Two hundred ninety-eight primary teachers (88% female) from across all Australian states and territories reported on the frequency with which they implemented instructional adaptations for struggling writers in their classrooms. They also rated their preparation and self-efficacy for teaching writing. The majority of participating teachers…

Informational text writing is a complex task requiring multiple literacy skills, such as reading and comprehending source material, identifying important information, and transforming ideas to meet the goals for the new writing task. The "Structures Writing" intervention was developed to improve the informational text writing skills of…

Informational text writing is a complex task requiring multiple literacy skills, such as reading and comprehending source material, identifying important information, and transforming ideas to meet the goals for the new writing task. The "Structures Writing" intervention was developed to improve the informational text writing skills of…

Purpose: This study aims to examine the writing outcomes of 6th-grade students learning English as a second language. Design/methodology/approach: In all 45 students in a text structure instruction (TSI) group were compared with 45 students in a self-regulated strategy instruction (SRSI) group and 43 students receiving traditional writing…

This study used a multiple-probe, multiple-baseline single-case design to investigate the efficacy of planning, and then revising strategy instruction using self-regulated strategy development on the compare-contrast writing performance of three late elementary students with language-learning disabilities. After receiving the planning instruction,…

The Common Core State Standards for the English Language Arts, together with the new tests being developed to assess them, are placing a greater emphasis on writing in elementary schools than in the recent past. This article explores similarities and differences of the standards with past state standards, explaining the reason both for why things…

Research suggests that experts and beginners use qualitatively different writing processes when given the same text to write. Throughout their writing, experts tend to create a network of executive, structural, and content problems that they continually refine and coordinate as they bring the text to fruition. Novices, in contrast, tend to focus…

Nine 2nd-grade students who struggled with writing learned the Ask, Reflect, Text (ART) strategy to help them better address the content that should be included in narrative stories. After asking the questions that address what should be included in their text, students used art media as they reflected to illustrate their answers. They used this…

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…

The purpose of this "teaching tips" article is to describe practical classroom instruction that helps elementary students write expository responses to narrative texts. It focuses on the importance of scaffolded, interactive discussions comprised of a combination of teacher think alouds and similar student responses before, during, and…

We compared 56 eighth-grade students who, 28 months previously, had received instruction in strategies for planning and revising their writing, with 21 students of similar academic ability from the same school who had not experienced the intervention. Both groups wrote an expository essay whilst logging their writing activities and completed…

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…