In an effort to identify effective instructional practices for teaching writing to elementary grade students, we conducted a meta-analysis of the writing intervention literature, focusing our efforts on true and quasi-experiments. We located 115 documents that included the statistics for computing an effect size (ES). We calculated an average…

Students with writing difficulties often struggle with the planning, composing, and revising skills required for effective writing. Fortunately, researchers have documented that explicit, interactive, scaffolded development of powerful composing strategies and strategies for self-regulating the writing process, as in Self-Regulated Strategy…

Reading is critical to students' success in and out of school. One potential means for improving students' reading is writing. In this meta-analysis of true and quasi-experiments, Graham and Herbert present evidence that writing about material read improves students' comprehension of it; that teaching students how to write improves their reading…

In this randomized controlled study, 20 second- and third-grade teachers participated in practice-based professional development in strategies instruction in either story or opinion essay writing, using the Self-Regulated Strategies Development (SRSD) instructional model. These teachers worked in schools collaborating with a local university to…

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…

The authors conducted two studies as part of a federally funded project to improve the writing performance of students identified as at risk for behavioral difficulties and struggling with writing. One study focused on improving persuasive writing abilities, whereas the second study focused on improving story writing abilities. Many of the…

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…

Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) is a well-established, thoroughly validated instructional model used to teach a variety of writing strategies to elementary, middle, and high school aged students. In this article, an overview of SRSD is presented. Specifically, this includes a discussion about why students struggle with various aspects…

Many students find writing extremely difficult and frustrating because they are not able to learn and apply the strategies used by skilled writers. Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) is a comprehensive, flexible model that explicitly helps students learn to manage the writing process. An extensive body of research has documented that SRSD…

The effects of a secondary academic intervention, embedded in the context of a positive behavior support model, on the writing of second-grade students at risk for emotional and behavioral disorder and writing problems were examined in this study. Students were taught how to plan and draft a story using the self-regulated strategy development…

Learning to write is a complex process that depends on mastering a variety of processes and skills, including how to plan compositions and regulate writing behavior. One approach that has been used successfully to teach both good and poor writers such processes is Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD). With SRSD, students are taught…

A study examined the effectiveness of a highly explicit, teacher-directed instructional routine used to teach three planning strategies to 20 fourth-fifth graders with learning disabilities. In comparison to peers who received process writing instruction, those taught goal setting, brainstorming, and organizing spent more time planning stories and…

There is considerable concern that the majority of adolescents do not develop the competence in writing they need to be successful in school, the workplace, or their personal lives. A common explanation for why youngsters do not write well is that schools do not do a good job of teaching this complex skill. In an effort to identify effective…

This article discusses the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) approach to teach writing skills to students with learning disabilities. It examines how SRSD is implemented in the classroom, how teachers can plan for and evaluate SRSD, the research evidence supporting SRSD, and the method's six stages. An example in a second grade classroom…

To minimize the negative impact of handwriting and spelling difficulties of students with learning disabilities, it is proposed that explicit and systematic instruction, as well as incidental or natural learning approaches be used to maximize the development of these two basic writing tools. These approaches are examined. (Author/CR)