INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION Vol 26, No: 3, 2011was appropriate for a variety of students. Students reported that the targeted lesson, really help mywriting, I noticed a difference right away, and I wish other Language Arts teachers taught this way.Many middle school students experience frustration with written expression. The abbreviated Step Up toWriting (Auman, 2002) program successfully facilitated improved writing skills among all students.Students with learning disabilities demonstrated the greatest improvements and students withoutdisabilities writing skills were enhanced. Through the use of explicit and strategy instructional methods,the writing intervention assisted students’ skills of idea organization, construction of topic, supportingdetails, transitions, and conclusion sentences. By assisting students written expression skills, studentswith and without disabilities successfully composed an expository essay in order to pass the state’scriterion assessment.Several limitations of this study may have affected the overall results and interpretations. First, studentswith disabilities pretest compositions were classified as flawed to deficient; therefore other researchbasedwriting interventions may have successfully produced a positive change. Second, the lack of acontrol group may suggest alternative explanations to improved expository compositions. Although thebrevity of the study attempted to control for extraneous variables, without a true control group practiceeffects could not be parceled-out. Third, the students were relatively homogenous most of the studentswho participated were European American males. With this mind, broad conclusions must be cautioned.Future research is needed to verify the result of this study’s writing intervention. Future research shouldattempt to replicate these results across different writing compositions (e.g., persuasive, narrative,opinion). Additionally, future research is needed to investigate the long-term effects of writinginterventions and possible novelty influences. The generalization of writing interventions across settingsand different writing compositions also warrant future investigations. Furthermore, future research isneeded to investigate student perceptions of various writing interventions.ReferencesAuman, M. E. (2002). Step up to writing (2 nd Ed.). Longmont, CO: Sopris West <strong>Education</strong>al Services.Baker, S., Gerstein, R., & Graham, S. (2003). Teaching expressive writing to students with learningdisabilities: Research-based applications and examples. <strong>Journal</strong> of Learning Disabilities, 36, 109-123.Brown, A. L., & Campione, J. C. (1990). Interactive learning environements and the teaching of scienceand mathematics. In M. Gardner, J. Green, F. Reif, A. Schoenfeld, A. diSessa, & E. Stage (Eds.),Toward a scientific practice of science education (pp. 112-139). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Englert, C. S., Raphael, T., Anderson, L., Anthony, H., Stevens, D., & Fear, K. (1991). Making strategiesand self-talk visible: Cognitive strategy instruction in writing regular and special education classrooms.American <strong>Education</strong>al Research <strong>Journal</strong>, 28, 337-373.Gersten, R., & Baker, S. (2001). Teaching expressive writing to students with learning disabilities.Elementary School <strong>Journal</strong>, 4, 257-280.Graham, S. (1990). The role of production factors in learning disabled students’ compositions. <strong>Journal</strong> of<strong>Education</strong>al Psychology, 82, 781-791.Graham, S., & Harris, K. R. (1989). Improving learning disabled students’ skills at composing essays:Self-instructional strategy training. Exceptional Children, 56, 201-214.Graham, S., & Harris, K. R. (1993). Self-regulated strategy development: Helping students with learningproblems develop as writers. Elementary School <strong>Journal</strong>, 94, 169-181.Graham, S., & Harris, K. R. (1996). Self-regulation and strategy instruction for students who find writingand learning challenging: In M. Levy & S. Ransdell (Eds.), The science of writing: Theories, methods,individual differences, and applications (pp. 347-360). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Graham, S., & Harris, K. R. (1997). Self-regulation and writing: Where do we go from here?Contemporary <strong>Education</strong>al Psychology, 22, 102-114.Graham, S., & Harris, K. R. (2000). The role of self-regulation and transcription skills in writing andwriting development. <strong>Education</strong>al Psychologists, 35, 3-12.Graham, S., Harris, K. R., Fink, B. (2000). IS handwriting causally related to learning to write?Treatment of handwriting problems in beginning writers. <strong>Journal</strong> of <strong>Education</strong>al Psychology, 92, 620-633.Graham, S., Harris, K. R., Fink, B. (2002). Contribution of spelling instruction to the spelling, writing,and reading of poor spellers. <strong>Journal</strong> of <strong>Education</strong>al Psychology, 94, 669-686.112
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