Students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD) frequently experience significant difficulty mastering basic academic skills. This meta-analysis focuses on one specific potential area of learning difficulties for these students: namely, writing. To identify the extent and depth of the potential writing challenges faced by students…

Writing is a fundamental part of engaging in professional, social, community, and civic activities. Nearly 70 percent of salaried employees have at least some responsibility for writing, and the ability to write "well" is a critical component of being able to communicate effectively to a variety of audiences. Because writing is a…

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.…

Despite the importance of spelling for both writing and reading, there is considerable disagreement regarding how spelling skills are best acquired. During this and virtually all of the last century, some scholars have argued that spelling should not be directly or formally taught as such instruction is not effective or efficient. We conducted a…

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…

Strategic and Interactive Writing Instruction (SIWI) has led to improved writing and language outcomes among deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) middle grades students. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of SIWI on the written expression of DHH elementary students across recount/personal narrative, information report, and persuasive…

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…

In this meta-analysis, the impact of writing interventions on the quality of writing produced by students with learning disabilities (LD) was assessed. Ancestral and electronic searches were used to locate experimental, quasi-experimental, and within-subjects design studies with participants in Grades 1-12 with documented LD. The effects of…

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…

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…

This study examined whether attitude toward writing is a unique and separable construct from attitude toward reading for young beginning writers. Participants were 128 first-grade children (70 girls and 58 boys) and 113 third-grade students (57 girls and 56 boys). We individually administered to each child a 24-item attitude measure that contained…

The process approach to writing instruction is one of the most popular methods for teaching writing. The authors conducted meta-analysis of 29 experimental and quasi-experimental studies conducted with students in Grades 1-12 to examine if process writing instruction improves the quality of students' writing and motivation to write. For students…

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…