First Author Writing Curriculum is a comprehensive curriculum that supports daily writing instruction in self-contained and autism classrooms. It was designed to provide explicit daily instruction in both writing, and speaking and listening that is grounded in early writing development. If you’re using a district-created writing curriculum in your self-contained and resource classrooms, First Author will help systematize instruction and speed up progress monitoring. First Author Writing Curriculum includes several writing measures that monitor progress and are used to set goals and measure outcomes. These multiple formative and summative measures guide instruction. The anchor measurement tool is called the Development Writing Scale, this 14-point scale is sensitive to the slightest progressions from scribbling to paragraph writing.