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.…

By the upper elementary grades, writing becomes an essential tool both for learning and for showing what you know. Students who struggle significantly with writing are at a terrible disadvantage. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate that only 25% of students can be classified as competent writers; students with…

This article examines the Common Core State Standards as they apply to writing and students with learning disabilities (LD). We first consider why the implementation of these standards is advantageous to writing instruction for students with LD as well as the challenges in implementing them. Next, we make the following four recommendations in…

A random sample of language arts, social studies, science, and math high school teachers from across the United States were surveyed about their use of writing to support student learning. Four out of every five teachers reported they used writing to support student learning, applying on average 24 different writing activities across the school…

Writing may be an especially useful tool for improving the reading comprehension of lower performing readers and students with disabilities. However, it is reasonable to expect that students with poor writing skills in particular, may actually be less adept at using writing to improve their reading skills, and may not be able to do so without…

This review assessed the use of self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) for teaching written composition strategies to students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorders. We examined the participants and the settings in which SRSD has been used, the writing strategies tested, genres addressed, and the effects of SRSD on outcome measures.…

The purpose of this study was to determine what students know about the process of writing and the characteristics of stories, persuasive arguments, and informational reports. Participants were 50 grade 5 students. Students responded to questions about writing process and the three different types of writing, and showed a nuanced but relatively…

Over the years, the author has drawn on a variety of friends, both fictional and real, to help him make specific points when writing professional papers and books for teachers, administrators, and researchers. This included Snoopy and other Peanut characters to describe how struggling writers compose; Calvin and his imaginary tiger Hobbes to…

Explicitly and systematically teaching strategies for planning and drafting specific types of text has improved the writing of elementary and middle school students with disabilities in previous studies. In this investigation, we examined the effect of teaching a planning and drafting strategy for persuasive writing to high school students with…

The present study replicates and extends previous research regarding the effects of self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) within a school wide positive behavior support model among students with writing difficulties who also had either internalizing or externalizing behavior patterns. Two multiple-probe designs, involving 13 second-grade…

We examined the extent to which strategies instruction, using the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model, would enhance the writing, engagement during writing, and behavior of 44 second-grade students identified as having behavioral and writing difficulties. This study occurred within a comprehensive, integrated, three-tiered model of…

In the present study, participants were 127 3rd-grade students, to 64 of whom (33 boys, 31 girls) the authors taught a general strategy and a genre-specific strategy for planning and writing stories; procedures for regulating the use of these strategies, the writing process, and their writing behaviors; and knowledge about the basic purpose and…

Writing performance for a large number of adolescents, with and without learning disabilities (LD), in the United States is below the level required for success in college and in the world of work. Despite the importance of writing and students' with LD documented difficulties in this academic domain, writing intervention research for adolescents…

Research investigating how students who struggle with learning, as well as typically achieving students, can develop powerful self-regulation and academic strategies has become a major endeavor in both general and special education. In this article, we examine how one model of cognitive strategies instruction, Self-Regulated Strategy Development…

One ingredient that may serve as a catalyst for writing development is changes in writing knowledge. This study assessed the veracity of two tenets underlying this proposal: that skilled writers are more knowledgeable than less skilled writers, and that individual differences in knowledge are related to writing performance. Both of these…