The Cognitive Curriculum uses a nontraditional approach to language instruction. Children play an active role, learning from concrete experiences while writing and reading their own material. This type of instruction has been developed with Project Follow Through students and has been particularly successful in writing instruction. The Productive Language Assessment Tasks (PLAT) were designed to assess the impact of this program. This task-oriented instrument is suitable for measuring nontraditional objectives, and serves as an alternative to standardized tests. The PLAT was administered to second and third grade children enrolled in the Follow Through program in five different U.S. locations. A comparable non-Follow Through sample was located in four of the five sites, and given the same test. Writing samples were produced as a result of the test, and reviewed for a number of variables. These include fluency; syntactic maturity; vocabulary diversity; descriptive quantity; diversity and scope; reporting quality; narrative organization; explanatory statements; and decodability. Results indicated that by the third grade, positive effects of the Follow Through program were evident. Reports and narratives written by Follow Through Children were more complex and more fluent than those written by non-Follow Through children. (GDC)