The present study aims to evaluate the effects of an argumentative writing strategy (POW+TREE) on four struggling ninth graders' ability to produce persuasive texts regarding their point of view on different questions. I applied a multiple-baseline design to evaluate outcomes across participants. The results indicate the intervention helped…

This study tested the effectiveness of a writing planning strategy (STOP & LIST) with four struggling students from fourth grade. A multiple-baseline design (AB) was used with baselines consisting of between five and seven daily probes. The duration of the intervention was between five and seven 25-minute sessions. A randomization procedure…

Good writing skills are vital to success in school and, later, in the workplace. However, many elementary and secondary students fail to invest sufficient time and effort in planning what they want to write and, consequently, produce texts of inferior quality. One approach to help struggling children and adolescents acquire effective writing…

Most students who struggle with writing have particular trouble with planning a text. They do not find themselves sufficiently able to generate content and organize the ideas they wish to address into a coherent order. STOP & LIST is a well-proven strategy that has the potential to help students mold an internal representation of the text in…

Poor writers generally spend little time developing an outline and otherwise planning written assignments before composing them. Far too many students in elementary and secondary education fall behind in their planning and composition skills because they do not receive appropriate instruction. In this single-case study, we tested the effects of an…

The alarming results of large studies such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP; National Center for Education Statistics, 2012) point to an urgent need for writing support and call for specific and effective methods to foster writing competencies. The main purpose of this paper is to describe an innovative peer-assisted…

Achieving sustained student engagement with practice in computer-based writing strategy training can be a challenge. One potential solution is to foster engagement by embedding practice in educational games; yet there is currently little research comparing the effectiveness of game-based practice versus more traditional forms of practice. In this…

Research on expert performance suggests that deliberate practice provides optimal opportunities for expertise development. This study examined whether the provision of computer-based scaffolding (CBS) guiding deliberate practice facilitates students' development of writing expertise. A CBS environment "escribo" was designed to externally…