The limited research available on writing in Grade 1 led to the development and implementation of an intervention for students who were performing below expectations. Ten students participated in a writing intervention for 11-13 weeks. A multiple baseline design across three units of instruction was focused on (a) paragraph structure, (b) sentence…

The author explored text difficulty for third-grade bilingual students reading below grade level. In six small-group discussions, students read and discussed informational texts matched to their reading levels, and in six other sessions they read and discussed texts one year ahead of their reading levels. The alternating treatment design and…

There has been no research reported about if or how well primary grade teachers can identify information text structures in children's authentic informational texts. The ability to do so accurately and reliably is a prerequisite for teachers to be able to teach students how to recognize and use text structures to assist them in comprehending…

This study compared 70 English learners (ELs) and English-only (EO) second-grade students' writing samples before and after a yearlong writing program. The school utilized Write From the Beginning (J. Buckner, 2006) and focused on personal narratives. A subgroup of students also participated in an intervention supporting expository writing on…

This study evaluated the quality of educational research articles published in 1983. One hundred seventy-eight judges randomly selected from Division D of the American Educational Research Association evaluated 128 articles from 38 journals. Methodology and results are discussed and analyzed. (Author/JL)

Describes process variables associated with reading maze tasks in macrostructure theory. Researchers provided a multiple-choice extension of cloze to high school readers, eliciting word, sentence, and paragraph replacement. Different maze accuracy patterns emerged for readers of differing proficiency, suggesting mazes are valuable in diagnosing…

A study was done to investigate the use of graphic organizers to compensate for text that was poorly organized. Results support assimilation encoding theory and suggest that organizers aid recall when readers must reorganize information but are of little value when reorganization is unnecessary. (Author/JN)

Results of a study which tested the effect of four instructional strategies on students' (N=138) writing indicate that the most effective instructional strategy for informational writing was presentation of model pieces of writing, followed by free writing. (IAH)

This study tested the influence of writing self-efficacy, writing apprehension, perceived usefulness of writing, and writing aptitude on 218 fifth graders' essay-writing performance. Students' beliefs about their abilities directly influenced apprehension, perceived usefulness, and performance, and partially mediated the effects of gender and…