Self-Regulated Strategy Development: A Validated Model to Support Students Who Struggle with Writing
Tanya Santangelo, Karen R.Harris and Steve Graham
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 consistently
increases content knowledge, writing quality, strategic behavior, self-regulation
skills, self-efficacy, and motivation among students of varying ages
and ability levels, but especially those with learning disabilities. Further,
these improvements are maintained over time and generalized across settings,
genres, people, and media. In this article, common challenges with
writing are reviewed, the SRSD model is presented, and an illustration of
how a persuasive writing strategy was taught to a small group of fifth- and
sixth-grade students is offered.
Place Value and Mathematics
for Students with Mild Disabilities: Data and Suggested
Practices
John F. Cawley, Rene S. Parmar, Lynn M. Lucas-Fusco,
Joy D. Kilian, and Teresa E. Foley
Place value is a phenomenon that has ominous implications
for developing number sense and meaning and for using alternative algorithms
and alternative representations within whole number arithmetic.
For the most part, school programs examine place value at a surface
level, with a primary focus on having the student identify or state a number
value according to its positional setting. For example, in 146 the student
is asked to state the value of the "4" as 40 or as four
10's. Seldom is place value examined for its deep structure potential by incorporating, for
example, expanded notation to complete an item. Our interest
is in the deep structure view of place value models
(e.g., Ross, 1986, 1989, 1990), which delved more deeply into selected
meanings of place value and their implications. In modeling the work of
Ross with a sample of students with mild disabilities, the tasks were constructed
from her model and the data are presented following her procedure.
This paper presents data from a developmental inquiry of the place
value performance of 126 students with mild disabilities on six place
value tasks. A discussion of the multiplicity of meanings and activities related
to knowing and doing arithmetic with an emphasis on place value is presented.
Strategy Instruction in Reading Comprehension: An Intervention Study for Students with Learning Disabilities
Faye Antoniou and Elmar Souvignier
Teaching reading strategies and guiding students towards self-regulated
reading routines are promising approaches to fostering reading comprehension
in students with learning disabilities. The aim of this study was to
evaluate in a sample of 73 fifth to eighth graders with learning disabilities
(IQ higher than 85 and reading skills below expectation) a reading-strategy
program containing reading and self-regulation strategies. The program
was taught to the experimental group by their general or special education
teachers, whereas the control group received traditional reading
instruction. A pre-, post- and followup design was used during an entire
academic year assessing reading-strategy knowledge, reading comprehension,
and reading self-efficacy. Immediately after completion of the program
only effects on reading strategy knowledge were significant; however,
followup measures yielded meaningful gains in the experimental group
for reading comprehension (d = .80), reading-strategy knowledge (d =
.62), and reading self-efficacy (d = .78).
The Effect of Asymmetry on the 2x2 Kappa Coefficient: Application to the Study of Learning Disabilities
Teresa Rivas-Moya and María-José González-Valenzuela
In educational practice, for the evaluation and diagnosis of learning disabilities
(LD), it is advisable to use standardized tests together with observation
questionnaires. When observation questionnaires are used in the
study of LD, Cohen’s (1960) kappa coefficient (k) is frequently applied as
a measure of agreement between two raters when they independently classify
a sample of subjects in several categories. In practice, a good interpretation
cannot be made if the conditions surrounding the calculation are
not taken into consideration. This investigation presents a study of asymmetry
and its effect on the kinterpretation. In Study 1, the importance of
symmetry is highlighted by means of several examples that show agreement
between two raters when classifying 60 subjects in one of two categories.
From these examples the interpretation of k is complemented with
the information given by (a) asymmetry analyzed by descriptive and
graphical methods and hypothesis tests; and (b) other values, such as maximum
observed agreement, maximum reachable agreement, and maximum
unreachable agreement. In Study 2, the concepts of Study 1 are
applied to examples of LD.
Story Mapping and Its Effects on the Writing Fluency and Word Diversity of Students with Learning Disabilities
Daqi Li
Students with learning disabilities (LD) often experience difficulties in
writing fluently and using a diversity of words. To help these students, specific
and effective writing strategies must be incorporated into instruction
and demonstrated to them through modeling. This study examined the
effectiveness of using a story map and story map questions to improve the
story writing fluency and word usage diversity of four students with LD
using a multiple-probe design. Results showed that three of the four students
improved their writing fluency. Regarding the diversity of word
usage, no considerable changes were found in the students’ writing performance.
This finding supports the use of the story mapping strategy by
teachers who are looking for ways to improve the writing fluency of students
with LD. For students who struggle with the diversity of word usage
in story writing, it is suggested this strategy be used in combination with
other strategies that focus on improving word usage.
