Stephen L. Isaacson

Assessing the Writing Product: Qualitative and Quantitative Measures

Assessment of writing skills must focus on the writing product in order to satisfy four educational functions: identifying unsuccessful writers, planning instruction, monitoring student progress, and giving feedback. Within the last 25 years, various researchers have tested the validity of simple direct measures that correspond to five important aspects of the writing product: fluency, content, conventions, syntax, and vocabulary. Measures for each of these components, both qualitative and quantitative, are discussed.

Instruction That Helps Students Meet State Standards in Writing.

Two key components of recent educational reform are (a) new attention to writing as an important academic skill, and (b) the establishment of national and state standards for student achievement. State standards for writing vary considerably in their form and specificity. Many are not listed separately but are included within integrated language arts benchmarks. Most state standards make reference to the writing process and address several aspects of writing, although most focus on conventions. The most frequently required genres are personal narrative, letter, report, persuasive or opinion essay, and imaginative narrative. Recent reviews of the research literature on writing instruction for students with learning problems have suggested that pupil achievement in writing is linked to explicit strategy instruction. In this article, I present a day-by-day plan for teaching the writing process in a way that will help students meet state standards in writing. Two especially important teaching practices are modeling and highlighting critical features.

Role of Secretary Vs. Author: Resolving the Conflict in Writing Instruction:

The mechanical and creative skills required to write an original composition may be beyond the abilities of a student with a learning disability. These skills can be characterized, respectively, as constituting the roles of secretary and author. The author has to get ideas, organize his or her thoughts, and select and arrange words and phrases. The secretary, on the other hand, deals with the physical effort of writing and is concerned with the mechanical aspects of the writing task. Learning disabled (LD) writers have difficulty with both the author and secretary roles, but educators are not agreed as to which should be emphasized first in instruction. The purpose of this paper is to (a) present a way of looking at the complexities of written language from the perspectives of both the secretary and the author; (b) discuss four approaches to providing assistance to the struggling writer; and (c) recommend a model of written language on which curriculum should be based.

Teaching Others How to Teach Strategies

Anita L. Archer is associate professor of education at San Diego State University. Stephen L. Isaacson is an associate professor of special education at Western Oregon State College at Monmouth. The big question that has always faced teacher educators is: How can we instruct teachers so that they master critical teaching procedures and, more importantly, actually use those procedures when teaching students? Consultants for CEC’s Academy for Effective Instruction have grappled with this question for the last 31/2 years as they have taught teachers how to teach’strategies. This training has been provided through district inservices, conference and preconference workshops, and preservice courses. Our experiences as consultant/instructors, as well as a review of the existing literature, have pointed to a few important principles that instructors should keep in mind in providing preservice or inservice training. There is little actual research on how to teach

INSTRUCTIONALLY RELEVANT WRITING ASSESSMENT

A ssessment can be a valuable tool to monitor student learning, evaluate the success of various teaching methods, and guide instructional decision making. It also can provide opportunities for the teacher to discuss and the student to internalize the criteria for effective writing. A ssessment is instructionally relevant if it focuses on priority learning outcomes and is aligned to meaningful instructional activities. The purpose of this article is to discuss issues surrounding classroom - based assessment of writing. The author describes his own experiences in developing and using a formative evaluation system and discusses issues related to the linkage between assessment and instruction. As the example in this article shows, matters of technical adequacy are as important in classroom assessment as they are in other uses of assessment.

CONFUSED DICHOTOMIES: A RESPONSE TO DUCHARME, EARL, AND POPLIN

In their presentation of the constructivist view, DuCharme, Earl, and Poplin raise several good points, many of which I agree with wholeheartedly. They cite several authors who point out the importance of function and meaning to writing. Writing, by its very nature, is a communicative function and should be taught as such. We agree that developing fluency is important for the beginning writer and that emphasizing form will frustrate initial writing attempts. However, DuCharme, Earl, and Poplin draw a distinction between the reductionist view presented in my article and the constructivist model they claim I have omitted. This distinction is theirs, not mine. To the extent that constructivists, as well as reductionists, use col

Teaching Expressive Writing to Hearing-Impaired Students.

Many hearing-impaired students have great difficulty communicating effectively and sharing ideas using written language. The traditional approach of assigning writing correcting the errors, returning the paper, and expecting improvement is still widely practiced today. In contrast, this paper presents a model for teaching written language to hearing-impaired students that emphasizes a high degree of student involvement, with specific attention given to planning revising and rewriting as well as transcribing. Recommendations also are made regarding direct instruction in necessary writing skills.

INTEGRATING PROCESS, PRODUCT, AND PURPOSE: THE ROLE OF INSTRUCTION

Writing is a complex domain, and educators disagree about which aspects of writing should be emphasized and how it should be taught. A balanced point of view takes into account process, product, and purpose and acknowledges both the author and secretary roles. First, teachers should develop in the young writer three general understandings: that writing is a communicative function, that it is different from conversation in its form, and that it requires thinking. Second, teachers must teach specific procedural, declarative, and conditional knowledge about writing. In addition to knowledge about writing, teachers must take into account the unique challenges faced by students with learning problems. Environments that foster achievement in written expression do so by promoting academic learning time, success, and content coverage. Examples of these principles in practice are given, and an appeal is made for carefully structured teacher‐directed instruction.

Volleyball and Other Analogies A Response to Englert

Englert and her colleagues have contributed much to our knowledge about effective writing instruction. They have demonstrated that interventions that make explicit the writing process and text structures are successful with students with learning disabilities as well as those without. Englert attributes this success to the holistic, social, and interactive nature of the instruction. However, one must keep in mind that CSIW was a package approach that included other validated instructional components. CSIW teachers presented conceptual models, used examples and nonexamples to illustrate text structure concepts, modeled thinking overtly while demonstrating the process, provided guided practice by prompting the process through dialogue and think-sheets, faded prompts as students took over more of the responsibility for the process, and taught for generalization by addressing more than one text structure and promoting student talk about the process. As Englert reported, most teachers seldom do these things, even when they claim to teach the writing process. Englert allows for the possibility that all students with learning disabilities may not be ready for cognitive strategy instruction as it is described in her article, and professionals must acknowledge that different techniques may be more effective for students of different ages and abilities. Swanson (1990) emphasized that there must be a match between strategy and learner characteristics and that strategies must be considered in relation to a students knowledge and capacity. Strategic teaching requires that the teacher have a repertoire of approaches along a continuum that encompasses coaching students to use their own mental resources at one end and basic skill instruction at the other.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Teacher Ratings of Teaching Behaviors Derived from the Research Literature.

In spite of the rapidly increasing body of research within the past 20 years concerning the effects on pupil achievement of certain teaching skills, there is considerable skepticism regarding the impact of this research on classroom practice. This skepticism is frequently based on the assumption that teachers are unaware of and indifferent to the research literature. A questionnaire study was conducted among 141 elementary and junior high special education teachers to evaluate the degree of their agreement with the findings of research conducted primarily in regular classrooms. Results of the study showed special education teachers to be in agreement with classroom research on teaching skills. Teacher behaviors positively correlated with pupil achievement were rated significantly higher than behaviors negatively correlated with achievement. The predominant influence on teacher ratings was the district in which the teacher was employed. Possible explanations of this effect are discussed. Student grade level and type of class (resource, self-contained) also affected teacher ratings, but only as joint effects with district. There were several significant differences between groups of teachers on individual items. Teacher age or years of teaching experience did not affect ratings. Results of this study have several implications for the role of IHEs in preservice and inservice education.