)
About CRAWL
Cynthia Puranik, Ph.D./CCC-SLP, is a Professor in the department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and a certified speech-language pathologist. In addition, Puranik is an affiliate faculty at the Center for Research on the Challenges of Acquiring Language and Literacy initiative at Georgia State University and a certified speech-language pathologist.
Her research focuses on examining the developmental progression of early writing and factors that contribute to writing skills, assessment of emergent and early writing skills, exploring the concurrent relationship between children’s skills within literacy domains, understanding the relationship between oral and written language skills, assessing and facilitating writing in elementary school children, and examining the relationship between writing and aspects of cognitive functioning. She has simultaneously explored both basic theoretical and highly applied research pathways to address questions pertaining to children’s emergent and early conventional writing.
Current Research Projects
- Peer-Assisted Writing Strategies (PAWS):The primary goal of this project is to test the efficacy of an early writing intervention aimed at improving kindergarten students’ writing skills by teaching them to coach their peers on basic transcription and early writing skills. This is a five year, multi-state project funded by IES, involving Georgia State University, Stanford and Southern Methodist University. As part of the project, additional questions about the reliability and validity of curriculum based writing measures are also being addressed.
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- Writing in Students with Language-based Learning Disabilities (WILLD):The purpose of this project is to create an intervention that targets word, sentence, and discourse level writing skills in 4th and 5th grade students with LLD. The intervention is being designed to be administered as part of an individualized education plan (IEP) delivered by special education teachers or speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to improve writing outcomes in students with LLD. The intervention will go through four iterations of development over the four years of the project. Project WILLD is funded by IES and is being conducted in partnership with Dr. Anthony Koutsoftas (PI), Seton Hall.