strategy instruction in planning: teaching students with learning and writing disabilities to...

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Strategy Instruction in Planning: Teaching Students with Learning and Writing Disabilities toCompose Persuasive and Expository EssaysAuthor(s): Susan De La PazSource: Learning Disability Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 3, Second Special Issue on Intervention(Summer, 1997), pp. 227-248Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1511310 .

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STRATEGY INSTRUCTION IN PLANNING: TEACHING STUDENTS WITH LEARNING

AND WRITING DISABILITIES TO COMPOSE PERSUASIVE AND

EXPOSITORY ESSAYS

Susan De La Paz

Abstract. This article summarizes two intervention studies using the Self-Reg- ulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model of instruction. The major objective of the studies was to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching students with learning and writing disabilities an approach to planning persuasive essays before and during composing. An in-progress investigation will also be described, in which the planning strategy has been modified to accommodate a change in genre from persuasive to expository writing. Instructional effects have been in- vestigated using different research designs (multiple-baseline-across-subjects with multiple probes in baseline and between-group comparisons); in different settings (individual instruction, small groups in resource rooms, and general education classrooms); and with different types of students (fifth through eighth graders, including students with and without learning disabilities). Instructional procedures and methodology from these studies are summarized, and the central findings from the first two investigations are presented. Suggestions for future interventions that focus on planning strategies are proposed.

Jeffrey, a 10-year-8-month-old African-Ameri- can, sixth-grade student with learning and writing disabilities, received language arts instruction in a self-contained fifth-sixth grade resource classroom in a public elementary school. When responding to the prompt, "Do you think teachers should give students homework?" and asked to "Remember to plan your essay before you begin writing," he planned for only one minute and spent the next 11 minutes writing the following essay:

I think teacher should not give homework because people come to school to learn. If teacher would like for students to do homework stop pressuring kid's to do homework. Students stay in school for six hours so we as students should not get homework for the night teacher should teach us a lot more but should not give us homework.

Interestingly, the amount of time Jeffrey planned is commensurate with that of most sixth-grade students without disabilities who have not received explicit instruction in planning for writing tasks (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1986). It is also not surprising that Jeffrey did not generate written notes prior to composing, because many normally achieving students also plan without writing before composing.

There are additional similarities between Jef- frey's text and those generated by normally achieving students. First, the written text appears to be generated using a knowledge-telling approach. He simply converted the writing task into

SUSAN DE LA PAZ, Ph.D., is assistant professor, Peabody/Vanderbilt University.

Volume 20, Summer 1997 227



telling what he knew (and felt) about the topic (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1987), without first es- tablishing global plans (McCutchen, 1988) or at-

tempting to evaluate or review his emerging text. Second, Jeffrey's finished text appears equiva- lent to a single conversational turn (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1982), as if his text were equiva- lent in length to the amount of time that would have been needed to provide a verbal response to this topic. Thus, Jeffrey appears to have answered a question (Thomas, Englert, & Gregg, 1987) rather than written a persuasive essay.

Given these similarities between Jeffrey and many of his normally achieving peers, how do students with learning disabilities differ from students in general education with respect to their

planning and text-production skills? First, com- pared to their normally achieving peers, students with learning disabilities appear to have less knowledge of the structure of expository writing, or frames (e.g., compare/contrast), that writers often use in retrieving and organizing ideas. They are also less successful in sustaining their thinking about topics when retrieving ideas from memory (Englert & Raphael, 1988). Moreover, these students frequently fail to include critical elements such as the premise or conclusion of their essays, and they generate a considerable amount of irrelevant or nonfunctional information in their compositions (Gra- ham, 1990).

Second, students with learning disabilities struggle considerably more with written language production than their peers. These students make considerably more spelling, capitalization, and punctuation errors than their normally achieving peers (cf. Deno, Marston, & Mirkin, 1982; Moran, 1981); they make more errors in word usage (Anderson, 1982; Poplin, Gray, Larsen, Banikowski, & Mehring, 1980); they generate shorter texts than their peers (En- glert & Raphael, 1988; Graham, 1990; Gra- ham & Harris, 1992; Montague, Graves, & Leavell, 1991; Newcomer, Barenbaum, & No- dine, 1988; Wong, Wong, & Blenkinsop, 1989); and they have less legible handwriting (Graham & Weintraub, 1996). As a result, compositions of students with learning disabilities are often judged to be of poorer quality than the compositions written by peers without learning difficulties (Graham & Harris, 1992; Newcomer & Barenbaum, 1991).

In contrast to the planning and composing methods of novices and poor writers, approaches employed by more skilled writers are quite different (Graham & Harris, 1994a; Hayes & Flower, 1980). Flower and Hayes (1980), for instance, found that skilled writers usually develop an initial set of goals or plans to guide the writing process. As they write, they continue to enrich and refine their plans and determine the means necessary for reaching their goals. For example, if asked to write an opinion essay about the necessity of school rules, a mature student writer might decide to persuade his or her reader that school rules were necessary, and then brainstorm and organize ideas to include in the finished essay. Adults who are skilled writers further demonstrate writing expertise by orchestrating several strategies for generating, organizing, evaluating, and reformulating what they plan to do and say, at- tending to a variety of audience needs and to the overall purpose of their writing at the same time (De La Paz & Graham, 1997a).

Hayes and Nash (1996) further specified how planning interacts with the task environment when skilled writers compose. First, the act of writing sometimes suggests new (and possibly contradictory) ideas, which lead to substantial changes in the writing plan. When this happens, writers must integrate or resolve these new ideas with their initial thoughts about the topic. To illustrate, a writer may discover a logical argument against the premise that school rules are necessary. This realization prompts the writer to consider counterarguments that may be used to refute the hypothetical disagreement, thus changing the initial writing plan substantially. Second, the written text also becomes part of the task environment and influences further planning. A writer's decision, for instance, to include a personal example in a persuasive essay may constrain later stages of planning or composing. In addition, even student writers use their emerging text as a guide for planning when they reread their initial paragraphs prior to writing the conclusion for their papers.

These examples illustrate rather than exhaust examples of planning and task environment interactions. Other factors, such as motivation for engaging students in writing tasks in school envi- ronments, are also critical for teachers to consider. In Hayes and Nash's (1996) analysis of re- cent planning studies with normally achieving

228 Learning Disability Quarterly



students, qualitative improvements in text production were attributed to an increase in amount of time spent planning in advance of composing rather than to the specific instructional procedures for planning. In other words, for general education students, time-on-task is positively linked to text quality. Thus, improving student engagement (i.e., motivation to write) should be a component of planning instruction.

During the past 15 years, several programs of research have examined how students with learning disabilities can be assisted to develop more sophisticated approaches to writing, including the strategies and self-regulation procedures used by more skilled writers (Englert, Raphael, Anderson, Anthony, Stevens, & Fear, 1991; Graham, Harris, MacArthur, & Schwartz, 1991; Schumaker & Deshler, 1992; Wong, 1997). Of these programs, the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model developed by Steve Graham, Karen Harris, and their col- league Charles MacArthur (Graham et al., 1991) has had the greatest impact on my efforts to construct and evaluate planning strategies for expository writing. With SRSD, students learn specific strategies for accomplishing tasks along with procedures for regulating their use, the as- signment, and undesirable behaviors (such as use of negative self-statements) that interfere with performance. To help them manage these strategies, the writing process, and their own behaviors, students are also taught self-regulatory procedures such as goal setting, using self-instructions and self-monitoring progress.

Using the SRSD model, students with learning disabilities have been successfully taught strategies for semantic webbing (MacArthur, Schwartz, Graham, Molloy, & Harris, 1996); brainstorming (Harris & Graham, 1985); using text structure to generate writing content (Danoff, Harris, & Graham, 1993); setting process and product goals (Graham, MacArthur, Schwartz, & Voth, 1992); peer response in revising (MacArthur, Schwartz, & Graham, 1991); and revising for both mechanics and substance (Graham & MacArthur, 1988; Graham, MacArthur, & Schwartz, 1995). These strategies have proven effective in teaching students to self-regulate their performance, resulting in substantial improvements in the quantity and quality of their writing. In addition, SRSD procedures have been successfully integrated in classrooms

using a process approach to writing (Danoff et al., 1993; Harris & Graham, 1996; MacArthur et al., 1996).

Two SRSD studies are particularly relevant to my goal of improving students' approach to planning expository texts. In the first study, Gra- ham and Harris (1989) taught three sixth-grade students with learning disabilities a planning strategy for writing opinion essays. Prior to writing, students generated ideas for use in their paper. Students used a mnemonic, TREE, and a three-step writing strategy to help them generate and evaluate their initial writing notes. The three steps were: (a) Think, who will read this, and why am I writing it? (b) Plan what to say using TREE (see below). (c) Write and Say More. The mnemonic prompted students to note Topic sentence, note Reasons to support their premise, Examine reasons (Will my reader buy this?), and note an Ending for the paper.

The mnemonic and prompts for planning cor- respond to the most basic framework for persuasive essays, which consist of a premise, supporting reasons, and a conclusion. After learning the strategy, students produced papers that addressed the topic in greater detail and were more persuasive. Instruction also altered students' approach to composing, as they spent time planning their papers prior to writing; moreover, informal analysis of their writing suggested that they continued planning as they wrote.

The second study (Sexton, Harris, & Graham, in press) replicated and extended the Graham and Harris (1989) investigation. Similar to the previous study, students with learning disabilities learned the three-step strategy for planning opinion essays and self-regulation of the strategy and writing process. In contrast to the previous study, however, instruction also included an attri- butional component; students were encouraged to attribute their success to effort and the use of the TREE writing strategy, and to use self-statements reflecting these attributions. During instruction, the instructor and students discussed consequences for possible errors in the use of the strategy. Students were encouraged to com- bine use of the strategy with a positive attribu- tional statement such as: "I need to try to follow all of the strategy steps, so I can write a good essay." Previous findings by Graham and Harris (1989b) were replicated, indicating that students'




papers became longer, the number of reasons supporting the premise increased, text was co-

herently ordered, and overall quality improved. In addition, this study demonstrated that students' attributions for writing could be influenced

by a combination of strategy, attribution, and self-regulation components.

STOP AND DARE: ADVANCED STRATEGIES FOR PLANNING

I have conducted two studies in collaboration with Steve Graham (De La Paz & Graham, 1997a, 1997b), which extended the Graham and Harris (1989b) study in several ways. In each study a major objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching students with learning and writing disabilities a more sophisticated approach to planning before and during composing. These investigations included fifth- through seventh-grade participants who received strategy instruction in either of two conditions: (a) individual tutoring sessions or (b) small groups of 2- 3 students in resource settings. In addition, the first study employed a single-subject design (multiple baseline across subjects with multiple probe in baseline) with three students; the second study employed a between-groups comparison design with 42 students.

The instructional procedures, methodology and central findings from these two studies are summarized here. I will also describe methodology and instructional procedures for an in-

progress investigation using a multiple-baseline design with eighth-grade students (with and without learning disabilities) in general education classrooms. In addition, I will describe how the planning strategy was modified in my most re- cent investigation to accommodate a change in

genre from persuasive to expository writing and to accommodate the change in setting from resource to regular education classrooms.

Instruction in Advanced Planning In the first investigation (De La Paz & Gra-

ham, 1997a), the procedures for planning in advance of writing were upgraded from Graham and Harris (1989) to provide students with a more sophisticated approach and a framework for planning and writing persuasive essays. In the first extension, prior to writing, students were encouraged to be more reflective by generating ideas to support each side of an issue, and then by deciding what their position was. In the

past, students were not taught to examine issues from multiple perspectives before taking a side. Students in this study were also taught to develop more sophisticated essays-ones that went

beyond the most basic format of premise, supporting reasons, and conclusion. As they developed their initial plans, they selected and decided how to refute counterpositions in the text of their paper.

A second extension involved the use of a measure to determine if students' initial plans were in fact extended and modified during writing. While an informal analysis in the Graham and Harris (1989) study suggested that students continued to revise their plans as they wrote, it was not clear how or to what extent this occurred. Therefore, both the number and types of planning transformations made by students during writing were analyzed to determine the extent to which students continued to plan throughout the composing process.

The third extension of the Graham and Harris (1989) study was to include participants with more varied learning problems. Previously, students who participated in SRSD studies in the area of writing had been either normally achieving students (Danoff et al., 1993) or students with learning disabilities whose IQ was typically within plus or minus one standard deviation of the mean (e.g., Graham & Harris, 1989b). In the De La Paz and Graham (1997) study, the participating students' IQs ranged from 64 to 128 and their academic difficulties ranged from mild to severe. We anticipated that learning the strategy would have a beneficial effect for each of the participating children.

The methods for teaching the writing strategy were based on the SRSD model (Harris & Gra- ham, 1996). In this model, the goals and signifi- cance of target strategies are defined, and the instructor explicitly and overtly models the strategies in context. As students initially apply the strategy, interactive learning is stressed. Teaching includes scaffolding, discussion, and individually tailored feedback. These supports are withdrawn when students demonstrate mastery of individual strategy components, gradually placing responsibility for recruiting and applying strategies upon the student. Students are encouraged to collaborate throughout instruction, and they are taught to monitor their progress. Fi- nally, instruction is criterion- rather than time-




based. Table 1 provides an overview of the planning steps; the specific stages in the SRSD model are highlighted as they occur in the fol-

lowing discussion through the use of underlining During the first instructional session, an initial

conference was held to establish the purpose of instruction. This included a discussion on how writers use planning strategies when they compose and the benefits of using such strategies. The student's commitment to learning the planning strategy and the goal of learning (to write better essays) were established. Next, a discussion of the composition strategy targeted for instruction ensued. The composing strategy and the rationale for each step were introduced. The mnemonic STOP was used to help students re-

member strategy steps, it also served as a reminder to stop, reflect, and plan before starting to write.

The first step of the strategy, Suspend judgment, asked the writer to consider each side of an argument before taking a position. The writer brainstormed ideas for each side of the argument and recorded them on a planning "think sheet." Once the writer ran out of ideas, cue cards containing the following questions and statements were consulted: (a) Did I list ideas for each side? If not, do this now; (b) Can I think of anything else? Try to write more ideas; and (c) Another point I haven't considered yet is... Think of possible arguments. These cues were previously employed by Burtis, Bereiter, Scar-

Volume 20. Summer 1997 231

Table 1 The Essay Planning Strategy

Planning strategy: STOP Instructions for each planning step:

1. Suspend judgment Consider each side before taking a position. Brainstorm ideas for and against the topic. When you can't think of more ideas, see the first three cue cards: (a) Did I list ideas for each side? If not, do this now; (b) Can I think of anything else? Try to write more ideas; and (c) Another point I haven't considered yet is...

2. Take a side Read your ideas. Decide which side you believe in, or which side can be used to make the strongest argument. Place a "+" on the side that shows your position.

3. Organize ideas Choose ideas that are strong and decide how to organize them for writing. To help you do this, see the next three cue cards: (a) Put a star next to the ideas you want to use. Choose at least ( ) ideas; (b) Choose at least (_) argument(s) to refute; and (c) Number your ideas in the order you will use them.

4. Plan more as you write Continue to plan as you write. Use all four essay parts (see the last cue card if you can't remember DARE):

Develop your topic sentence Add supporting ideas

Reject at least one argument for the other side End with a conclusion

Note. In the third step, "Organize ideas," goals to choose the number of supporting ideas and arguments are adjusted for each writer, based on initial writing ability. Remind students that their primary goal is to be convincing, so they may include more (or even less) items as they write.

I

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L



damalia, and Tetroe (1983) to help children generate additional ideas for their writing and further reflect on the composing topic.

During the second step, Take a side, the writer evaluated the merits of each side of the ar-

gument before taking a position. To facilitate this process, the writer was encouraged to decide which side he or she believed in, or which side could be used to create the strongest argument. Once the writer established a position for the paper, it was noted on the think sheet.

In the third step, Organize ideas, the writer examined the planning think sheet, identified ideas that provided the strongest support for the thesis of the paper, and marked arguments that should be refuted. At this point, the writer also

began to think about how these ideas would be

organized for writing. To help the writer carry out these processes, three additional cue cards were used: (a) Put a star next to ideas you want to use. Choose at least (_) ideas; (b) Did I star ideas on both sides? Choose at least (_) argument(s) to dispute; and (c) Number your ideas in the order you will use them. The numbers for both "ideas you want to use" and "arguments to dispute" were adjusted for each student individually, ac- cording to baseline performance. To ensure that these goals were reasonably challenging, the writer was asked to increase baseline performance of the number of functional essay elements by at least 150%. We were careful to stress, however, that the primary goal was to write a convincing argument, and that a writer might need to include more or even fewer items as he or she developed an argument.

The final step, Plan more as you write, was a reminder to use the planning think sheet while writing, but to also continue the process of planning, making additions and adjustments as needed. At this point, the writer also consulted a cue card that contained the mnemonic, DARE (Develop your topic sentence, Add supporting ideas, Reject at least one argument for the other side, and End with a conclusion). This mnemonic reminded the writer to check to be sure that the essential parts of an opinion essay were included in the paper. Students had previously learned that the four parts of a good essay included a topic sentence, supporting ideas, arguments and conclusion, and had practiced identifying them and generating alternative essay parts in two sample essays.

After describing the STOP strategy, the instructor modeled how to use it by "thinking aloud" when planning and writing an essay. While modeling the strategy, the instructor used a variety of self-instructions to show how she managed the strategy and the writing process. These included self-statements involving problem definition (e.g., "What is it that I have to do?"); planning (e.g., "OK, first I need to ..."); self-evaluation (e.g., "I'm making a good plan."); and coping (e.g., "I know I can come up with some good ideas.").

While the instructor modeled the strategy, the recursive use of various processes and procedures was also highlighted. For example, during steps two and three, Take a side and Orga- nize ideas, the instructor added ideas to the planning think sheet as the need arose. Simi- larly, during step four, Plan more as you write, the initial writing plan was further revised as the instructor was in the process of writing the paper. As the strategy was modeled, students played an active role by assisting the instructor. During planning, this included helping with the brainstorming process, taking a side, starring items, and so forth. During writing, students helped by formulating sentences for ideas generated during the planning process.

Modeling was followed by collaborative practice, where students used the strategy to write essays, but received assistance from the instructor in applying it. During this stage of instruction, the instructor systematically provided less assistance, thus shifting responsibility for using the strategy directly to the students. Types of scaffolding that were faded included feedback, prompting and guidance, use of cue cards (list- ing steps for STOP and DARE), and so forth.

Students also learned to use cohesive ties as they put their plans into action. Students were asked to try to use a few cohesive ties (presented on a list) each time they composed an essay. Initially, students were given assistance in using cohesive words as they translated ideas from their plans to sentences in their essays. For example, when introducing an argument, students were taught to use words and phrases such as "conversely," or "on the other hand," to signal the transition between ideas. This assistance was faded as students became comfort- able using self-selected cohesive ties.




During the final stage of instruction, independent practice, students had to use the strategy without assistance. The only assistance was help in charting the number of functional elements included in an essay to see if the goal to increase the number of essay parts was met. At this time, students also had to assume the additional responsibility of developing essay plans on a regular sheet of notebook paper instead of the work- sheet provided by the instructor. Throughout both independent and collaborative practice, the student verbally rehearsed the steps for STOP and DARE (memorization of the strateqy).

Independent practice was discontinued once the student was able to: (a) recite from memory the steps of the strategy, (b) use the strategy independently (without relying on the planning think sheet or cue cards), (c) generate essays that include all of the basic parts specified in the mnemonic DARE, and (d) increase the number of functional essay elements in their essays 1.5 times the number included during baseline. After reaching criterion in using the planning strategy, students were administered the posttest. Participants

Rand, Elayne, and Aviendha (one boy and two girls) were 5th-grade students from two suburban elementary schools in Maryland. They were each receiving special education services for learning disabilities in their respective schools. Interviews with their teachers indicated that each child had significant problems in generating and organizing written ideas. Rand and Elayne were approximately two years below grade level in reading as well as having writing problems; Aviendha, in contrast, read on grade level.

Rand, an African-American, had IQ scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale-III (WISC-3) (Wechsler, 1991) that ranged from 64 (verbal, full scale) to 69 (performance scale). His written language quotient on the Test of Written Lan- guage-2 (TOWL-2) (Hammill & Larsen, 1988) was 56. Elayne, a Caucasian, and Aviendha, an African-American, each had high verbal intelligence scores, but were poor writers. Elayne's IQ scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale-Re- vised (Wechsler, 1974) were full scale 128, verbal and performance scale 123. Aviendha's IQ scores on the WISC-3 were full scale 105, verbal scale 122, and performance scale 86. Both Elayne and Aviendha received a score of 85 on the writing sample from the TOWL-2.

Experimental Design The effects of teaching the strategy were as-

sessed through a multiple-probe design across subjects (Horner & Baer, 1978). During baseline, the participating students' pretreatment response rates on writing essays were established. The primary variable of interest was the number of functional essay elements (defined below) included in each paper. Baseline data consisted of a minimum of three observations or until the data stabilized; an additional baseline probe was also required for each successive student. In- struction continued until each student demonstrated mastery of the writing strategy during three consecutive sessions. Posttreatment essay probes were administered immediately following instruction. Finally, a maintenance essay probe was administered six weeks following instruction for Elayne and Rand, and eight weeks following instruction for Aviendha. Writing Probes

Opinion essay topics used in a previous study by Graham and Harris (1989) were randomly ordered for each of the planned probes, and unassigned topics were used during instruction. Examples of essay topics include: "Should children be allowed to choose what subjects they study in school?" and "Do you think children should be allowed to have their own pets?" Baseline, posttreatment, and maintenance writing probes were given to each student using identical procedures. When collecting writing probes, the examiner read the topic and asked the student to make up a good essay and to remember to plan before writing. Although the examiner did not provide feedback to students about the content or quality of their papers, she did provide the correct spelling for individual words upon request. Scoring Procedures

Dependent measures are presented in bold as they are described in the following text. An ab- breviated definition of each dependent measure is presented in Table 2.

Two measures were used to assess students' planning when writing essays. First, the amount of time spent planning before writing (advanced planning) was recorded by the instructor. Second, all written plans were collected. The number of unique ideas included on each planning sheet were then counted.




U U~~~~~~~

Table 2 Summary of Dependent Measures

Variable Description

Planning Advanced planning Unique ideas

Transformations

Essays Length Elements Coherence

Quality

Strategy usage

Social validation

The amount of time planning prior to writing. Individually listed nouns/noun phrases, verbs/verb phrases, or complete propositions. Deletions, additions, elaborations, inversions, integrations, and meaning changes; raw scores converted to percentages (transformations divided

by propositions) for analyses.

Number of words written or dictated. Number of units, including premise, reasons, elaborations, and conclusion. Number of text units in the longest string of functional units.

Rating based on persuasiveness and overall development of essay.

Evidence (written or verbalized) of planning.

Responses to interview questions.

Note. Interobserver agreement was at least .80 for all dependent measures (range = .80 to 1.0) using Pearson product-moment reliability coefficient.

The number of changes between the writer's initial written plan and resulting essay were cal- culated to determine the extent to which students continued to plan throughout the composing process. Examples of transformations included the addition or deletion of ideas from the plan to the text, a change in the ordering of ideas, two ideas expressed in the plan combined as one in text, and so forth. Ideas from the written plan that were repeated or changed in minor ways in the text were not scored. The total number of transformations was converted into a percentage by dividing transformations by the total number of propositions in the student's plan.

Essay length was scored in terms of number of written words. All words, regardless of spelling, that represented a spoken word were counted. Following procedures recommended by Graham (1990), essays were segmented into text units, and each unit was classified as functional or nonfunctional. Functional essay elements were those that directly supported the

development of the writer's argument, whereas nonfunctional text included information that was repeated without any discernible rhetorical purpose or was unrelated to the argument under consideration.

Functional essay elements included premise, reason, conclusion, and elaboration. A premise was a statement specifying the writer's position on the topic ("kids should have to learn a second language"). Reasons were explanations to support or refute a position ("because they will be able to talk to more people"). A conclusion was defined as a closing statement ("that is why I believe you should learn a second language"). Finally, a unit of text could be scored as an elaboration on a premise, reason, or conclusion. For example, an elaboration on the reason above would include: "and this will make the world a better place."

Based on scoring procedures developed by Graham (1990), all essays received a coherence score for the longest string of functional elements, as measured by the number of text units


I I



the string contained. Different patterns of functional elements were rated as coherent; generally, coherent strings of units included a premise followed by reasons and elaborations, or they provided elaboration in sequence with reasons. Introduction of nonfunctional elements was treated as a break in the coherent string.

A traditional holistic rating scale was used to assess essay quality. Prior to scoring, all essays were typed and corrected for spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. Two former teachers who were unfamiliar with the design and purpose of the study independently scored all essays. Essays were rated from a low score of 1 to a high score of 8, representing the readers' general impression of overall quality. Raters were told to take aptness of word choice, grammar, sentence structure, organization, and ideation into account in forming a judgment about the overall quality of the paper, but no factor should receive undue weight.

The instructor was asked to keep a log of the planning procedures used by students throughout the study to provide evidence of strategy use. Written plans generated by students were also examined. Examples of planning notes and descriptions that demonstrated strategy use included: (a) key words from the strategy ("STOP," "for," "against," "suspend judgment," "take a side," "organize ideas," "plan more as you write," "DARE") written on the student's paper or verbalized by the student; and (b) self- monitoring questions or statements ("Did I list ideas for both sides?"; "Can I think of anything else?"; "Did I star ideas for both sides?," etc.) written or verbalized by the student.

At the end of the study, students were inter- viewed separately to obtain information on per- ceived effectiveness of the intervention (a social validation measure) as well as provide recommendations and other feedback. They were also asked to describe any instances where they had used the strategy when writing at school. Treatment Fidelity

To ensure that instruction was delivered as planned, the instructor checked off steps from the daily lesson plan as they were completed. Second, a doctoral student unfamiliar with the study listened to a random sample of 25% of the tapes and verified that an average of 95% of the steps were completed across students.

Results and Discussion Prior to learning the strategy, the participating

students spent little or no time planning. Be- cause none of the students generated written planning notes, transformations between plans and the subsequent essays were not assessed. In addition, no more than 6 minutes were spent composing baseline essays. Correspondingly, the participants generated essays containing a relatively small number of words and ideas. None of the students included more than six functional essay elements in their baseline papers (see Figure 1). The number of cohesive breaks in students' essays were few; however, this was most likely a consequence of their brevity. Finally, the quality of essays generated during baseline was poor.

After learning the strategy, all of the students improved their essay writing, as evidenced by the following improvements: (a) substantial increases in the number of functional essay elements in each student's papers, (b) increases in essay length that were approximately double for two students (Elayne and Aviendha) and three to four times longer for the third student (Rand), (c) essay coherence maintained, and (d) quality ratings doubled after instruction. Elayne and Aviendha overtly used the planning strategy to generate and organize ideas, and to transform ideas (mostly in the form of additions and elaborations) as they wrote; Rand, in contrast, did not spend time in advance of writing. The amount of writing time increased substantially for Rand and Elayne following instruction.

On the maintenance probe administered six to eight weeks following the end of instruction, with one exception, the students maintained their postinstruction gains on each dependent measure. The only exception involved the maintenance paper written by Elayne; the quality rating for this paper returned to baseline levels. Since her paper was similar to essays obtained immediately after instruction in terms of planning procedures, number of functional elements, and organizational structure, it seemed likely that the raters thought her argument was weak; that is, the reasons used to support the paper's premise were not convincing. Unfortunately, we were unable to verify this hypothesis, since raters had not been asked to describe the rationale for their decisions during scoring. In the social validation interviews, both girls indicated




that they thought the strategy helped them write better and that it could be used to help other children. Aviendha also noted that she had used the strategy for classroom assignments. In one class, the teacher had assigned a topic that was similar to the ones used in this study. Aviendha commented that she first planned her essay by generating ideas for and against the topic. The teacher asked Aviendha to explain her planning approach to her classmates. Aviendha appeared to be pleased to be able to help other students compose their papers. Not surprisingly, Rand indicated that he did not think planning was necessary for writing essays.

To conclude, in this study, the automated re- trieve-and-write strategy that the participants used prior to instruction was confronted "head on" by teaching students an approach to writing that emphasized both reflection and planning.

Learning how to use this strategy had a positive effect on each of the participating students' writing. Papers became longer, number of reasons supporting the premise increased, ideas counter to the premise were addressed, text was coher- ently ordered, and overall quality improved.

Instruction in the strategy also changed students' approach to writing. For two of the students, Elayne and Aviendha, planning played a more prominent role in their writing following instruction. Similar to more skilled writers, they developed an initial writing plan that they continued to refine as they wrote. This plan accounted for approximately 40% of the ideas included in their essays. They also considered both sides of an issue before writing. All of their written plans included at least one supporting idea for each side of the issue. Because their approach to writing became more like that of skilled writers, it


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was not surprising that their essays became

quantitatively and qualitatively better. For Rand, the student who had the most se-

vere writing and academic problems, learning the strategy did not overtly change his approach to writing. He did no advanced planning before or after learning the strategy. It appears, however, that using the strategy during instruction helped him expand his conceptualization of the writing task, and he later applied this knowl-

edge when writing posttreatment and maintenance essays. Therefore, although he continued to use the same basic approach to writing, Rand was able to improve his essay writing so that it was comparable to the initial baseline performance of the more capable students.

COMBINING DICTATION WITH ADVANCED PLANNING

While conducting the previous study, it became obvious that all three students struggled with the mechanical processes involved in writ-

ing (i.e., handwriting and spelling), which limited their ability to plan and compose essays. In fact, one student frequently asked if she could dictate rather than write her notes and essays. Because students with learning disabilities frequently have severe language-production difficulties (which in turn impedes the quality of their compositions), researchers and teachers are hard pressed to make appropriate accom- modations (such as the use of dictation as a mode of production) that enable students to cir- cumvent the mechanics of writing. It should be recognized, however, that the potential benefits of dictation to advanced planning are likely to be minimized if the writer's planning skills are limited.

To return to an earlier premise, the planning strategies used by students with learning disabilities when composing are less effective and sophisticated than those used by their normally achieving peers (Englert, Raphael, Fear, & An- derson, 1988; Graham, 1990; Graham, Schwartz, & MacArthur, 1993; Thomas et al., 1987). Furthermore, the critical nature of advanced planning to the process of dictation is supported by investigations involving individuals who were novices as well as those who were experienced in the use of dictation (Gould, 1978; Halpern & Liggett, 1984; Reece, 1992). Instruction in advanced planning is especially

important when students are eligible to dictate middle- and high-school competency tests in

writing. Thus, the second investigation (De La Paz &

Graham, 1997b) was conducted to determine the singular and combined effects of dictation and explicit instruction in advanced planning. In addition to determining the efficacy of dictation (and the combined effects of dictation and planning instruction) as a means of generating students' essays, we were also interested in explor- ing the use of dictation as a means of generating the students' advanced plans. Previous researchers indicated that dictation should facilitate the process of advanced planning during composing as it allows children to generate ideas without them having to worry about the mechanical aspects of recording them (Bloodgood, 1989; Boscolo, 1990).

Therefore, in this study, 42 students in fifth, sixth, and seventh grade with learning and writing problems received instruction in either (a) advanced planning, using procedures similar to the previous study; or (b) a comparison condition, in which students learned about the characteristics of good essays, read and revised sample essays, and composed and shared their own essays with peers rather than receiving instruction in advanced planning. In both conditions, half the students dictated their plans and essays; the other half wrote their plans and essays. Students were randomly assigned to one of the four instructional conditions.

Instructional Procedures Students in the two advanced planning condi-

tions received scaffolded instruction in developing, evaluating, and organizing their ideas prior to composing opinion essays and in self-regulation of the strategy and writing process, using the same instructional procedures as in the first study (see Table 1 for a summary). In contrast to the previous study, there was one essential difference in instructional procedures for students in the two advanced planning conditions. In the current study, half of the students who learned to plan their essays received instruction on how to plan and compose essays orally, while the other half received instruction on how to plan and compose essays in writing. Because the instructional procedures for both advanced planning conditions were essentially the same (with the exception of providing a different mode of




production), the remaining summary focuses on the nature of the comparison instructional procedures. Comparison Group

Students in the comparison groups (a) learned about the characteristics of good essays, (b) read and revised sample essays for meaning and structure, and (c) composed and shared their own essays with peers. Again, half of the students in this condition dictated their essays, while the other half wrote their essays by hand.

During the first instructional session, the instructor and students discussed composing and reasons for improving writing skills. Discussion of these topics was designed to activate participants' prior knowledge about previous composing activities. Instructors then engaged the students in a discussion concerning parts of an opinion essay, and how including and expand- ing these parts could improve essays. Students were introduced to the terms "topic sentence," "supporting ideas," "argument," and "conclusion" to represent the essay parts. Students then read sample essays, identified the four essay parts, and generated alternate examples for each part. Students rehearsed the essay parts, but were not taught a mnemonic for remember- ing the four terms.

Following this introduction, students engaged in additional practice reading essays, identifying essay parts, and generating alternate essay parts. They also critiqued and revised "poor" essays by identifying missing or redundant parts and making appropriate changes to each essay. Revisions included generating missing parts, improving the parts included, and eliminating irrelevant or redundant information from the text. Instructors helped students revise the sample essays and gave them feedback about the quality of their revisions. The instructor then introduced a list of cohesive ties to help students make their sentences and essays more coherent. Students subsequently reviewed the sample essays to find, generate, and correct errors in the use of cohesive words and phrases.

In subsequent sessions, students practiced composing essays after reading and revising sample essays. Students were asked to use a few cohesive ties (presented on the list) each time they composed an essay. They continued to rehearse the four essay parts until each was memorized. Finally, after each student in the

small group had finished composing an essay, the group reconvened and each student read his or her essay out loud. Each student was asked to tell one or two things he or she liked about his or her essay, and the remaining students and instructor gave positive feedback to that student. Participants

Information about the characteristics of students by condition is presented in Table 3. Each student was in a self-contained classroom for students with LD or in a special education language arts class in one of four elementary or middle schools (in a single suburban school district) in Maryland. Students met several stepwise criteria for inclusion in this study. Notably, they were identified as having (a) a learning disability by their school district, (b) average IQ as measured by verbal or full scale scores on a norm- referenced intelligence test, and (c) a writing disability as measured by performance of at least one standard deviation below the mean on a norm-referenced writing test. A series of one- way ANOVA tests revealed no significant differences among students assigned to the four conditions on IQ, chronological age, or writing ability. Experimental Design

Participants were randomly assigned to one of four instructional groups: (a) advanced planning and dictation, (b) advanced planning and writing, (c) comparison and dictation, and (d) comparison and writing. The unit of analysis in this study was the average performance of small groups of 2-3 students in each of these instructional conditions. Students' entry writing abilities were taken into account when analyzing the effects of the experimental conditions, because pretreatment differences have been found to in- fluence instructional outcomes (Pressley, Good- child, Fleet, Zajchowski, & Evans, 1989). Data were collected at pretest, posttest, and at maintenance, two weeks following instruction. Writing Probes

Essay topics were similar to those used in the previous study. In addition, students in the present study received two topics to choose from for each test probe (and during instruction). This minimized the possibility that students would be unfamiliar with or uninterested in a topic. One topic from each pair related to school activities, the other related to some aspect of the child's




home environment. The three pairs of topics were counterbalanced across conditions and test probes. Scoring Procedures

Many dependent measures in this study were identical to those in the previous investigation (advanced planning, transformations, length, functional elements, quality, strategy use, and social validation interview). There were three essential differences in the dependent measures used in this investigation and the previously described single-subject study. First, ideas generated during planning were scored only if they were complete propositions (i.e., the minimum content was essentially a predicate). Second, a holistic rating for coherence was used, based

on the student's facility with linguistic ties and proportion and severity of errors. Essays were scored on a 4-point scale, with 0 representing the lowest coherence rating and 3 the highest. Third, because we were interested in the speed of production, rate was assessed, based on the number of words generated in the composition divided by the time spent composing. Treatment Fidelity

Instructors were asked to audiotape each session. A randomly selected sample of 25% of au- diotapes were checked to determine if each step of a lesson was executed by the instructor as in- tended. The percentages of correct steps completed across lesson plans by the four instructors (averaged across observations and conditions)




were 83%, 95%, 92%, and 91%. Most errors were omissions of reminders to students to get papers signed by parents or to reflect on what they were learning during other times of the school day.

Results and Discussion Both planning and composing performances

were analyzed at posttest and two weeks follow-

ing instruction (i.e., short-term maintenance), comparing the average performance of small groups of students across the four instructional conditions. At posttest and maintenance, the Fisher-Hayter procedure with covariate adjust- ment for the pretest was used to analyze mean differences between instructional groups for each dependent measure except for planning propositions and transformations.

An important assumption in the use of the Fisher-Hayter procedure is homogeneity of re-

gression. Therefore, separate hierarchical re-

gression analyses were used to determine whether this assumption was met (i.e., whether there were parallel slopes for each condition) for each variable of interest. Failure to meet this assumption indicated the Fisher-Hayter procedure was not appropriate, and that the interventions may have had differential effects on students scoring low and high on the pretest. Thus, the Johnson-Neyman procedure (Pedhazur, 1982) was used to determine whether there was an interaction between the pretest score and mem- bership in one of the four conditions. When an interaction was present, the Johnson-Neyman procedure was used again to specify upper and lower values in the range of pretest scores that are associated with superior outcomes for one of the intervention conditions. Effects of Combining Dictation and Ad- vanced Planning

Because students with LD have difficulties with the mechanical aspects of writing and tend to employ immature and ineffective writing strategies, we predicted that the combination of dictation and advanced planning would be especially beneficial for these students. Consistent with our expectations, students who received instruction in advanced planning and dictation out- performed students in the comparison condition who wrote. On the essay probe administered immediately following instruction, students in the advanced planning dictation condition produced essays that were longer, more complete,

more cohesive, and qualitatively better than those generated by students in the comparison writing condition. On the maintenance probe administered two weeks later, their essays were again more complete and qualitatively better. For students with the least coherent essays at pretest, higher coherence scores were also obtained by students in the advanced planning dictation condition.

Not surprisingly, we also found significant differences in the planning behavior between students in the advanced planning and comparison groups. With two exceptions, students in the two advanced planning groups planned their compositions, spending, on average, 11 minutes to plan and generating an average of 13 propositions. They continued the planning process as they generated their papers, transforming approximately half of their propositions between their plans and final compositions on both fol-

lowup probes. In contrast, with one exception, comparison students did little or no planning in advance, generating no notes and pausing for 30 seconds or less before starting to write.

Contrary to our predictions, however, instruction in advanced planning generally did not ben- efit dictation more than writing. Instruction in advanced planning did change these students' approach to planning, but there was no difference in the planning behavior of students related to mode of production. Prior to the start of instruction, students in the two advanced planning conditions immediately started composing after choosing an essay topic, generating no advanced plans. After instruction, virtually all of these students were observed to follow the planning steps they had learned. Further, the finding that most transformations involved incorporat- ing new ideas (through additions or elaborations) showed that the students became more like skilled writers, who treat their initial plan as containing pieces of information that are to be revised and transformed.

Students in the comparison dictation group composed at significantly faster rates than students in the two writing groups at posttest and the comparison writing group at maintenance. In contrast, no difference in rate of composing was found between students in the advanced planning dictation condition and the comparison writing condition. Because the planning behavior of students in these two conditions differed




significantly, while rate of composing did not, it is possible that instruction in the planning strategy alone accounted for differences in the essays produced by students in these two conditions. This is unlikely, however, because advanced planning instruction by itself (holding composing mode constant) did not produce the same level of improvement in children's compositions as the combination of advanced planning and dictation, suggesting that both factors were responsible for differences between the advanced planning condition and the writing comparison condition. Effects of Dictation versus Writing

The effects of dictation on students' composing ability were determined by examining the performance of students in the two comparison conditions. Students in both comparison conditions received meaningful writing instruction, learning about the characteristics of good essays, reading and revising essays for meaning and structure, and composing and sharing their own essays. However, students in one condition dictated all of their essays during instruction and testing, whereas the other condition wrote their essays using pencil and paper. Contrary to our expectations, and in contrast to findings from Graham (1990) and MacArthur and Graham (1987), dictation had weak and inconsistent effects on the composing of students with LD participating in this study.

First, although students' rate of composing when dictating was significantly faster than writing (250%) at posttest, a significant difference in speed was not found at maintenance (even though dictation was 188% faster than writing by hand). Second, there was no difference in the planning behavior, composition quality, essay length, number of functional essay elements, or essay coherence of the two comparison conditions at posttest. The only differences in the compositions produced by the two conditions of students occurred on the maintenance probe, where the essays of students who dictated were more cohesive. Furthermore, dictation had a positive effect on quality of maintenance essays for students who had the lowest quality pretest scores (see Figure 2C). Conversely, however, students who wrote qualitatively better essays at the start of the study benefited more from writing than from the use of dictation in terms of quality of maintenance essays.

There are several possible reasons why dictation did not have a more pronounced effect on the composing of comparison condition students. One possible explanation is that the instructional procedures used with the students in the comparison conditions made the use of dictation super- fluous. The basis for this conclusion comes from finding that the comparison instruction resulted in a more fully developed conceptualization of opinion essays, as actualized in students' compositions. Such an increase in knowledge and skills may have reduced the potential impact of dictation on the composing of students who find writing and learning challenging.

A second possible reason why dictation did not enhance the performance of students in the comparison condition is that students may have terminated the composing process too soon, before the full effects of dictation were realized. Even though the compositions of students in the comparison conditions were more complete following instruction, it is important to note that the average length of these students' posttest and maintenance essays was only 90 and 76 words, respectively. Results from a study by Gra- ham (1990) indicate that students with LD may stop composing too soon when working on expository tasks, but that this may be particularly problematic when compositions are produced via dictation.

Particularly interesting in this study were the aptitude-by-treatment interactions between instructional conditions and students' initial competence (see Figure 2 for each comparison). These interactions indicated that students who initially composed longer essays benefited from planning instruction when dictating posttest essays. Furthermore, students with the highest quality ratings at the start of the study wrote qualitatively better papers at maintenance when (a) planning instruction was added to dictation, (b) writing was used as the mode of composing for comparison students, or (c) writing and planning instruction were combined. In contrast, students who started with the least cohesive papers produced more cohesive papers at maintenance when advanced planning instruction was added to writing or advanced planning and dictation were combined. For students who began the study with the lowest quality ratings, higher quality ratings were obtained on maintenance essays when dictation was used as the mode of com-




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posing for comparison students or when the comparison condition and dictation were combined. Overall, these findings favor the use of planning instruction and dictation, but also illustrate that the impact of a particular writing intervention depends upon the child's initial capabili- ties.

A PLANNING STRATEGY FOR EXPOSITORY WRITING

I am currently field testing a modification of the advanced planning strategy with students with and without written language learning disabilities in regular 8th-grade language arts classrooms. Again, the current investigation includes several extensions from my previous work. The first extension involves both setting and type of participants. My current interest is to develop effective writing interventions for students with learning disabilities who receive instruction in general education settings, and to provide instruction relevant to the needs of more capable writers. Therefore, using a multiple-probe design across classrooms with multiple probes in baseline, I have identified pairs of (a) students with learning disabilities, (b) low-achieving students not identified as having a learning disability, (c) average-achieving students, and (d) high-achieving students, based on composite standard scores from the writing portion of the Weschler Individual Achievement Test (Psychological Corporation, 1992) and teacher agreement. Eighth-grade students were selected as participants because a state writing competency test exists at this grade level in the state of Ten- nessee where this investigation is taking place. Thus, both teachers and students have an au- thentic goal for improving their expository writing skills and are motivated to participate in the planning strategy instruction.

A second extension in this project involves the adaptation of the planning strategy to a different genre-that of expository rather than persuasive writing. This change, along with the need to up- grade the planning strategy to boost the quality expected in eighth-grade students' writing, resulted in the generation of a new planning strategy (see Table 4). Because eighth-grade students are expected to write five-paragraph essays, the first part of the current planning strategy (STOP) has been upgraded to teach students to generate and organize more content than in the

previous planning strategy. In addition, the state writing test presents a single prompt that students must respond to in a 35-minute session, forcing students to write a first draft in a timely fashion. Students must address the topic in the prompt to receive a proficient score on the exam, so a mini-routine (TAP) (Sam Oliver, as cited in Harris & Graham, 1992) was added to the current strategy to focus students' attention on the prompt and serve as a guide in generating and organizing content. Additional qualities of proficient writing are reflected in the second mnemonic (DARE) of the planning strategy. Thus, DARE has been upgraded from prompting students to include structural elements of persuasive essays, to prompting students to continue to plan as they translate ideas from their written notes to their final essays, and to consider their audience as they do so.

A third extension in the current planning strategy was to provide more capable writers a means of developing sophisticated expository essays. The expository planning strategy, as discussed so far, teaches students a basic approach to writing five-paragraph essays in which the introductory paragraph provides an overview for content in the three body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph restates the main ideas. "You tell them what you gonna tell them, you tell them, you tell them, you tell them, and you tell them what you told them you were going to tell them" summarizes this approach.

To meet the needs of more capable writers, an alternative strategy for writing more sophisticated introductory paragraphs was embedded in the planning strategy in addition to the more basic approach. Students were shown that as an alternative to presenting their thesis statement as their first sentence, they can decide to "start with an attention getter," or lead up to their thesis statement in one of the following ways: (a) use a series of questions or statements, (b) use a brief or funny story, (c) use a mean or angry statement, or (d) start with the opposite opinion from what they believe. Cue cards list these al- ternatives, and teachers model both ways of writing introductory paragraphs during instruction.

Three changes in the instructional procedures were necessary to accommodate instruction in classes of approximately 30 students. First, lessons were presented more than once (and ad-




Table 4 The Expository Planning Strategy

Planning strategy: STOP

1. Suspend judgment

2. Tell your thesis statement

3. Organize ideas

4. Plan more as you write

Instructions for each planning step:

Read the prompt and do TAP (identify task, audience, & purpose). Brainstorm ideas about the purpose. Use webbing, umbrella-type maps, lists, or other ways to jot down ideas.

Read your ideas. Write your thesis statement on your planning sheet. Decide whether you will put your thesis statement first or whether you will "start with an attention getter."

Choose ideas that are strong and decide how to organize them for writing. To help you do this, put a star by major points and a dot or some other mark by elaborations of the main points. Number major points in the order you will use them.

Use the essay sheet, your cue cards, and DARE:

Different kinds of sentences Avoid first-person pronouns if you can Remember to use good grammar Exciting, interesting, $100,000 words

Note. In the second step, "Tell your thesis statement," each writer makes the decision how to introduce the thesis statement, based on his/her reaction to the topic. Cue cards suggest how to introduce the thesis sentence, list transition words for different paragraphs, and repeat DARE. In the last step, "Plan more as you write," students initially use a form, called an essay sheet, to write their five-paragraph essay.

ditional redundancy is built into some of the lessons) due to the high rate of student absen- teeism at some of the participating schools. Sec- ond, a holistic scoring rubric, developed by state officials, was used to help the entire class of students set appropriate goals for planning and composing their expository essays. This rubric was used to categorize students' essays into proficient (scores 4-6) and deficient (scores 0-3) based on several criteria such as maintaining control of the topic, organization, use of mature vocabulary, and use of varied (error-free) sentence types. Students initially received individualized feedback from their teacher regarding their entry-level performance; however, during instruction teachers set goals (such as showing clear organization with transitions) that were appropriate for the entire class of students. As stu-

dents neared mastery of the target strategy, teachers again helped them set individualized goals, typically focusing on 1-2 areas of need for each student. In addition, because teachers have limited resources for grading large numbers of papers on a daily basis, students gave each other written and oral feedback about the quality of their essays. By making this modification, two of the most difficult components of SRSD instruction (goal setting and feedback) to include in a large group have been preserved in the instruction.

Finally, a small-group collaborative practice lesson was added to the instructional sequence to provide an intermediate step between whole class collaborative practice and independent practice. In the small-group collaborative practice, groups of 5-6 students were assigned dif-




ferent roles for planning and composing an expository essay. One student was assigned to keep the entire group on task, another was assigned to use cue cards, a third did TAP, a fourth led the group in brainstorming, the fifth decided how to write a thesis statement, the sixth took the lead in writing the introductory paragraph, and so forth. Leaders were provided with overhead trans- parency, when appropriate, so that each group could share its work with the remaining groups after completing its work. Remaining group members wrote ideas on paper, creating a per- manent record of the group work.

This modification was exciting to watch, because students have, thus far, been motivated to work collaboratively in their groups using this structure. Two essays, written before and after instruction by a student with learning disabilities, are presented (with spelling, capitalization and punctuation corrected) to give the reader a sense of the potential benefits from this instruction. Consider an essay written during baseline by Brandin, a student with learning disabilities. The prompt was, "Think about situations where you should say "No" to a friend. Write an essay telling what these situations are, and give reasons ex- plaining why it is important to say "No."

I think you should say no to drugs, alcohol, sex, and smoking. I also think you should also say no to anything that will get you in trouble. I usually don't do getting in trouble but I do to everything else. I won't do anything it will all kill me before I am supposed to die. It is not cool and will kill you. Plus it will one day get you in trouble; therefore, I will never do it. Maybe the sex but that's all. Anybody that has asked me so far as been hit unless they were a girl. Even sex will kill you but you need it to re- produce.

I say this with all my heart and mean every bit of it. You should also say "No" to anything that will hurt anybody else out of cold blood. Well, thanks for your time. And in conclusion you should say "No" to anything that is wrong."

Brandin's paper establishes his premise for the reader but fails to clearly explain why. The following prompt was given after instruction: "Think of the most important things you could wish for, if you were given the chance. Write an essay telling the wishes you have selected and give reasons ex- plaining why they are the most important."

The most important things that I would wish for would have to be no poor people, for a better government, and for me to be in the Navy Seals and have a two story house.

First, I would want there to be no poverty anywhere in the world because we the U.S.A. are spending our money trying to help other countries while making ourselves poor.

Secondly, I want a flawless government. I know it won't ever happen but that's a wish. The government today is o.k. but most people don't like it. I really don't care but I would like it to be better than it is now. When I vote I want to vote for a good not a bad cause.

Thirdly, I would like to go to the Navy Seals. That has been a life long dream of mine. To fly a F-16 and go on a air craft carrier.

Finally, another one of my life long dreams is to have a two story house. I don't know why but that's my other wish. I want to walk up the stairs everyday. To look down at my friends when they come over.

In conclusion, the wishes that I picked I think are very reasonable and one day might really happen. I want no poverty, a better government, to be in the Navy Seals, and to have a two story house. Those are my wishes and also my dreams. In contrast to his baseline essays, Brandin's pa-

pers after instruction answered the prompt, used transition words appropriately, provided a different reason or example for each body paragraph in support of his topic, and summarized his ideas in a concluding paragraph. Additional goals for Brandin would be to write an introductory paragraph with at least three sentences, to proofread his papers for sentence fragments and to correct spelling errors; however, this postinstruction essay is much better than his preinstruction essays. At this time, additional data are needed to determine whether benefits from the strategy instruction in planning are maintained over time, and for students with different entry-level writing skills.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE PLANNING INVESTIGATIONS

A large literature now exists in which the ad- vantages of teaching students with and without learning disabilities strategies to plan (setting process and content goals, using text structure to generate writing content, and so forth) before composing are well known; students gener-




ally produce more content in their compositions, and their ideas are organized better, resulting in more coherent and qualitatively better essays. These strategies appear to be successful not only because they help emerging writers develop skills in the processes underlying effective writing, but also because they teach students to regulate and manage the writing process independently. There is, however, a need to develop different instructional strategies to help students gain more information that is relevant to their writing tasks, because the quality of ideas generated during planning is often poor. One approach may be to provide students with some common experience, which becomes a springboard for group discussion and generation of ideas; another approach could be to use some type of social interaction to help students generate more and better ideas during the brainstorming process. Students could also gather information through reading and inter- viewing activities. In addition to helping students evaluate the quality of their emerging ideas, instruction should teach writers to evaluate the organization of their plan for both logic and coherence. The development of specific instructional strategies for improving students' abilities in these areas is needed in part because of the nature of many state competency tests in writing.

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Bloodgood, J.W. (1989). The first draft on tape. The Reading Teacher, 43, 188.

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Danoff, B., Harris, K.R., & Graham, S. (1993). In- corporating strategy instruction within the writing process in the regular classroom: Effects on normally achieving and learning disabled students' writing. Journal of Reading Behavior, 25, 295-322.

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Please send correspondence to: Susan De La Paz, De- partment of Special Education, Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37203. delapaz@uansv5. vanderbilt. edu


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