Educators play an important role in ensuring that students attain the necessary strategic actions to become skilled writers. Studies have indicated that teachers need to consistently embed a larger range of evidence-based writing practices in their instruction to help their students improve the overall quantity and quality of their writing. The effectiveness of Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) reinforces the need to examine additional instructional scaffolds. One potential strategy involves the integrated use of observation and drawing as both a prewriting and revising tool. The body of research regarding the relationship between those three processes is limited. The purpose of this study was to build on the existing body of research to bring new insights to the field of education about writing instruction with an emphasis on SRSD. A quasi-experimental mixed methods approach was used to explore how a strategy combining observation and drawing impacted upper elementary students' writing. Participants were drawn from the fifth-grade population in a rural district in New York's Southern Tier. Quantitative data was collected using a pretest-posttest to capture potential changes in participants' writing on descriptive details, descriptive phrases, and word count, pre- and post-strategy instruction. Qualitative data was gathered using semi-structured interviews and provided descriptions of focal participants' and their teacher's reflections on the development of participants' pre- and post-strategy instruction writing. An independent samples t-test indicated that students in the strategy instruction and comparison groups were not significantly different on the pretest on descriptive elements and descriptive phrases but were significantly different on word count. The strategy instruction group scored significantly higher than the comparison group on the posttest on all dependent variables. Paired samples t-test findings indicated that students in the strategy instruction group included significantly more descriptive elements and descriptive phrases and had higher word counts in their writing from pretest to posttest. There were no significant differences for the comparison group from pretest to posttest on any dependent variables. Qualitative findings supported and expanded the quantitative results. A thematic analysis of the interview data indicated that the strategy instruction impacted students' elaboration, use of analogies, and technical language and provided a scaffold for the organization of their writing. Suggestions for future research and implications for practice are discussed. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]