Sabbatical Report - Oranga School Website

Sabbatical Report 2009
added more story elements to, and improved their overall writing quality of
their stories after instruction. It was also found that they spent more time
planning and reviewing during the intervention compared with the baseline
phase. The researchers state that this is “largely consistent with those that
have been observed when strategy instruction is applied to students with
learning disabilities (e.g., Harris and Graham, 1996)” (Albertson & Billingsley,
1997) and important as it indicates that relatively competent writers can also
make substantial gains when provided with direct strategy instruction. The
validity of the Alberton et al. (1997) and De La Paz et al. (2002) studies is
shown through the use of independent observers and interrator agreement
scores of between 81% and 94% for any given criteria.
De La Paz et al. (2002) used a 5 point scale (1 being no planning to 5 being
advanced), which included evaluation of elaboration and accuracy to evaluate
planning. Using ANOVA 6 statistics it was established that eighty percent of
students in the pre-test did no advanced planning, while after the intervention
through post-test and maintenance measures it was established the majority
of students in both the groups pre-planned, but the plans of the experimental
group were better developed. Ninety percent of these students compared with
only 30% and 65% of the control students’ scored 4 or 5 at the post-test and
maintenance. After instruction and 1 month later, students in the experimental
group wrote papers significantly longer than those students in the control
group. Students’ in the experimental group wrote papers with a greater
number of different words that were seven letters or longer compared with the
control students. This was maintained 1 month afterwards. It was shown that
after instruction and one month afterwards the students in the experimental
group were judged to write essays of higher overall quality than the control
group.
The studies have shown that the teaching of strategies to the participants has
been effective. The studies started with the collection of baseline data from
participants and the following instruction interventions included teaching both
planning and reviewing strategies. This included teacher instruction through to
handouts and discussion with the instructor. Formal evaluations indicated that
instruction modified both what and how students’ wrote. Prior to the start of
the interventions, the participating students did not plan in advance of their
writing. Following instruction, however they consistently used the strategies
taught through the intervention (i.e., STOP & LIST, TREE, C-SPACE).
The studies showed that their stories became longer, of higher quality and
more complete. In the Graham et al. (1998) study this even generalised to a
second genre and the effects of the intervention were maintained at the
writing probe administered almost one month after the instruction had
finished. De La Paz et al. (2002) showed also that the effect on instruction
was still positively maintained at one month after instruction had finished.
6 ANOVA: analysis-of-variance
Jonathan Ramsay
Oranga Primary - One Tree Hill - Auckland