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Article Excerpt
Abstract. In this study, supplemental writing instruction in planning and revising was used to improve the stories written by young writers with learning disabilities (LD) and poor writing skills. Six second-grade students practiced a strategy for planning and writing stories using the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) approach and then revised their stories after instructor modeling of revising. After learning the strategy and practicing revisions, the students wrote post-instruction stories that were longer, more complete in terms of story grammar elements, and qualitatively better. The students also increased the amount of time they spent planning their stories at post-instruction as well as the number of revisions attempted.
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Many school-age children experience difficulty mastering writing. In fact, in 2002, the majority of students in 4th, 8th, and 12th grade demonstrated only partial mastery of the writing skills and knowledge needed at their respective grade levels in the area of writing (Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003). Although alarming, these findings are not unexpected when considering the intricacies of the writing process. Writing is a highly complex and demanding task. Although many students struggle occasionally with writing, writing is especially difficult for less skilled writers and writers with a learning disability (LD) (Graham & Harris, 1989). For these children, major obstacles often include grammar, punctuation, and spelling; audience awareness; planning; content generation; and revising (Newcomer, Nodine, & Barenbaum, 1988).
Background
Planning. Less skilled writers and writers with LD may not engage in mindful planning, instead relying on what Scardamalia and Bereiter (1986) have described as a "knowledge telling" behavior, in which students write down whatever information they can recall about a topic with little regard for the rhetorical goals of the writing task at hand and little effort expended to shape the ideas to meet audience needs. Because of such behaviors, these students may produce writings that are brief and poorly organized. In addition, they may not include the most basic story elements, such as an ending or a premise (Graham & Harris, 1989).
The good news is that planning behavior can be improved through strategic instruction. Thus, planning strategies have been used to teach paragraph writing skills (Welch & Jensen, 1991), stories (Sawyer, Graham, & Harris, 1992), persuasive essays (De La Paz & Graham, 2002), expository texts (Wong et al., 1994), and narrative texts (Simmons et al., 1994). Although the evidence regarding strategic instruction in planning is convincing, little research has focused on very young writers, with the exception of three studies, which will be briefly summarized below.
In the first study, Danoff, Harris, and Graham (1993) taught a story-grammar writing strategy to one fourth-and two fifth-grade classes. Data were collected from 6 students, 4 fifth-graders and 2 fourth-graders. Three of the students had LD. After instruction, all of the writers improved the schematic structure and overall quality of their stories.
In a more recent study, a planning strategy was taught to second-grade writers (Saddler, Moran, Graham, & Harris, 2004). Following instruction, most of the students' stories were more complete in terms of story elements, longer, and qualitatively better. In addition, five of the students' personal narratives were qualitatively better, longer, and contained more elements.
Finally, Saddler (2006) replicated Saddler et al. (2004), employing strategic planning to improve the story writing ability of six young writers with LD and poor writing skills. After learning the strategy, the students' post-instruction and maintenance stories became more complete, longer, and qualitatively better, and planning time at post-instruction and maintenance increased.
Revising. Revising is an essential element of the writing process. In fact, to some, writing is revising (cf. Murray, 1978). Good writers invest time and effort reflecting on how what they have written may sound to their audience while attending to elements that are somehow dissonant with their original intent (Hayes & Flowers, 1986).
Although revising is an essential element of the writing process, many students with disabilities do not view revising in this way. Thus, the approach of students with writing disabilities to revising is ineffective, consisting of correcting mechanical errors (often unsuccessfully), changing one word for another, and making the end product neater (MacArthur & Graham, 1987; MacArthur, Schwartz, & Graham, 1991).
We chose to focus on revising in the current study because of the importance of revising within the writing process and because there is relatively little research on the impact of revising on very young writers (we chose to focus on second-graders). The studies that have explored the effects of revising instruction on very young writers suggest that (a) group conferences can positively affect revision knowledge and activity (Fitzgerald & Stamm, 1990, 1992); (b) teacher questioning improves ambiguities (Vukelich & Leverson, 1988); (c) analysis of semantic and surface flaws increases rates of revision (Cameron, Edmonds, Wigmore, Hunt, & Linton, 1997); and (d) use of strategies can improve revision (DeLaPaz & Graham, 2002). However, researchers have never combined strategy instruction in planning with revising practice; therefore, the effects of such a pairing are unknown.
The Current Study
In this study, we focused on planning and revising. Our intervention supplemented the students' regular writing curriculum by providing direct instruction in these areas. Second-grade students with LD who also experienced difficulty with writing were taught the same strategy for story planning as in the Danoff et al. (1993), Saddler et al. (2004), and Saddler (2006) studies. The same grade level (second grade) as in Saddler et al. (2004) and Saddler (2006) was selected. However, these studies were extended by pairing instruction in story grammar with revising practice through modeling and verbal prompting.
Our research was guided by the following questions: First, would pairing instruction in story grammar with revising practice increase the amount of planning time, the quality, and the number of story grammar elements in the stories written by second-grade students with learning and writing...
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