WRITING OF FOURTH-GRADE STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES

A within-subject pretest-posttest comparison design was used to explore the effectiveness of a planning and writing intervention in improving the argumentative writing performance of five fourth-grade students with learning disabilities. Students were taught to collaboratively plan and revise their essays and independently write their essays using procedures articulated by Wong, Butler, Ficzere, and Kuperis (1996). Results demonstrated notable increases in students’ written protocols on the quantitative criteria (e.g., number of words written, prewriting and composing times). However, only three of the five students made gains related to writing clarity and cogency. Students’ performance improved from “below basic” to “basic” or “proficient” levels with respect to qualitative criteria (i.e., focus, content, and organization) on the statewide writing assessment. Although transfer effects to a different writing task, person, and setting were evident for all students on the quantitative criteria, these effects were mixed on the qualitative criteria. Social validity data indicated student and teacher satisfaction with the planning/writing intervention. Implications of the study for argumentative essay writing instruction are discussed. ANDRIA DEATLINE-BUCHMAN, M.Ed., is an intervention specialist, Easton Area School District, Easton, PA. ASHA K. JITENDRA, Ph.D., is professor, Department of Education and Human Services, Lehigh University. Writing is a fundamental skill that allows us to communicate with others. Today’s technology-based society increasingly emphasizes the ability to write clearly, which is also a requirement in many states for students to graduate from school. Unfortunately, many students in elementary, middle, and high schools evidence difficulties in writing, a central form of discourse in school curricula. Thus, results of the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) indicate that while average scores in writing increased at grades 4 and 8 from 1998 to 2002, only 28% of fourth graders, 31% of eighth graders, and 24% of twelfth graders performed at or above the “proficient” level (National Center for Education Statistics, 2004). Students with learning disabilities (LD) especially have difficulty processing and organizing written information (Graham & Harris, 1997). As a result, these students’ written products are often short, provide few details, demonstrate a lack of awareness of the audience, and indicate what they know rather than what is Volume 29, Winter 2006 39 required (Gleason, 1999; Gleason & Isaacson, 2001; Graham & Harris, 1989, 1997; Graham, Schwartz, & MacArthur, 1993). Although students with disabilities have trouble with writing tasks (e.g., narrative, informative, persuasive styles) in general, they experience persistent difficulties with persuasive writing (Gleason, 1999). Unlike narrative and informational writing that describes familiar information (e.g., writing about a person who has the greatest influence on one’s life) in a familiar text structure (e.g., introduction, body, and conclusion), the text structure for persuasive writing is more complex (Englert & Raphael, 1988; Gleason, 1999). For example, a persuasive essay might entail developing structured paragraphs that validate both sides of an opinion or argument, choosing a particular side, and persuading the reader to one’s side (Englert & Raphael, 1988; Gleason, 1999; Wong, 1997). Specific difficulties that students with LD demonstrate when writing persuasive (argumentative or opinion) essays include writing in a narrative style, using unsupported or nonexistent evidence, disregarding an opposing view, or presenting an argument that agrees with the other side (Gleason, 1999). Instructional recommendations to enhance the writing performance of students with disabilities include allocating more time to writing, integrating reading and writing, and exposing students to a variety of writing tasks (Graham & Harris, 1988). While these recommendations are important in creating an environment that promotes writing, explicit instruction in the genre of the writing task (e.g., persuasive) is critical to address the writing difficulties of students with LD (Gersten & Baker, 2001; Gleason, 1999; Gleason & Isaacson, 2001; Wong, 1997). A seminal study of persuasive writing instruction conducted by Wong, Butler, Ficzere, and Kuperis (1996) taught eighthand ninth-grade students with LD or low achievement to write opinion essays. This study is important given its focus on the argumentative text structure and the collaboration between two students in the writing process. Students in the trained condition were randomly paired for instruction and were taught to use interactive dialogues to collaboratively plan and to revise essays that they wrote individually. Results indicated that, when compared to untrained controls, the clarity and cogency of written products for the trainees improved significantly from pretest to posttest, and the gains were maintained. In addition, a growing body of research on selfregulated instructional procedures has demonstrated improved persuasive writing performance of middle and high school students with LD (e.g., Chalk, HaganBurke, & Burke, 2005; Graham & Harris, 1989). These procedures have been found to be successful with both middle school and high school students with regard to improvements in length and quality of writing as well as gains in the number of functional elements (e.g., premise, reason, conclusion, elaboration) and planning time (i.e., Graham & Harris, 1989). In addition, the effects maintained over time, and generalization to a new person and stories (e.g., Graham & Harris, 1989) as well as to a different subject in a content classroom (Chalk et al., 2005) was evident. Other studies on self-regulated instructional procedures have included explicit instruction in planning and/or dictation to examine the added value of these procedures for middle school students (e.g., 5th, 6th, and 7th grade) with LD (De La Paz, 1997; De La Paz & Graham, 1997a, 1997b). These studies demonstrated the importance of advanced planning in positively influencing the number of functional elements, length, coherence, quality of writing, and strategy usage. Further, the combination of dictation and instruction in advanced planning resulted in more complete and qualitatively better essays compared to those written by students in the comparison condition (De La Paz & Graham, 1997b). Finally, the effects for planning strategy instruction were maintained over time (De La Paz, 1997; De La Paz & Graham, 1997b). Another extension of the research on self-regulated strategy instruction has examined the value of adding an attribution component to the writing strategy instruction (Sexton, Harris, & Graham, 1998). Results for six students with LD showed longer papers, increase in the number of reasons supporting the premise, coherently ordered text, and improvement in overall quality of persuasive essays. Further, a combination of strategy, attribution, and self-regulation components influenced student attributions. Interestingly, although strategy effects transferred across settings and teachers, maintenance data were mixed. Argumentative text structure has also been the focus of several studies involving manipulated goals for text production, revising, or planning to improve writing (Ferretti, MacArthur, & Dowdy, 2000; Graham, MacArthur, Schwartz, & Page-Voth, 1992; Page-Voth & Graham, 1999). Setting specific goals in conjunction with self-regulated strategy instruction has shown gains in terms of overall persuasiveness and elements of argumentative discourse for students with LD. However, data regarding generalization to story writing in the Graham et al. (1992) study were inconsistent across the four participants. In addition, setting goals alone was not sufficient for fourth-grade students with LD in the Ferretti et al. (2000) study. These students evidenced difficulties in writing as reflected in essays that included fewer elements of argumentative discourse (e.g., propoLearning Disability Quarterly 40 sitions, conclusions, alternative propositions, alternative reasons, rebuttals) than those of their typically achieving peers. In summary, the importance of explicit instruction, particularly planning, for improving the production of written text by students with LD is clear. Further, dictation may be an alternate mode of response to consider for students with LD who have handwriting difficulties (De La Paz, 1999). Also, the findings of previous research suggest that effective writing instruction for students with disabilities must focus on all aspects of writing (e.g., planning and organizing, formulating goals, drafting, editing, revising text). The research, to date, has focused mostly on teaching argumentative writing to late-elementary and middle school (grades 5 through 9) students with LD. Because students’ reading materials change from narrative to expository text during the fourth grade, it is critical that students at this grade are introduced to the new text structure (Gleason & Isaacson, 2001). In addition, the argumentative writing of young students, especially students with LD, does not conform to conventional form (McCann, 1989, cited in Ferretti et al., 2000), which makes it imperative that writing instruction research addresses this population. Also, peer collaboration was the focus of only one study (Wong et al., 1996), even though it is considered an effective approach for many students with LD (Isaacson & Gleason, 1997). Therefore, the primary purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of a writing intervention that emphasized argumentative text structure and the writing process in conjunction with collaborative planning and revising by peer dyads. The present study extended the work of Wong et al. (1996) for several reasons. First, writing strategies in their