Teaching Writing Strategies and Spelling to Students with Learning Difficulties

1. CHAPTER NINE ASSESSING AND TEACHING WRITING AND SPELLING

2. Chapter Overview • The chapter presents background and instructional procedures for using writing strategies and teaching spelling, handwriting, and keyboarding to students who have learning difficulties and provides a table showing the pros and cons of teaching cursive versus manuscript.

3. The Writing Process for Students with Learning and Behavior Problems • Setting • Scheduling and preparing materials • Teaching writing conventions • Using the writing process in general education classrooms

4. Monitoring Student Progress • Teachers monitor students’ progress by noting the following: • Whether students can complete the written project • How proficient they are at each element of the writing process (e.g., planning, spelling, handwriting, composing) • Whether they can apply the skills and knowledge to other contexts (e.g., planning, spelling, handwriting, composing) • How they explain the process they are using • Which elements of writing are proceeding as expected (e.g., capital letters) and which require additional instruction (e.g., too many “run-on” sentences)

5. Elements of the Writing Process • Prewriting or planning • Composing • Revising • Editing • Publishing

6. Composing • Many students with learning and behavior problems begin the writing process here. They think of a topic and, without much planning, begin to write. They write ideas as they think of them, and each idea they write serves as a stimulus for the next idea Therefore, students benefit from instruction on how to be more reflective as they write (Graham, Harris, et al., 1995).

7. Composing • One of the skills that students must acquire is how to write sentences that are effective and then to organize these effective sentences into meaningful paragraphs.

8. Composing • In particular, students with learning problems require instruction in how to: • Add vivid words and lively verbs, • Combine short and choppy sentences to make more productive sentences, • Reduce long and run-on sentences • Read and revise to add meaning

9. Composing • Instructional principles and examples include: • Teach students to pain a picture with words by using adjectives to show readers what they mean. • Teach students to avoid using common verbs such as was, were, and said and instead use more interesting verbs such as avoided, clamored, quipped, barked existed, and repeated. • Teach students to list ideas and then to sequence them.

10. Revising • Words that are read incorrectly are counted as errors. Errors include mispronunciations, substitutions, and omissions. • When students pause for more than three seconds, you should tell them the word and then mark it as an error.

11. Editing • In addition to editing their own work, students serve as editors for the work of their peers. Whereas revision focuses mainly on content, editing focuses mainly on mechanics.

12. Editing(continued) • Suggestions to assist students in removing the mechanical errors from their writing: • Have students dictate their story to improve the flow of their writing. • Provide students with a list of key words and words that are hard to spell to assist with writing and editing. • Teach students to use a word book.

13. Editing • Suggestions: (continued) • Promote peer collaboration in editing. • Teach students to use technology to support editing and writing. • Hold students accountable for using the rules of writing they know, such as punctuation, spelling, and other writing conventions that they have been taught.

14. Publishing • Publishing – A piece is prepared in some way that it can be read and shared by others.

15. Why Publish? • Publishing is a way of confirming a student’s hard work and sharing the piece with others. • Writing requires an audience, and periodically we need to share what we write. • It is important for all students to publish – not just the best authors. • Publishing is a way of involving others in the school and home with the students’ writing.

16. Family Involvement • What can families do to promote children’s writing? • Encourage parents/guardians to play with their children and adolescents using words. • Ask them to be sure that the writing they promote and do with their children is fun, interesting, and encourages learning. • As children get older, encourage them to use writing as a means of communicating with grandparents or other family members.

17. Promoting Writing • Writing conference • Establishing a writing community • Write everyday for at least 30 minutes. • Encourage students to develop areas of expertise. • Keep students’ writing in folders. • Share Writing • Using computers to facilitate writing

18. Response to Intervention and Writing • Students with extreme writing challenges may be provided extra time each day (20 minutes) and extra instruction to determine if their writing improved. • Specific research-based strategies like those identified in Graham and Harris (2005) might be implemented. • Teachers can maintain copies of students’ writing to determine if adequate progress in writing has occurred.

19. Writing with Older Students • Research-based practices: • Teach students writing strategies that include planning, revising, and editing their compositions. • Help students combine sentences to achieve more complex sentence types and to summarize texts. • Provide opportunities for students to work together in pairs and groups toward cooperative written products to facilitate quality of composition.

20. Writing with Older Students • Research-based practices: (continued) • Establish goals for students’ writing to improve outcomes. • Give students access to and instruction in word processing to facilitate writing. • Assist students in developing prewriting practices that help generate or organize ideas for writing. • Use inquiry activities to analyze data related to writing reports.

21. Writing with Older Students • Research-based strategies: (continued) • Provide extended time for writing and revision. • Provide students with good models of writing to study and to compare with their own writing. • Use writing as a tool to enhance content knowledge. (Carnegie Corporation of New York, Graham and Perin 2007)

22. Consideration for Students Who Are Culturally and Linguistically Diverse • Have high expectations for all students. • Allow students to write about topics they know and have experienced. • Allow students to teach all of us about their backgrounds and experiences through their writing. • Encourage family involvement in writing. • Create a classroom setting that is culturally compatible. • Use materials, stories, and books that are culturally relevant.

23. Ten Pointers for Teaching Writing to Students with Special Learning Needs • Allocate adequate time for writing. • Provide a range of writing tasks. • Create a social climate that promotes and encourages writing. • Integrate writing with other academic subjects. • Focus on the processes central to writing.

24. Ten Pointers for Teaching Writing to Students with Special Learning Needs(continued) • During the writing phase, focus on the higher-order task of composing, and attend to the basic elements of spelling and punctuation after the writing is complete. • Teach explicit knowledge about characteristics of good writing. • Teach skills that aid higher-level composing. • Ask students to identify goals for improving their writing. • Use instructional practices that are associated with writing for students.

25. Assessing and Teaching Spelling • Most students with learning and behavior disorders need specific instruction in spelling and handwriting largely as a function of their phonological awareness problems. The core phonological deficit is associated with not just reading problems but also spelling problems.

26. Assessing and Teaching Spelling • Error analysis • Traditional spelling instruction • Phonics rules for spelling

27. Principles for Teaching Spelling to Students with Learning Difficulties • Teach in small units • Teach spelling patterns • Provide sufficient practice and feedback • Select appropriate words • Teach spelling through direct instruction • Use instructional language • Maintain previously learned words • Motivate students to spell correctly • Include dictionary training

28. Spelling Approaches • Test-Study-Test Approach • Visualization Approach • The Five-Step Word Study Strategy • Johnson and Myklebust Technique • Cloze Spelling Approach • Fernald Method • Gillingham and Stillman Approach • Constant Time Delay Procedure • Self-Questioning Strategy for Teaching Spelling • Morphographic Spelling

29. Instructional Practices in Spelling • Providing a weekly list of words. • Error imitation and modeling. • Allocate 3 spelling words per day. • Modality • Computer-assisted instruction • Peer tutoring • Study techniques • Explicit and systematic instruction in spelling

30. Teaching Handwriting and Keyboarding • Handwriting Problems • Poor letter formation • Letters that are too large, too small, or inconsistent in size • Incorrect use of capital and lowercase letters • Letters that are crowded and cramped • Inconsistent spacing between letters • Incorrect alignment (letters do not rest on a base line) • Incorrect or inconsistent slant of cursive letters • Lack of fluency in writing • Incomplete words or missing words • Slow writing even when asked to write as quickly as possible

31. Manuscript and Cursive Writing • Traditionally, most students learn manuscript writing first and then, generally in second or third grade, make the transition to cursive writing. • The bulk of evidence appears to support teaching students with learning disabilities to use manuscript effectively and neatly, with the exception of learning to write their name in cursive.

32. Reversals • Teachers should recognize the following: • Reversals are common before the age of six or seven. • A few students continue to reverse numbers and letters after the age of seven and may need direct intervention techniques.

33. Components of Handwriting • Legibility • Legibility is the most important goal of handwriting instruction, and incorrect letter formation is the most frequent interference. • Fluent writing • Just as not knowing how to read words fluently impairs reading comprehension, inadequate fluency in writing letters and words impairs written expression and the quality of written responses (Spear-Swerling, 2006).

34. Hanover Method • Hanover’s (1983) method of teaching cursive writing is founded on a single principle: the grouping of letters based on similar strokes into letter families. • e, l, h, f, b, k This is the e family and is taught first. • b, o, v, w This family has a handle to which the next letter is attached. • n, s, y This family is grouped together to emphasize the correct formation of hump- shaped letters.

35. Hanover Method(continued) • c, a, d, o, q, g This is the c family. • n, m, v, y, x This is the hump family. • f, q This family has tails in the back. • g, p, y, z This family has tails in the front • Some letters are included in more than one group. This approach is based on the idea that cursive letters are learned faster and more easily when they are taught in their grouped families because of the similar strokes within the groups.

36. Teaching Handwriting at the High School Level • Handwriting often becomes important later in school because of the emphasis on taking notes and submitting written assignments. • Teaching handwriting to older students is difficult because the immediate needs of most older students are content-related, and it is often difficult for teachers to justify instructional time for handwriting.

37. Teaching Handwriting at the High School Level • Teachers need to carefully evaluate students’ handwriting problems to determine whether handwriting instruction could be helpful in a relatively short period of time or the students should learn compensatory methods, such as typing. • The two most important criteria for evaluating handwriting of older student are legibility and fluency.

38. Teaching Keyboarding • Since many students with learning disabilities exhibit difficulties in handwriting, what additional options are there for improving their communication through writing? The most obvious solution is one that students will be expected to know in almost any job situation, familiar and fluent use of the computer keyboard.

39. Teaching Keyboarding(continued) • Formal instruction in keyboarding usually begins in third or fourth grade. • One of the first things that students should learn is correct hand position on the keys and how to develop the motor memory skills for using the keyboard while reading or writing a report. In other words, effective keyboarding skills require not looking at the keys.