Nine graduate students (teacher-researchers) with an average of 6 years teaching experience (1-15 years) participated in action research to examine the influence of teacher-chosen visual aids (pictures) on children's writing. A total of 165 elementary students participated in the two phases of the research project: 83 boys and 82 girls in…

Relatively little is known about the potential of web-based programs to support and scaffold the writing performance of students with disabilities. In this study, an experimental and control group of students planned and organized their ideas in order to write expository papers about self-selected topics. The experimental group used a web-based…

This booklet reviews the literature and suggests effective strategies for teaching social skills to children and youth with autism. The first chapter reviews the four common approaches for promoting social development. An individual chapter is then given to each of these: direct skill instruction; antecedent prompting procedures; peer-initiated…

Student writing performance has not appreciably improved in the past decade. While there is evidence that teachers assign more writing than in the past, performance has not kept pace. Three urban schools that experienced significant improvements in students' writing achievement were studied. To glean ideas and examples, the authors observed…

A study explored whether cues given in advance of messages presented through noise were effective for increasing comprehension. Specifically, the study examined whether (1) relevant cues increased overall listening accuracy and (2) irrelevant cues impaired listening by introducing distortions into the processing of messages or simply decreased the…

Past research has suggested that reliance upon implicit theories may depend upon the ambiguity or salience of provided cues. Previously unexplored factors were investigated to further an understanding of implicit theories related to group processes, by: (1) utilizing a no feedback control group in addition to high and low feedback groups; (2)…

Cross-age and peer-tutoring projects are innovative approaches which both harness untapped school resources and provide opportunities for children to help one another. In order to implement effective tutoring programs, there is a need to delineate precise tutoring behaviors employed, as well as the requisite behaviors of supervisors. A multiple…

Additional support to a stimulus-response (S-R) association by the use of an extraneous stimulus is called "prompting." Prompting has an effect on learner achievement particularly if the prompting agent is identical on successive S-R trials. This experiment sought to analyze the differences in learner achievement when different prompting stimuli…

This study examined the use of supported employment to provide competitive janitorial work experience for a 19-year-old severely mentally handicapped student. Training consisted of a combination of total task presentation and an individualized prompting hierarchy. Results demonstrated acquisition and maintenance of all skills at 100 percent…

Five congenitally blind children (ages 5-8) were trained to simultaneously employ appropriate gaze direction and sitting behavior while conversing with an adult. Training consisted of discussion, modeling, physical prompting, feedback, and positive reinforcement. All children reached criterion in 19 to 25 training sessions. (Author/DB)

Subjects were assigned to one of three categories: (1) a phone prompt one day before the appointment, (2) a letter prompt one to two days prior, and (3) a no-intervention control group. Both phone and letter prompts produced significantly greater attendance than the no-intervention condition, the phone group slightly higher than the letter. (LHW)

Investigates the effects of structural cueing (color or no color) and decision level (rote or semantic) on students' verbatim retention of technical prose and concludes that the results support the distinctiveness of encoding hypothesis for learning via the microcomputer. (DF)

The effectiveness and efficiency of two instructional prompting procedures, progressive time delay and the system of least prompts, in teaching manual signs was evaluated with three moderately or severely retarded adolescents with additional handicaps. Results indicated both procedures were effective though the time delay method appeared to be…

The effect of pupils' reading miscues and achievement levels on their teachers' prompting decisions was examined in a study involving teacher trainees and elementary school special education students. Teachers were actively engaged in decision making, and although pupil traits affected teachers' decisions, teaching moves were sometimes…