TEACHING CHILDREN WITH SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT TO PLAN AND REVISE COMPARE -CONTRAST TEXTS By Mei Shen A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Special Educ ation Ð Doctor of Philosophy 2015 ABSTRACT TEACHING CHILDREN WITH SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT TO PLAN A ND REVISE COMPARE -CONTRAST TEXTS By Mei Shen Children with specific language impairment (SLI) experience significant difficulties with writing due to their deficits in language, phonological processing, and working memory. This study used a multiprobe multiple baseline single -case experimental design to investigate the efficacy of planning and revising strategy instruction on the compare -contrast expository writing performance of fourth to sixth graders with SLI. Strategy instruction in planning also was compared with a sequenced intervention package of planning and revising. Maintenance probes were administered four weeks after the writing instru ction ceased . Potential generalization of the intervention effects to writing essays of another uninstructed but related expository text structure, explanation, as well as the impact of strategy instruction on writing self -efficacy were examined. The r esults showed th at all three students with SLI spent time on advanced planning and generated quality written plans after receiving the planning instruction. The students also wrote longer compare -contrast essays, included more text structure elements, and demonstrated bet ter overall writing quality. After receiving the added revising instruction, all the students demonstrated increases in writing accuracy but decreases in planning time, quality of written plans, length, and text structure elements. The added revising instr uction didnÕt substantially contribute to overall essay quality , either. The gains from the writing instruction w ere maintained for at least four weeks. The positive gains from the planning and th e revising instruction were also found to generalize to writ ing explanation essays . Two of the students showed enhanced writing self -effi cacy after receiving the planning and revising instruction, whereas the third student showed a dec line i n self-efficacy , possibly indicating that the writing instruction helped this student develop a more realistic perceived competence for writing performance. Copyright by MEI SHEN 2015 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Gary Troia, for providing great advice and support to me througho ut my doctoral study. I learned from him how to conduct rigorous research , from recruiting participants to publishing manuscripts, how to keep passion for my work while staying calm and seeking solutions wh en encountering difficulties, and how to maintain high expectations of myself for conducting research and delivering instruction . All these valuable experiences have enabled me to grow as a scholar with clear goal s, capability, and confidence , perform well in my teaching, and give back to the academic com munity through my service. I would lik e to also expand my deep gratitude to my dissertation committee members, Dr. Carol Sue Englert, Dr. Troy Mariage, and Dr. Josh ua Plavnick. Without their great advice and comments, I wouldnÕt have been able to complete this dissertation with such rigor and hence contribute to the field of writing research . I have been a teaching assistant for Dr. Englert for five years and I learned from her how to maintain a passio n for literacy instruction and how to deliver high qual ity teaching to our undergraduate future educators . Working as a teaching and course development assistant for Dr. Mariage inspired me . Moreover, h e truly cares for every doctoral student in our program and I always enjoy ed sharing with him my experiences with research and teaching and asking him for advice. Dr. Plavnick , who is an expert in single -case design , provided me with great advice on my dissertation research design. He always gave great feedback to make sure my research was thoughtfully planned an d executed . I would like to thank Dr. Cindy Okolo , who taught me how to become a good instructor to help our online graduate stude nts teach struggling students with technology ; I would like to vi thank Dr. Summer Ferreri who taught me how to help our autism cohort to be knowledgeable of their target population . In addition, m y student colleagues play ed such important role in my doctoral study and always ke pt encouraging me to move forward. Particularly, I would like to thank Maryl Randel and Nathan Stevenson for their invaluable support. I would like to thank all the participants in my dissertation as well as their famil ies. Without their great commitment and support to this six -month project , I wouldnÕt have been able to complete my dissertation research with the rich data I collected to inform both researchers and practitioners in the field. Last but not least, I would like to thank my mother, Jinzhi Shen, my husband, Lu Wang, and my daughter, Lillian Wang for their unconditional love and support. I am grate ful to have them in my life and they always encourage me to pursue my dream s and conquer whatever difficulties lay ahead. They are my inspirat ion and motivation in my life, always. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ..................................................................................................................................... ix LIST OF FIGURES .....................................................................................................................................x CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................1 Writing Strategy Instruction ......................................................................................................................1 Rationale of the Study ...............................................................................................................................3 Research Questions ...................................................................................................................................4 Educational Significance ...........................................................................................................................5 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW ...........................................................................................................................7 Specific Language Impairment: Definition and Characteristics ................................................................7 Children with SL I Experience Difficulties with Writing ........................................................................10 Planning Strategy Instruction ..................................................................................................................13 Revising Strategy Instruction ..................................................................................................................20 Self -regulated Strategy Development Framework ..................................................................................26 Teaching Compare -contrast Text Structure .............................................................................................28 Self -efficacy for Writing .........................................................................................................................30 CHAPTER THREE METHOD ...................................................................................................................................................33 Participant Screening ...............................................................................................................................33 Nonverbal Intelligence. .......................................................................................................................33 Listening Comprehension. ...................................................................................................................33 Oral Expression. .................................................................................................................................34 Written Expression. .............................................................................................................................34 Selected Participants ................................................................................................................................35 Writing Prompts ......................................................................................................................................36 Measures ..................................................................................................................................................37 Writing Process Measures ..................................................................................................................37 Writing Product Measures ..................................................................................................................38 Treatment Integrity ..................................................................................................................................41 Experimental Design ...............................................................................................................................41 Baseline. ..............................................................................................................................................41 Instruction. ..........................................................................................................................................42 Posttest. ...............................................................................................................................................42 Maintenance. .......................................................................................................................................43 Instructional Procedures ..........................................................................................................................43 Planning Strategy Instruction .............................................................................................................44 Revising Strategy Instruction ..............................................................................................................47 Effect Size ...............................................................................................................................................49 Social Validity .........................................................................................................................................50 CHAPTER FOUR RESULTS ...................................................................................................................................................52 Compare -Contrast Writing Process Measures .........................................................................................52 Planning Time .....................................................................................................................................52 viii Written Plans .......................................................................................................................................53 Revisi ng Behaviors ..............................................................................................................................54 Compare -Contrasting Writing Product Measures ...................................................................................55 Total Words Written (TWW) ...............................................................................................................55 Percentage of Correct Writing Sequences (%CWS) ...........................................................................55 Text Structure Elements ......................................................................................................................56 Writing Quality ....................................................................................................................................58 Explanation Writing Process Measures ...................................................................................................59 Planning ..............................................................................................................................................59 Revising ...............................................................................................................................................59 Explanation Writing Product Measures ...................................................................................................59 Total Words Written (TWW) ...............................................................................................................59 Percentage of Correct Writing Sequences (%CWS) ...........................................................................60 Writing Quality ....................................................................................................................................61 Self -efficacy for Writing .........................................................................................................................61 Social Validity .........................................................................................................................................62 CHAPTER FIVE DISCUSSION .............................................................................................................................................68 Effects on Writing Performance: Planning Instruction within SRSD Framework ..................................68 Effects on Writing Performance: Sequential Planning and Revising Instruction within SRSD Framework ...............................................................................................................................................72 Maintenance of the Intervention Effects on Compare -Contrast Writing ................................................75 Effects on Writing Self -efficacy ..............................................................................................................76 Generalization of the Intervention Effects to Explanation Writin g .........................................................78 Generalization of Planning Intervention Effects .................................................................................78 Generalization of Sequential Planning and Revising Intervention Effects .........................................80 Maintenance of the Generalization Effects .........................................................................................80 CHAPTER SIX LIMITATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS .................................................................................................82 APP ENDICES ............................................................................................................................................86 Appendix A. Text Structure Elements for Scoring Compare/Contrast Essay .........................................87 Appendix B. Writing Self -Efficacy Rating Scale ....................................................................................88 Appendix C. Lesson Plans (Plann ing & Revising Strategy Instruction) .................................................90 Appendix D. Planning Sheet (Reflecting Two Ways to Organize Ideas) .............................................126 Appendix E. Evaluation for Compare -Contrast Essay Quality .............................................................128 Appendix F. Student Satisfaction Survey ..............................................................................................129 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................................130! ix LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Participant Information ...................................................................................................................51 Table 2 Results for Compa re-Contrast Essays: Writing Process and Product Measures ............................63 Table 3 Results for Compare -Contrast Essays: Component Analysis for Text Structure Elements ...........64 Table 4 Results for Explanation Essays: W riting Process and Product Measures ......................................65! x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Compare -Contrast Text Structure Elements ..................................................................................66 Figure 2 Compare -Contrast Text Quality ....................................................................................................67 1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Writing is a critical literacy skill that has been playing an increasingly important role in everyday life (Graham & Perin, 2007). Children need to demonstrate sufficient writing abilities to meet th e school curriculum requirements for writing and to succeed in their classes. They also need to use writing as a tool to communicate with others by texting, blogging, emailing, and so forth and fully participate in social and civic activities. However, chi ldren with specific language impairment (SLI) have been found to experience difficulties with many aspects of writing (Mackie & Dockrell, 2004; Nelson, Roth, & Van Meter, 2009). Compared to peers of a comparable chronological age, children with SLI compose shorter texts (Dockrell, Lindsay, & Connelly, 2009), demonstrate a limited ability to generate and organize ideas, display many errors in grammar, spelling, and other writing conventions (Dockrell & Connelly, 2009), and show poorer overall writing quality (Fey, Catts, Proctor -Williams, Tomblin, & Zhang, 2004). Writing Strategy Instruction Strategy instruction focused on planning and revising has been found to be effective in improving writing outcomes for struggling writers ( average effect size = 0.82), specifically students with learning disabilities (LD; Graham & Perin, 2007). Explicit planning strategy instruction has been adopted to help children generate and organize content for papers across different genres such as stories and personal narratives ( Saddler, 2006; Tracy, Reid, & Graham, 2009), expository papers (MacArthur & Philippakos, 2010), and persuasive essays (Monroe & Troia, 2006). The targeted population in much of the research is children in the late elementary grades (Troia & Graham, 2002) a nd middle school grade s (De La Paz, 2001, 2005). Some studies also focus on teaching younger writers (Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2006) and adults (MacArthur & Lembo, 2009) to plan. Struggling writers who receive planning strategy 2 instruction have been found to spend more time planning in advance of composing text (Deatline -Buchman & Jitendra, 2006) and to write longer texts (De La Paz & Graham, 2002) which include more story elements (Saddler & Asaro, 2007) or functional essay elements (MacArthur & Lembo, 200 9). Their written products also demonstrate enhanced overall text quality (Lienemann et al, 2006; Tracy, Reid, & Graham, 2009). In addition, gains from the planning strategy instruction are well maintained for 4 to 6 weeks after the instruction ends (Graha m, Harris, & Mason, 2005). The positive effects of st rategy instruction also generalize to studentÕs writing in some uninstructed genres (Graham, Harris, & Mason, 2005; Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2006). Revising is challenging in that poor writers tend t o revise their papers more at a superficial level, i.e., focusing on writing convention errors such as spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, rather than a t a substantial level, i.e., the content, organization, and rhetorical goals. Thus, their revisin g efforts tend to have a very limited impact on text quality (MacArthur, Schwartz, & Graham, 1991). Different revising strategies such as Compare, D iagnose , Operate (CDO; De La Paz, Swanson, & Graham, 1998; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1983), peer revising (Sto ddard & MacArthur, 1993), and setting revising goals (Midgette, Haria, & MacArthur, 2008) have been taught to struggling writers (mostly students with learning disabilities) ranging in genres such as personal narrative (Graham, MacArthur, & Schwartz, 1995) , expository (Graham & MacArthur, 1988), and persuasive (Midgette, Haria, & MacArthur, 2008). The results from most of these studies have shown that revising strategy instruction contributes to more substantial revisions at both local (i.e., mechanical) an d global (i.e., content and organization) levels. StudentsÕ overall writing quality also has been improved. 3 Rationale of the Study Given the documented efficacy of strategy instruction for planning and revising (Midgette, Haria, & MacArthur, 2008; Tracy, Reid, & Graham, 2009; Troia & Graham, 2002), this study will add to the growing body of literature on writing strategy interventions and inform teacher practice in this area. Moreover, this study addresses a critical gap in the extant research because a) relatively few studies ha ve examined strateg ies for expository writing, b) only a few studies have endeavored to teach students to write compare -contrast essays (e.g., Englert, Raphael, Anderson, Anthony, & Stevens, 1991; MacArthur & Philippakos, 2010 ; Wong , 1997), a less common form of exposition that could help with content area learning, and c) so few studies (e.g., De La Paz, 2001) have focused on students with SLI. It is worth mentioning that although the writing difficulties of students with SLI have been well documented, students who comprise the second largest group of students with disabilities in schools (after children with LD), this population has been largely ignored in the writing intervention research. As a matter of fact, SLI and LD are closel y related in that many children with SLI in early childhood or primary grades go on to be identified as LD or SLI/LD later ( Nelson, Roth, & Van Meter, 2009). They also share many characteristics with LD students in terms of writing problems: (a) having dif ficulties with generating and organizing ideas, (b) composing shorter texts, (c) exhibiting large numbers of mechanical errors, and (d) lacking self -regulation skills (possibly due to deficits in executive functioning) (Campbell & Skarakis -Doyle, 2007). Th erefore, it is believed that the potential for leveraging the body of research targeting LD students to design writing interventions for children with SLI is strong and appropriate. The efficacy of the planning instruction will be directly investigated, an d will also be compared with a combined strategies intervention package of planning and revising for children with SLI. 4 Research Questions This study aims to investigate the efficacy of planning and revising strategy instruction on the compare -contrast e xpository writing of fourth - to sixth -graders with SLI. Instruction in planning will be compared with a combined strategies intervention package consisting of sequential planning and revising . The Self -Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model , as an eff ective instructional framework ( Jacobson & Reid, 2010; Mason & Graham, 2008; Saddler & Asaro, 2007; Troia & Graham, 2002) , will be adopted to facilitate teaching of writing strategies and self -regulation skills in this study . The students will also be aske d to complete explanation writing prompts t o examine the potential generalization effects of the writing instruction. A motivation rating scale and a satisfaction survey will be given to examine the impact of the writing instruction on the studentsÕ writin g self -efficacy beliefs and their perception of the strategy instruction, respectively. The research questions are: 1)!What is the efficacy of planning strategy instruction on the compare -contrast writing performance of students with SLI (in terms of lengt h, accuracy, text s tructure elements, and quality) ? 2)!What is the efficacy of sequential planning and revising strategy instruction on the compare -contrast writing performance of students with SLI (in terms of length, accuracy, text structure elements, and q uality) and are any positive effects maintained four weeks after the instruction ceases ? 3)!Which kind of strategy instruction (planning or sequential planning and revising) is more efficacious for improving the writing performance of students with SLI (in te rms of length, accuracy, text structure elements, and quality) ? 5 4)!Are any intervention effects generalized to writing explanation essays? 5)!Do the students demonstrate enhanced self -efficacy for writing expository essays in general and compare -contrast essays in particular? 6)!Do the students view the planning and revising strategy instruction as socially valid? Educational Significance Previously documented evidence suggests that children with SLI experience significant difficulties with many aspects of writing ( Dockrell, Lindsay, & Connelly, 2009; Nelson, Roth, & Van Meter, 2009). However, few strategy instructional intervention studies have been conducted to improve the writing performance in this population, who comprises the second largest group of students wi th disabilities in schools. While explicit strategy instruction has been found to yield significant intervention effects on writing outcomes for struggling writers (Graham & Perin, 2007), the participants involved were mostly students with LD. It is assume d that children with SLI will also benefit from explicit writing strategy instruction. This study has implications for both researchers and practitioners. To date, there is no study that has directl y investigated the efficacy of planning versus sequential planning and revising strategy instruction for elementary children with SLI. Only a few studies have provided planning and revising strategy instruction for combined group s of typically developing students and those with special needs (Limpo, Alves, & Fida lgo, 2014) or students with learning disabilities (Deatline -Buchman & Jitendra, 2006; MacArthur, Graham, Schwartz, & Schafer, 1995; MacArthur & Philippakos, 2010). This study will add to the limited research base of writing instruction for children with SL I. This study may help teachers better understand the importance of each of the two strategies (as well as the combination), and consider supporting students with appropriate writing 6 strategy instruction based on individual writing needs. In addition, this study may also help teachers think about how to use writing as an effective tool to deepen understanding of content area information. Expository writing provides students with opportunities to work actively with their own knowledge and learn to tran sform their knowledge rather than simply telling their knowledge (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987). When writing compare -contrast papers in particular, students not only need to have clear and accurate thoughts about the topics to be compared and contrasted in mind , but also should be able to rely on their knowledge of writing processes, writing strategies, writing conventions, and self -regulation skills so as to share their thoughts on the key traits for comparisons/contrasts with supporting details . As emphasized in the Common Core State Standards, students need to develop the requisite skills necessary to use writing to analyze, interpret, and build knowledge for subject -matter topics and reading materials. Therefore, it is critical that teachers help improve stud entsÕ writing in content areas such as science and history and promote writing -to-learn for each student. Compare -contrast writing could potentially contribute to content area writing expertise as students integrate and deepen their knowledge of subject matter content through the examination of similarities and differences in important qualities or features . 7 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW Specific language impairment (SLI) refers to a condition in which children experience language difficulties tha t cannot be explained by other cognitive, neurological, or physical deficits (Bishop, 1992; Leonard, 1998). In other words, children with SLI demonstrate linguistic difficulties in the absence of hearing difficulties, low nonverbal cognitive abilit y, neuro logical impairment , and behavior or emotional problems (Fletcher, 1999). It also has been found that this language difficulty persists through later childhood, adolescence, and adulthood (Le onard, 1998). Specific Language Impairment: Definition and Charact eristics The discrepancy definition of SLI requires that children experience language difficulties in the presence of normal nonverbal cognitive abilities (Catts, Fey, Tomblin, & Zhang, 2002). In addition, b oth exclusionary and inclusionary criteria are u sed to define children with SLI (Gillam & Kamhi, 2010). Specifically, c hildren who experience mental, hearing, emotional, or neurological difficulties as well as severe speech sound production difficulties are typically excluded. The inclusionary criteri a for SLI requires nonverbal cognitive abilities within the normal range, meaning that children should demonstrate nonverbal IQ scores within one standard deviation of the mean (i.e., nonverbal IQ typically above 85 on intelligence batteries) and composite s cores lower than 1.25 standard deviations below the mean on standardized oral language tests (e.g., Tombline, Records, Buckwalter, & Zhang, 1996; Fey, Catts, Proctor -Williams, Tomblin, & Zhang, 2004). Children with SLI have been found to experience diffi culties with many subcomponents of the language system (Leonard, 1998). They exhibit problems with oral language acquisition and processing (Dockrell, Lindsay, Connelly, & Mackie, 2007), demonstrate poor performance 8 on non-word repetition t asks (Bishop et al., 1996; Ellis Weismer et al., 2000; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990) that are strong indicators of language abilities (Baddeley, Gathercole, & Papagno, 1998; Gathercole, Hitch, Service, & Martin, 1997), possess limited vocabulary knowledge (Dockrell, Lindsa y, Connelly et al., 2007; Dockrell, Lindsay, Palikara, & Cullen, 2007), and experience difficulties with morphology and syntax skills (Leonard, Eyer, Bedore, & Grela, 1997; Scott & Windsor, 2000; van der Lely & Ullman, 2001), particularly the use of inflec tional morphemes (Leonard, McGregor, & Allen, 1992; Ullman & Gopnik, 1999). Beside difficulties with the language system, children with SLI have also been found to show weaknesses in auditory processing (Miller, 2011). They exhibit difficulties when respo nding to brief or rapid auditory stimuli (of both speech and non -speech types), compared to their age -matched normally developing peers (Stark & Heinz, 1996; Tallal & Piercy, 1973, 1974; Tallal, Stark, Kallman, & Mellits, 1981). Troia ( 2004) suggested that children with SLI demonstrated more errors compared to their typically developing peers on tasks that required identification, discrimination, and serial or dering of speech stimuli that re lied on temporarily cued information. Actually, more recent studies suggest that even if the inter -stimulus intervals (ISIs) for nonspeech stimuli are prolonged or verbal stimuli are slowed, the deficit still exists (Bradlow et al, 1999; Waber et al., 2001). However, when it comes to the question of whether the deficit in auditory processing leads to language problems in SLI, it seems that the causal relationship between the two is not clear (Miller, 2011). Rosen (2003) reviewed previously documented studies and indicated that the auditory deficits seemed only associated w ith, instead of causing, the language difficulties in children with SLI. As argued by Bishop, Carlyon, Deeks, and Bishop (1999) who found no evidence that auditory processing was a sufficient cause of language impairment, some children with SLI might demon strate normal auditory processing, 9 while children with normal language abilities could still exhibit difficulties with auditory processing. Children with SLI also experience difficulties in the working memory system (Ellis Weismer, Evans, & Hesketh, 1999; Montgomery, 2000). BaddeleyÕs (2000) working memory model suggests a central executive component supporting the processing of complex memory span tasks as well as two separate systems dedicating to the short -term storage of visuo -spatial and verbal inform ation, termed the Òvisuo -spatial sketchpadÓ and the Òphonological loop ,Ó respectively. The phonological loop consists of two portions: a short -term store that maintains phonological representations and is subject to time -based decay, and an articulatory re hearsal process which serves to refresh, and therefore to help maintain verbal material in the phonological store. Previous studies have documented children with SLI exhibit deficits in phonological memory in that they consistently demonstrate poor perform ance on tasks that tap phonological processing, such as non -word repetition, phonological discrimination, and phonological awareness (Briscoe, Bishop & Norbury, 2001; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990, 1993). This deficit in the phonological system could pose di fficulties for morpho -syntactic comprehension and word learning (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993) and may negatively affect language acquisition and literacy development (Bishop & Clarkson, 2003; Gathercole, 2006). In short, research evidence has shown that children with SLI not only experience difficulties with the language system, but also auditory processing and working memory (in particular, phonological memory), which in turn seem to have a negative impact on language development. These difficulties coul d further lead to higher risk of having problems with developing sufficient reading and writing skills in subsequent years (Catts, 1993; Dockrell & Connelly, 2009; Fey, Catts, Proctor -Williams, Tomblin, & Zhang, 2004). 10 Children with SLI Experience Difficu lties with Writing Children need to demonstrate sufficient writing abilities to meet school curriculum demands for writing and to succeed in classes (especially those which use writing as a major tool for assessing achievement). Students need to be able t o use writing as an effective tool to learn different content area subjects and deepen understanding of themselves and the world (Graham & Perin, 2007; Shanahan, 2009). When entering the job market, there are a number of occasions that require them to enga ge in writing for employment and promotion (e.g. writing an impressive resume, demonstrating good presentation skills, composing a persuasive recommendation letter, etc.; National Commission on Writing for AmericaÕs Families, Schools, and Colleges, 2004). However, writing is a complex task that requires children to not only have the cognitive resources for producing varied texts such as topic, genre, and linguistic knowledge and specific writing skills and techniques, but also to have adequate meta -cognitiv e abilities to monitor their writing -related thoughts, behaviors, and feelings, and to maintain positive attitude towards writing (De La Paz & Graham, 2002; Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2003; Troia, 2006). Children with SLI have been found to experience diffi culties in many aspects of writing (Dockrell, Lindsay, & Connelly, 2009; Nelson, Roth, & Van Meter, 2009). For example, Mackie and Dockrell (2004) found that children with SLI tended to experience more difficulties when generating texts compared to their c hronological age -matched peers. The written texts generated by these children were shorter and characterized by poor sentence structure containing many errors that inhibit clarity or fluency (Dockrell, Lindsay, & Connelly, 2009). Children with SLI seldom e ngage in effective planning, with their writing showing little evidence of elaborated ideas and adequate organization (Dockrell & Connelly, 2009) . Their texts are also frequently marred with many mechanical errors such as grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes 11 (Dockrell & Connelly, 2009; Dockrell, Lindsay, Connelly, & Mackie, 2007; Puranik, Lombardino, & Altman, 2007). The poor overall quality of their papers has been documented in a number of research studies (Fey, Catts, Proctor -Williams, Tomblin, & Zhang, 2004; Lewis, OÕDonnell, Freebairn, & Taylor, 1998). The difficulties that children with SLI experience with writing are highly associated with their deficits in the areas of language, phonological processing, and working memory (Dockrell & Connelly , 2009). As oral language skills have been viewed as the prerequisite of text generation (Graham, Berninger, Abbott, Abbott, & Whitaker, 1997), the oral language problems typically associated with children with SLI li mit the number and diversity of words ( i.e., fluency) and clauses (i.e., micro -organization) produced in their written texts and negatively impacts their overall writing quality (Berninger & Fuller, 1992). Vocabulary, which is viewed as a strong predictor of text productivity (Dockrell, Lindsay , & Connelly, 2009) and quality (Dockrell, Lindsay, Palikara et al., 2007), is closely associated with phonological memory skills (Gathercole, Service, Hitch, Adams, & Martin, 1999). Therefore, very limited vocabulary knowledge in children with SLI constra ined by their deficits in phonological memory leads to reduced lexical di versity (Fey et al., 2004; Scott & Windsor, 2000) and content generation (Dockrell, Lindsay, Connelly et al., 2007). This populationÕs limited grammatical skills are also associated w ith frequent grammar errors in their written texts (Gillam & Johnston, 1992). For example, children with SLI find it difficult to use correct past tense and regular plural forms (Windsor, Scott, & Street, 2000). Instead, they have been found to use the con junctive and repetitively in an inappropriate manner, omit whole words (e.g., auxiliary verbs, prepositions, and nouns), and omit morphological inflections , specifically inflectional suffixes (Mackie & Dockrell, 2004). Additionally, difficulties with under standing grammatical distinctions also pose 12 difficulties in text production and the ability to construct complex sentences using diverse sentence structure frames (Dockrell, Lindsay, Connelly et al., 2007). Phonological difficulties have been found to exer t a negative impact on spelling, which is evidenced by the fact that the written texts composed by children with SLI contain many spelling errors that follow phonological patterns (Lewis & Freebairn, 1992; Mackie & Dockrell, 2004). Bishop (1997) suggested that children with SLI might experience difficulties analyzing spoken language into phonological segments, hence posing an adverse impact on spelling. Bishop and Clarkson (2003) supported this argument by presenting two common findings: first, more spellin g errors in the written texts are of a phonological nature (e.g., ÒhcecesÓ instead of checks ); second, writing performance is closely related to childrenÕs ability to repeat non -words. Of course, poor spelling, together with slow handwriting, contribute to difficulties in text transcription (Dockrell, Lindsay, & Connelly, 2009). Working memory deficits that arise from phonological difficulties, as reviewed by Rosen (2003), could pose negative influences on writing by delaying the learning of grammatical str uctures. The high cognitive demands during wri ting may also overload the limited working memory capacity of children with SLI , thus leading to shorter texts and higher frequencies of errors compared to their age - and language -matched typically developing p eers (Dockrell & Connelly, 2009). To address the writing difficulties that children with SLI experience with generating and organizing ideas, composing texts, and text production accuracy and help improve their overall writing performance (i.e., quality) , explicit strategy instruction might be able to facilitate better writing (Graham & Perin, 2007). The effectiveness of planning and revising strategy instruction on the writing performance of struggling writers is reviewed in the following sections. 13 Plann ing Strategy Instruction Planning refers to developing appropriate goals and sub -goals and generating and organizing ideas based on task demands, writing purposes, and perceived audience needs (Troia, 2002). Planning is a critical process during writing i n that it requires children to identify background knowledge, set goals for specific writing tasks, and generate and organize ideas using text structure demand s (Hayes & Flower, 1986). Good writers allocate plenty of time to planning when composing texts ( Starllard, 1974; Van Weijen, 2009a), wh ereas struggling writers have been found to devote minimal efforts to planning (De La Paz, 1997b; Graham, MacArthur, Schwartz, & Page -Voth, 1992; Lienemann, Graham, Leader -Janssen, & Reid, 2006; Troia, Graham, & Harri s, 1999). De La Paz and Graham (2002) found that 80% of the middle school participants in their study did not generate any written plans before writing. In addition , students with LD were found to not engage in planning during writing, even when prompted t o do so (MacArthur & Graham, 1987; Saddler, 2006). Students with SLI and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) demonstrate little evidence of planning either (De La Paz, 2001). The good news is that planning can be taught through direct and expl icit instruction. Evidence has shown that explicit teaching of planning strategies can improve writing outcomes for struggling writers (De La Paz, 2005; Graham, Harris & Mason, 2005; Saddler & Asaro, 2007; Troia & Graham, 2002). Extant studies have mostly focused on teaching planning strategies to children with LD to help improve their overall writing performance (De La Paz & Graham, 1997b; Lienemann et al., 2006; MacArthur & Philippakos, 2010; Saddler, 2006; Sawyer, Graham, & Harris, 1992; Troia & Graham, 2002). For example, De La Paz & Graham (1997a) taught fifth to seventh graders with LD to generate and organize ideas for writing persuasive texts. In contrast, the control group was only 14 taught the persuasive text structure, asked to revise sample essays , then write essays and share them with peers. The results showed that the students who received planning strategy instruction wrote more complete (defined as including key functional essay elements including a premise, reasons, elaborations, and a conclus ion) persuasive essays with better holistic quality than the control group. Saddler (2006) taught six second graders with LD to effectively plan and write stories. Before receiving the strategy instruction, the stories composed by the participants lacked important story elements, averaged 25 words in length, and were characterized by poor quality. In addition, none of the six students generated any written plans, and the average planning time was 5.2 seconds. After strategy instruction, the students wr ote l onger stories with more complete and important story elements included and t he overall writing quality was significantly improved. Additionally, the average time spent on planning increased to 32.3 seconds. The students who completed the maintenance probes three and six weeks after the instruction were found to include more story elements (except one student), write longer texts, and even demonstrate better writing quality compared to their post -instruction performance. Compared to the existing writing in tervention studies for children with LD, only a few studies have been conducted to address the writing problems of children with other types of disabilities. De La Paz (2001) taught planning and composing strategies to one student with ADHD and two student s with SLI. The participants showed little effort in planning before composing, generated a limited number of words and ideas, and demonstrated poor overall writing quality during baseline. After instruction, all three students generated written plans in advance of writing. They wrote longer texts, and included more functional essay elements, leading to substantially better overall writing quality. The two students who completed the maintenance test four weeks later still wrote quantitatively and qualitativ ely better expository 15 essays than before instruction. Reid and his colleagues provided strategy instruction to help a) three second to fifth graders with ADHD to plan and write stories (Reid & Lienemann, 2006), b) four fourth and fifth graders with ADHD to write opinion essays (Lienemann & Reid, 2008), and c) three eleventh and twelfth graders to write persuasive essays (Jacobson & Reid, 2010). The students in all these studies were found to write longer stories/essays, include more story/essay elements, an d write papers with better holistic writing quality following instruction. Different planning strategies have been adopted in writing instruction to help struggling writers learn to effectively plan before drafting. Troia and Graham (2002) taught three pl anning strategies known as goal setting, brainstorming, and organizing to fourth and fifth graders with LD. Two acronyms, SPACE (Setting, Problems, Actions, Consequences, Emotions) and DARE (Develop a position statement, Add supporting arguments, Report an d refute counterarguments, End with a strong conclusion) were introduced during the pre - instruction phase to help children become familiar with the structure of stories and opinion essays, respectively. Two mnemonics, STOP & LIST (i.e., Stop, Think of Pur pose, and List Ideas, Sequence Them) were used to facilitate the teaching of the three planning strategies. The results showed that these studentsÕ overall quality of story writing was significantly improved. In addition, the results from the maintenance t est given one month after the intervention ceased showed that the students who received planning strategy instruction not only maintained an advantage in writing quality, but also composed longer texts than their peers who received process writing instruct ion. Tracy, Reid, and Graham (2009) taught 64 third graders general planning strategies represented by the mnemonic POW (Pick my idea, Organize my notes, and Write and say more). A genre -specific strategy targeting fictional story writing was introduced, which was represented by the mnemonic WWW, What = 2, How = 2 (i.e., Who are the main characters? When does the 16 story take place? Where does the story take place? What do the main characters want to do? What happens when the main characters try to do it? Ho w does the story end? How do the main characters feel?) Compared to the control group who received traditional skill instruction (i.e., spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and sentence construction skills), the students in the planning strateg y instruction group wrote longer stories that were of better quality. The training gains were maintained for at least two months. In addition, the strategy instruction on story writing was also found to help the students generalize to writing papers of an untaught but related genre, personal narratives. Graham, Harris, and Mason (2005) randomly assigned 73 third -grade struggling writers to three conditions: self -regulated strategy development (SRSD) only group, SRSD plus peer support group, and the compari son group who received writerÕs workshop instruction. Both the SRSD only and SRSD plus peer support groups were taught POW plus WWW, What = 2, How = 2 to enhance story writing. The two groups also learned a different strategy, TREE (i.e., Tell what you bel ieve, provide three or more Reasons, End it, and Examine) to help them with writing persuasive essays. The students who received SRSD instruction showed advantages over their counterparts in the workshop control group in terms of increased planning time, l onger texts, and enhanced overall quality for both stories and persuasive papers. In addition, peer interaction was found to facilitate generalization of the taught strategies to two uninstructed genres, personal narrative and informational texts. Three s tudents in De La PazÕs (2001) study were taught a strategy represented by the mnemonics PLAN (Pay attention to the prompt, List main ideas, Add supporting ideas, and Number your ideas) and WRITE (Work from your plan to develop your thesis statement, Rememb er your goals, Include transition words, Try to use different kinds of sentences, and 17 Exciting, interesting, $100,000 words) for planning and composing expository essays. All the written plans generated by the students were collected and analyzed using a 6 -point scale ranging from 0 (no advanced planning) to 5 (accurate map or outline). Both completeness (defined as including mapping or outlines) and accuracy (defined as responding to the writing prompt and logical subordination of main ideas with supportin g details) criteria were used to examine planning. Length also was determined, defined as the number of words written. An analytic scoring procedure was used to determine the number of functional essay elements (i.e., premise, reason, and conclusion). A ho listic rating scale ranging from 0 (nonscorable) to 7 (outstanding) was used to evaluate overall text quality. The results showed that the students not only learned to plan before composing (compared to no or minimal planning prior to instruction), but als o demonstrated better writing performance both quantitatively and qualitatively. The two students who completed the maintenance probes four weeks later still showed better writing performance compared to pretest. Planning strategy instruction has been ado pted to teach children to write across different genres such as stories and personal narratives (Lienemann et al., 2006; Saddler, 2006; Saddler, Moran, Graham, & Harris, 2004; Sawyer, Graham, & Harris, 1992; Tracy, Reid, & Graham, 2009; Troia & Graham, 200 2), expository papers (Deathline -Buchman & Jitendra, 2006; De La Paz, 2001, 2005; MacArthur & Philippakos, 2010; Yeh, 1998), and persuasive essays (De La Paz, 1997b; Monroe & Troia, 2006; Troia & Graham, 2002; Wong, Butler, Ficzere, & Kuperis,1996), and ev idence has shown that the planning strategies help children effectively generate and organize ideas and write texts in different genres with better overall quality. The planning strategy instruction in the previously documented studies has been provided mostly to students in hig her grades of elementary school (e.g., Sawyer, Graham, & Harris, 1992; 18 Troia & Graham, 2002) and middle schools (e.g., De La Paz, 2001, 2005; De La Paz & Graham, 1997a; Yeh, 1998). Some other studies have focused on teaching young er writers (Graham, Harris, & Mason, 2005; Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2006; Lienemann et al., 2006; Saddler, 2006; Saddler et al., 2004; Tracy, Reid, & Graham, 2009) and adults (MacArthur & Lembo, 2009) to plan. For example, Lienemann and colleagues (2006) tau ght six second -grade struggling writers to plan and compose stories using POW and WWW, What = 2, HOW = 2 under the SRSD framework. Compared to before strategy instruction, all of the participants wrote longer and more complete stories. All the students, ex cept for one, demonstrated substantial improvement in writing quality. Harris, Graham, and Mason (2006) also found that second graders who received planning and composing strategy instruction under the SRSD framework spent more time on planning and wrote m ore complete stories. However, no significant differences in length or text quality were found between the SRSD -instructed group and the comparison group who received writerÕs workshop instruction. This result only partially replicated Graham, Harris, and MasonÕs (2005) study in which third graders demonstrated both significantly improved writing quantity and quality. Harris and colleagues (2006) argued that one possible explanation was that these young students needed more opportunities to practice using t he taught strategy and self-regulatory skills before fully taking advantage of the strategy. Three middle -aged adults in MacArthur and LemboÕs (2009) study learned to identify a topic, generate ideas, organize information on a graphic organizer, state a po sition and provide supporting details, write, self -evaluate, and make revisions to a four -paragraph essay (i.e., introduction, reason, rebuttal, and conclusion). All three participants showed significantly enhanced organization and better overall writing q uality following intervention . To evaluate the effectiveness of planning strategy instruction on student writing 19 performance, different measures such as planning time, length of written text, story or essay elements, holistic writing quality, and writing traits are used. Length refers to the number of words written in the text. Planning time is defined as the time between the end of the teacher or examinerÕs directions and the beginning of the child Õs writing on paper or keyboard (Saddler, 2006). Stories g enerally include the following elements: main characters, locale, time, what the main characters want to do, what they did, how they felt, and how it all ended (Lienemann et al, 2006). Essay elements typically include the following units: premise (i.e., a statement specifying a particular position on a topic), reason (i.e., explanations to either support or refute the authorÕs position), conclusion (i.e., a closing statement), elaboration (i.e., a unit of text can be scored as an elaboration if the author p rovides details pertaining to the topic), and nonfunctional (i.e., information that was off the topic, repeated without discernible purpose, or not appropriate for the expository genre) (De La Paz, 1997b; 2001). Overall writing quality is generally scored using a holistic rating scale, e.g., a 7 -point scale ranging from 1 (representing the lowest quality) to 7 (representing the highest quality). Before scoring, childrenÕ written texts are typed and corrected for spelling, punctuation, and capitalization to minimize potential bias in scoring and examiners read the papers to obtain an overall impression of the writing quality (Tracy, Reid, & Graham, 2009). ChildrenÕ writing quality can also be assessed using an analytic scale for traits such as content, organi zation, sentence fluency, word choice, and writing conventions (Monroe & Troia, 2006). In summary, previous studies have well documented that struggling writers who receive planning strategy instruction spend more time in advance planning (Deatline -Buchma n & Jitendra, 2006; Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2006; Saddler, 2006; Troia & Graham, 2002). They write longer texts (De La Paz, 2001; De La Paz & Graham, 2002; MacArthur & Lembo, 2009; 20 MacArthur & Philippakos, 2010; Troia & Graham, 2002) which include more st ory elements (Lienemann et al, 2006; Saddler, 2006; Saddler & Asaro, 2007; Saddler et al, 2004; Tracy, Reid, & Graham, 2009) or functional essay elements (De La Paz, 2001; De La Paz & Graham, 1997b; MacArthur & Lembo, 2009; Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2006). Their writing products also demonstrate enhanced overall text quality (De La Paz, 2001; Graham et al, 1992; Lienemann et al, 2006; Tracy, Reid, & Graham, 2009). In addition, gains from the planning strategy instruction are well maintained for at least four weeks after the instruction ends (De La Paz & Graham, 2002; Graham, Harris, & Mason, 2005; Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2006; Saddler, 2006; Troia & Graham, 2002). The positive effects of strategy instruction also generalize to writing in some uninstructed ge nres for the trained students (Graham, Harris, & Mason, 2005; Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2006). Revising Strategy Instruction Revising, viewed as a critical part of the writing process (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1986), refers to identifying discrepancies b etween intentions and the existing text, and making desired changes based on detected dissonance (Fitzgerald, 1987; Fitzgerald & Markham, 1987). Expert writers tend to make global text revisions and target more meaning -changing revisions which lead to subs tantial improvement in writing quality (Butterfield, Hacker, & Albertson, 1996). However, poor writers have been found to experience difficulties with revising (Graham & Harris, 2000; Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997). They seldom revise their written texts, an d most of the revisions made are more superficial, i.e., focusing on the convention s (such as spelling, punctuation, capitalization) rather than the content, and hence have a very limited impact on the text quality (MacArthur & Graham, 1987; MacArthur, Sch wartz, & Graham, 1991; Stoddard & MacArthur, 1993). Troia (2009) suggested that this difficulty with revision might possibly reflect 21 the fact that struggling writers tend to Òmake inaccurate presuppositions regarding shared understandings between themselve s and their audienceÓ (p. 30) and focus on revising mechanical errors rather than content and global issues. These struggling students also demonstrate lack of sufficient skills and strategies to identify mismatches and carry out desired revisions, relucta nce to revise the existing paper , and lack of the executive mental control to Òmanage revising along with the other cognitive, linguistic, physical, and motivational operations involved with composing textÓ (p. 31). Different revising strategies have been adopted in previous studies to address the difficulties experienced by struggling writers. Scardamalia and Bereiter (1983) designed a simplified procedure to facilitate the use of the CDO (Compare, Diagnose, Operate) process, which helped children to revi se by detecting mismatches between intentions and actual text, determining the cause of the mismatch, and making the desired changes. The CDO revising strategy, as argued by the researchers, reduced the cognitive load by explicitly requiring children to fo llow the three steps when evaluating and revising the written texts sentence by sentence. Reynolds, Hill, Swassing, and Ward (1988) adopted the evaluation and directive phrases of the CDO procedure to improve revising at the sentence level. The COPS acro nym (i.e., Capitalization, Overall appearance, Punctuation, and Spelling) was also taught to address mechanical issues. After the instruction, the participants with LD were found to revise more of their mechanical errors. However, the content of the texts was not substantially improved. Reynolds and colleagues suggested that this result might indicate that the taught strategy guided the students to improve sentence content while ignoring the overall logic and cohesiveness of the paragraphs. The researchers also pointed out that compared to the COPS strategy , which was straightforward, the CDO procedure was more difficult for children with LD as it required more 22 complex proble m solving . Graham (1997) replicated Scardamalia and BereiterÕs (1983) study by teach ing twelve fifth and sixth graders with LD using a slightly modified CDO process, for which the number of evaluative and tactical choices was reduced from 11 to 7 and from 6 to 5, respectively. This modification further decreased the cognitive demands for revising, and the participants with LD who demonstrated limited cognitive capacities were expected to benefit from the reduction in options. Following instruction in using the CDO procedures, the students were found to make more revisions at both mechanica l and substantive levels, with the latter significantly increased. However, no significant improvement in text quality was found. Graham (1997) suggested that this result might indicate that the CDO strategy focused more on local rather than global problem s in the written texts. In addition, 83% of the students in the Graham study indicated that the CDO procedure not only made revising easier, but also helped them write better papers. De La Paz, Swanson, and Graham (1998) further extended GrahamÕs (1997) investigation by modifying the executive routine by including two revising cycles: during the first cycle, the students reread their paper, used four evaluation cards to identify problems, and then selected one of the four tactical directives to carry out the specific revision; during the second cycle, students worked more at local level of the texts and selected one of the six evaluations and a tactical directive to address the problems. To reduce the studentsÕ focus on mechanical errors, the students with LD were encouraged to ignore spelling, punctuation, and capitalization issues when revising. The results showed that the students who used the CDO procedure conducted more non -surface, meaning -changing revisions than their peers in the comparison group wh o were simply asked to revise texts to Òmake it better.Ó The CDO procedure also positively impacted text quality, with 67% of papers improved from the first to the final drafts in CDO 23 instructional condition versus 17% in the comparison group. Ninety perce nt of the participants believed that the CDO strategy made revising easier and helped them make desirable revisions, leading to written texts of better quality. In conclusion, the CDO strategy has been found to help struggling writers make more non-surfac e revisions, leading to enhanced quality of written texts. However, due to its complexity, the CDO strategy might be more suitable for revising shorter texts before children can fully internalize the strategy (Troia, 2009). Peer revising is another strate gy that combines revising strategy instruction and peer response (e.g., MacArthur, Schwartz, & Graham, 1991; Stoddard & MacArthur, 1993). Peer response itself might not always have a positive impact on revising as struggling writers may lack sufficient eva luation criteria and appropriate strategies for revising. Therefore, combining peer interaction with strategy instruction might be more effective in that children might gain a more thorough understanding of the strategy used through interacting with peers, have more opportunities to take the role of both writer and editor, and work collaboratively with peers to improve their writing performance (Stoddard & MacArthur, 1993). MacArthur, Schwartz, and Graham (1991) taught 29 fourth - to sixth -graders with LD t o revise both content (Revise) and mechanical issues (Edit). The children worked in pairs to help each other improve their essays and took the role of the writer (i.e., the author of a paper) and the listener (i.e., the person who provided suggestions and feedback on the paper). During the Revise phase, the listener first read the paper along with the writer then told the writer what parts he or she liked best. The listener then read the paper again and was required to provide at least three suggestions for revising the paper. Finally, the writer and the listener discussed the suggestions and the writer then made revisions. During the Edit phase, the writer followed a checklist that 24 helped with correcting mechanical errors and then gave the revised paper to the listener. The listener then corrected the missed errors using the same checklist. The results showed that the students who received the peer revising strategy instruction not only made more revisions, but also demonstrated improved overall writing qual ity compared to the control group who only received process writing instruction. Stoddard and MacArthur (1993) taught a peer editor strategy similar to that in MacArthur and colleaguesÕ (1991) investigation to six seventh - and eighth -graders with LD and m odified the evaluation criteria to focus revising on completeness, logic, details, and clarity. Following the intervention, all the participants were found to make more substantial revisions rather than simply correcting mechanical errors, leading to signi ficant improvement in the writing quality of the final drafts. The gains were also maintained for at least two months. In short, the peer revising strategy takes advantages of both the effects of strategy instruction on improving revising behaviors and th e benefit of peer interaction in providing social and motivational contexts to enhance writing performance. Graham & Harris (2005) suggested that the Revise (i.e., revising at content level) portion should be taught in advance of the Edit (i.e., revising a t mechanical level) portion so that children can be guided to revise at more substantive levels at the very beginning of revising. Moreover, it would be easier for children to learn one part at a time. They also suggested that the peer revising strategy mi ght be more suitable for young writers compared to the CDO procedure, as CDO was a relatively more complex procedure that required appropriate evaluation and revising. Setting appropriate goals for revising might also be able to guide struggling writers to revise more at substantive levels, and hence could lead to enhanced overall writing quality (e.g., Graham, MacArthur, & Schwartz, 1995; Midgette, Haria, & MacArthur, 2008). Graham, 25 MacArthur, and Schwartz (1995) randomly assigned 67 fourth - to sixth -graders with LD into three instructional conditions: (1) general goal (i.e., children were asked to revise their paper to Òmake it betterÓ); (2) goal to add information (i.e., children were required to add at least three things to their paper); and (3) goal t o add information using procedural facilitation (i.e., children were not only told to add at least three things to their paper, but also were guided to follow a procedure that helped them generate and evaluate information they were going to add to the pape r). After the instruction, the students whose revising goal was to add information to their papers (the second and third groups) not only made more meaning -changing revisions, but also demonstrated better writing quality compared to their peers who were as signed a general goal to make their papers better. However, neither the studentsÕ revising behaviors nor text quality seemed to benefit from the addition of the procedural facilitator. Midgette, Haria, and MacArthur (2008) randomly assigned 181 fifth - and eighth -graders into three conditions for revising persuasive essays: (1) general goal (i.e., students were asked to revise to make the paper better; (2) goal to add content (i.e., students were required to provide more reasons to support their papers); and (3) goal to add content and perceive audience (i.e., students were told to add more reasons to the essays and also to take into consideration the potential readers who might disagree with them). The results showed that the students in both the goal -to-add -content condition and the goal -to-add -content plus audience awareness condition wrote essays that were more persuasive than those in the general goal condition. In addition, the students who were assigned to the audience awareness goal condition tended to consider opposing positions more often than those in the other two conditions that didnÕt require consideration of potential audiences. Revising strategy instruction has been adapted to help children revise texts of different genres such as personal narr ative (Fitzgernald & Markham, 1987; Graham, MacArthur, & 26 Schwartz, 1995; MacArthur, Schwartz, & Graham, 1991; Stoddard & MacArthur, 1993), expository (Graham & MacArthur, 1988; MacArthur & Philippakos, 2010; Reynolds et al., 1988), and persuasive essays (M idgette, Haria, & MacArthur, 2008; Moore & MacArthur, 2012) and the results from these studies have shown that revising strategy instruction contributes to both substantial revisions and better overall writing quality. It is worth noting that mixed finding s do exist in terms of quality. In spite of the fact that most studies have documented the effectiveness of teaching revising strategies on improving struggling studentsÕ writing performance, significant improvement of the participantsÕ overall writing qua lity was not found in GrahamÕs (1997) and Reynolds et al.Õs (1988) studies. Also, previous studies that adopted different revising strategies focused on a limited range of grades (mostly higher grades at the elementary level) and disability types (mostly L D). Therefore, more efforts are needed to validate the effectiveness of revising strategy instruction for enhancing childrenÕ revising behaviors and writing outcomes. Self-regulated Strategy Development Framework Self-regulated Strategy Development (SRSD ) is an instructional program developed by Harris and Graham to help children develop knowledge about writing, writing strategies, writing self-regulation and self -monitoring skills, as well as positive attitudes toward writing ( Graham & Harris, 1993; Grah am & Harris, 2003; Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2003). The purpose of the SRSD model is to help children become independent, sufficient, and goal -oriented writers (Graham, Harris, & Reid, 1992; Troia & Graham, 2002). The SRSD model typically includes the follo wing six stages: (a) the teacher helps children develop background knowledge that facilitates the learning of writing and self -regulation strategies, (b) the teacher and children discuss the strategies to be learned in terms of when and how to use the stra tegies as well as the 27 importance of using the strategies in relation to current writing performance, behaviors , and thoughts, (c) the teacher models using the strategies in actual writing activities; (d) children memorize the strategy mnemonics and steps f or future use in writing, (e) the teacher scaffolds childrenÕs attempt s at using strategies during writing, and (f) children are encouraged to and given opportunities to use the strategies independently. Previous studies adopting either group experimenta l or single -case experimental design parameters consistently show that SRSD can help students gain better knowledge about writing, improve their approaches to writing, produce better writing, and boost writing self -efficacy (Graham & MacArthur, 1988; Jacob son & Reid, 2010; Lienemann & Reid, 2008; Mason & Graham, 2008; Reid & Lienemann, 2006; Saddler & Asaro, 2007; Stoddard & MacArthur, 1993; Troia & Graham, 2002). SRSD also targets the generalization and maintenance of strategy skills gained from the writin g instruction (Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2006). Several meta -analyses have been conducted to examine the overall effects of writing instruction on studentsÕ writing performance (Graham, McKeown, Kiuhara, & Harris, 2012; Graham & Perin, 2007; Rogers & Graham , 2008). For example, Graham and his colleagues (2012) conducted a meta -analysis of writing interventions (adopting true and quasi -experimental design s) for students at the elementary level. The results showed that the average weighted effect size for the instruction that adopted the SRSD framework (ES = 1.17) was not only significantly greater than zero, but also significantly larger than that for non -SRSD interventions (ES = 0.59). When taking into consideration the difficulties that children with SLI ex perience with writing, SRSD might be an effective framework for the planning and revising strategy instruction to help students with SLI : a) develop more initial ideas pertaining to the topic, organize information based on text structure, compose texts wi th fewer errors, and revise at both 28 mechanical and substantive levels, all of which will contribute to improved overall text quality; b) gain more in -depth understanding of the taught strategies (e.g., what is the strategy? when and where can the strategy be used?) through teacherÕs explanations, modeling, and scaffolding and studentsÕ independent practice with the strategy; c) obtain better maintenance and generalization of the strategy through instructional sessions that engage students in thoughtful disc ussion about how to continue strategy use in the face of obstacles and how to adapt strategies for diverse writing tasks; and d) develop self -regulation skills, set appropriate goals and sub -goals, monitor writing behaviors, and maintain positive attitudes toward writing. Teaching Compare -contrast Text Structure Compare -contrast is one of the five major identified expository text structures, together with collection, description, causation, and problem -solution (Meyer & Freedle, 1984). Previous studies ha ve suggested that compare -contrast is relatively more difficult than the other expository structures (Englert & Hiebert, 1984). It is worth mentioning that given compare -contrast texts can be organ ized by attributes , and they can vary in the use of superor dinate categories , students find it easier to write compare -contrast essays when describing similarities and differences (Meyer & Freedle, 1984; Richgels, McGee, Lomax, & Sheard, 1987) than when using superordinate categories (Englert & Hiebert, 1984; Engl ert & Thomas, 1987). In this study, the participants will be taught to identify superordinate attribute categories and then compare and contrast within superordinate categories for each paragraph. As the Common Core State Standards place more emphasis on e xpository writing as well as using writing as a tool to facilitate learning (Graham & Harris, 2013), compare -contrast writing is of potential importance in helping students better understand content area information by asking students to highlight 29 key info rmation, generate categories for that information, and make comparisons of attributes within the categories (MacArthur & Philippakos, 2010). To date, only a few studies have directly included compare -contrast texts in writing instruction (Englert, Raphae l, Anderson, Anthony, & Stevens, 1991; Hammann & Stevens, 2003; MacArthur & Philippakos, 2010; Wong, Butler, Ficzere, & Kuperis, 1997). For example, Englert et al . (1991) taught fourth and fifth graders with and without LD to write explanation, compare -con trast, and problem -solution texts using the Cognitive Strategy Instruction in Writing (CSIW) program. The set of the strategies incorporated in this instructional program was referred to by the acronym ÒPOWER ,Ó representing plan, organize, write, edit, and revise. The plan think -sheet helped students to identify writing purpose and audience, activate background knowledge, and brainstorm ideas. The organize think -sheet helped students to organize their ideas based on the specific text structure. Students the n wrote their first draft on the write think -sheet. The edit and the revise think -sheets guided students to examine their papers for content and text organization, develop plans for revising, and make revisions accordingly. The results suggested that the students who received the writing instruction wrote compare -contrast and explanation texts of better organization and overall quality compared to the control group who only received process writing instruction. Writing gains were found for the students with LD, low -achieving (defined as those who scored at or below the 39 th percentile on the reading subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test ), and high -achieving (defined as those who scored at or above the 56 th percentile on the test) students, with reported e ffect sizes ranging from 0.11 to 0.37 across the three ability levels. In MacArthur and PhilippakosÕs (2010) study, six students ranging in age from 11 to 14 years were taught to plan, write, and revise compare -contrast essays within the SRSD framework 30 using a strategy that was based on this specific text structure. The studentsÕ essays were scored for length, strategy use and planning, text structure elements (i.e., introductory statement, superordinate topic sentence, comparisons, details, conclusion, an d use of transition words), and overall quality (using a 6 -point trait rubric assessing content, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions with emphasis on how well different things were compared). The results showed that all the student s made significant improvements on both text structure elements and overall writing quality. Gains in compare -contrast text structure were well maintained at four and eight weeks for four students who completed the maintenance probes, but the quality gains were maintained for only two of those four students. The researchers argued that due to the fact that only one essay probe was given during the maintenance test, it was not clear whether this result indicated a decline in writing quality or variation on t his single essay. Self-efficacy for Writing Self-efficacy, referring to an individualÕs assessment of his or her own competence to perform certain tasks (Bandura, 1997), is believed to be very influential on individualsÕ functioning (Bandura, 1986), and can influence studentsÕ choice of which tasks with which they engage, how much effort they exert on these tasks, and to what extent they persist with difficult tasks (Bandura, 1997; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). Self -efficacy beliefs include both outcome expe ctations (i.e., beliefs that certain actions will lead to certain outcomes) and efficacy expectations (i.e., beliefs that one has the capabilities to perform certain actions leading to desired goals) (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002). The two kinds of efficacy bel iefs are different in that one might believe a certain action will lead to desired outcomes (e.g., using a revising strategy will help improve writing quality), but not necessarily believe s/he can perform that action. Previous research studies have consis tently shown that self -efficacy is a strong predictor of 31 student writing performance (Shell, Colvin, & Bruning, 1995; Shell, Murphy, & Bruning, 1989; Pajares & Valiante, 1999; Troia, Harbaugh, Shankland, Wolbers, & Lawrence, 2010). Several studies have fo und that writing instruction within the SRSD framework can increase studentÕs self -efficacy for writing (Graham & Harris, 1989a, 1989b; MacArthur & Philippakos, 2010). For example, Graham and Harris (1989a) assessed the impact of their writing instruction on the self -efficacy of three LD students. The students were asked to rate on a scale ranging from 10 to 100 in ten -unit intervals their perceived abilities to write an essay with key functional elements, detect errors in the text, and carry out revisions to improve their text. All three students showed increased self -efficacy for writing after instruction (increases were 4 points, 18 points, and 12 points, respectively). MacArthur and Philippakos (2010) adopted an 11 -item self -efficacy scale to examine the effects of their compare -contrast writing instruction on studentsÕ self -efficacy for writing. These items tapped specific writing processes (e.g., generating and organizing ideas, evaluating essays) and complete written products (e.g., essays that include d strong conclusions). The researchers indicated that all the items addressed the studentsÕ perceived writing competence on expository writing in general, except for one item that asked students to rate themselves on compare -contrast writing specifically, which was directly related to the taught text structure in their study. The results showed that all six students made gains in writing self -efficacy scores. Given the documen ted efficacy of strategy instruction on the writing performance of struggling students as well as the fact that few studies have focused on students with SLI, this study aimed to examine the efficacy of planning and revising strategy instruction within the SRSD framework on the compare -contrast expository writing of fourth - to sixth -graders with SLI. The efficacy of the planning instructio n alone is compared with sequential planning and 32 revising instruction, and the intervention effects are expected to be maintained for at least four weeks after the instruction ceased. It is expected that the training effects w ill generalize to writing in another uninstructed but related genre, explanation essays. The writing instruction is also expected to exert positive effects on studentÕs writing self -efficacy beliefs and their perception s of the planning and revising instruction. 33 CHAPTER THREE METHOD Participant Screening Participants with SLI in fourth - to sixth - grade were recruited from communities in the Great Lakes region . Each participant me t the following stepwise criteria: 1) Identif ication by a speech -language pathologist as having language impairment and having an IEP with expressive language goals; 2) A nonverbal intelligence score at or above 90 on the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence -Third Edition (TONI -3) to represent normal nonve rbal ability; 3) Scores on either of the two subtests ( Listening Comprehension or Oral Expression ) of the Oral and Written Language Scales -Second Edition (OWLS -II) that fall at least 1.25 standard deviations below of mean to represent oral language impairm ent; 4) Absence of hearing difficulties, frank neurological impairment, and emotional or behavioral problems. The students who met the se criteria also were given the Written Expression subtest o f the OWLS -II as a standardized assessment of writing performa nce prior to the strategy in tervention . All screening for participation was conducted by the instructor. Nonverbal Intelligence. To screen for the participantsÕ nonverbal intelligence, the TONI -3 was administered individually to each participant. The exa miner administered all the training items by showing the students how to respond with finger -point (i.e., nonverbal way) and encouraged students to join the pointing process until the training items were completed and the students seemed to understand the task. Once the testing started, the examiner pointed to the empty square in the stimulus pattern and the students were asked to respond by pointing to one (of four) choice below to match the pattern. The internal consistency reliability estimates for the TONI -3 are high (.89 < ! < .92) for participants aged 9 to 11. Listening Comprehension. To assess the participantsÕ listening comprehension, the 34 Listening Comprehension subtest from the OWLS -II that targeted syntactic, lexical/semantic, and supralinguisti c skills was administered. Students were asked to respond by either pointing to or saying the number of the one (of four) picture that matched the sentence spoken by the examiner (e.g., ÒIn which picture do the fishbowls have an unequal amount of water ?Ó). The internal consistency reliability estimates for the Listening Comprehension subtest are high (.89 < ! < .92) for this study sample Õs ages. Oral Expression. To assess the participantsÕ oral expression, the Oral Expression subtest from the OWLS -II that targeted syntactic, lexical/semantic, supralinguistic, and pragmatic skills was administered. The students were asked to orally complete the sentence spoken by the examiner based on the picture shown (e.g., ÒWhen Dad came into the kitchen, he looked at th e juice bottle and askedÉÓ), or describe a series of given pictures (e.g., ÒThese pictures tell a story. Tell what is happening as you point to each picture, starting hereÓ), or respond to a prompt (e.g., ÒThere is a new boy at school. Tell me two things t hat you could say to make him feel welcome. Say them to me exactly as you would say them to himÓ), or correct a sentence (e.g., ÒCorrect how Molly talks when she says ÔI throwed the ballÕÓ) said by the examiner. The internal consistency reliability estimat es for the Oral Expression subtest are high (.95 < ! < .96) for age s 9-11. Written Expression. To examine the participantsÕ writing performance, the Written Expression subtest from the OWLS -II that targeted conventions, syntactic, and lexical/semantic ski lls was administered. T asks used to measure writing performance included the following: (a) fill in the blank based on a given sentence (e.g., ÒHere is a sentence with some words left out. Fill in the blanks in this sentence: ÔYesterday, the ____ boy ____l unchÕÓ) or picture (e.g., ÒThe girl is saying whose ball she has. Fill in the blanks to finish her sentence. Remember, write just 35 one word on each line. The first word starts with the letter T. Be sure not to use any namesÓ) ; (b) describe given pictures (e .g., ÒIn this picture (point to the dog sleeping), the dog is sleeping. Write what is happening in this picture (point to the dog and cat sleeping) in one complete sentenceÓ) ; (c) combine two given sentences after examiner modeling (e.g., ÒListening to the se two sentences: ÔThe girl runs. The girl playsÕ. If asked to put them together into one sentence, you could write, ÔThe girl runs and playsÕ. Now you put these two sentences together into one sentence. ÔThe girl eats breakfast.Õ ÔThe boy eats breakfastÕ. Write your new sentence hereÓ) ; (d) add punctuation and capitalization to given sentences ; (e) write a story in their own words based on a story read aloud by the examiner ; (f) write down the answer to a question asked by the examiner (e.g., ÒWould you ra ther have a dog or a cat? Write one or two sentences telling which one you would rather have and whyÓ) ; and (g) write a sentence dictated by the examiner. The internal consistency reliability estimate for the Written Expression subtest w as .96 for age s 9-11. Selected Participants A total of three students, one fourth grader (girl), one fifth grader (girl), and one sixth grader (boy) , were identified as having SLI to be included in this study. The average age (in months) for the three students was 127.33. A ll three students were referred to the study for experiencing difficulties with oral language and writing performance. Sarah, the fourth -grade girl, received writing strategy instruction first. She was diagno sed as having attention deficit hyperactivity di sorder (ADHD) and received special education services during the time of the study. As reported by her parent, she also experienced some memory problem s due to anoxic brain injury. Ethan, the sixth -grade boy, was the second student to receive writing instr uction. He was diagnosed as having ADHD with major emphasis on attention deficit. Kayla, the fifth grade girl, was the last student to receive writing instruction. She was in the process for having 36 language learning difficulties and special education needs assessed. More detailed participant information is presented in Table 1. All screening measures were first scored independently by a graduate student who was not familiar with the purpose and design of the study. They were rescored by the researcher and interrater reliability was .90. The scores assigned by the graduate student w ere ultimately used in the study. According to the results from the screening assessments, Sarah showed a discrepancy of 25 points (1.67SD) between her nonverbal intelligence and listening comprehension performance; Ethan showed a discrepancy of 19 points (1.27SD) between his nonverbal intelligence and oral expression performance; and Kayla demonstrated a discrepancy of 19 points (1.27SD) between her nonverbal intelligence and list ening comprehension performance. Therefore, all the students met the discrepancy criteri on of demonstrating at least a 1.25 standard deviation difference between nonverbal intelligence and oral language (either receptive or expressive). In addition, Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla all obtained standard scores of 40 on the Written Expression subtest of the OWLS -II, which is below the 0.1 percentile rank (see Table 1). Therefore, all three students demonstrated profound difficulties in writing prior to receiving the writing instruction. Writing Prompts The compare -contrast writing prompts were provided during baseline, instruction, posttest, and maintenance phases of the study. All the writing prompts used the same format: Òwrite a paper comparing and contrasting _ __ and ___Ó as used in MacArthur and PhilippakosÕ (2010) study. An explanation expository writing prompt was also given at baseline, posttest, and maintenance to examine generalization effects of the compare -contrast writing instruction to writing explanat ion essays, an uninstructed expository text structure. Three fourth - to sixth - 37 grade teachers were asked to rate prompts based on familiarity, interest, and difficulty level. The prompts that were rated as too difficult were eliminated. Additionally, e ach participant was asked to rate their familiarity for each prompt to ensure they knew enough to be able to write an essay about the things being compared and contrasted . A few prompts were eliminated due to the fact that the participants were not familiar en ough with the topic (e.g., comparing and contrasting two zoos/museums; comparing and contrasting learning English and Chinese/Spanish/Latin). Each participant was provided with a topic prompt and was asked to compose an essay about the given prompt. To con trol for potential order effects, the following steps were taken. First, the topics were randomly selected from a larger pool of 40 compare -contrast essay topics. Second, all the essays written at a given time were on the same topic (e.g., three posttest e ssay prompts for student 1 and the final three baseline essay prompts for student 2 were the same). Similar procedures applied to the selection of the explanation prompts and the topics were randomly selected from a finalized pool of ten explanation essay topics. Measures The following measures were included to provide a comprehensive understanding of the studentsÕ writing performance before and after writing strategy instruction . Writing Process M easures Planning. Planning time refers to the interval b etween the instructor prompt to begin and the student starting to write. Planning time was recorded using a stopwatch to investigate how much time students spen t planning before composing. Written plans produced by the participants were collected and score d on a 5 -point scale ranging from 1 (no advanced planning) to 5 (fully developed planning) based on to what extent their generated plans contained writing goals, key traits for comparisons, and ideas that are organized to support elaboration on each trait. A 38 student Õs plans received the highest rating if s/he wrote down quantitative and qualitative goals, generated major traits for reporting similarities and differences, and included supporting details (in phrases or short sentences) corresponding to the wr iting prompt. The planning measures were recorded and scored during baseline, posttest, and maintenance. Revising. The instructor observed and took notes on any revising behaviors in which the student s engaged during the baseline, posttest s, and maintenan ce phases. Revising may occur at a substantial level (defined as revising that changes meaning or text organization to meet the quality and quantity goals) and/or superficial level (defined as revising that addresses capitalization, punctuation, and spelli ng errors). The instructor then tallied the number and type of revisions in each phase of the study . Writing Product M easures Total words written. Total words written (TWW) is an index of writing productivity. It is viewed as a reliable and valid measure for assessing studentsÕ writing outcomes, especially students at the elementary level (Deno, Marston, & Mirkin, 1982; Deno, Mirkin, & Marston, 1980). In particular, Deno and colleagues (1980, 1982) found that TWW is significantly correlated with written la nguage criterion measures such as the Test of Written Language (Hammill & Larsen, 1978; r = .69 to .82) and the Stanford Achievement Test (Madden, Gardner, Rudman, Karlsen, & Merwin, 1978; r = .41 to .88). Marston and DenoÕs (1981) investigation also provi ded strong evidence for the reliability of the TWW as a measure of written production. TWW for each paper was scored at pretest, posttest, and maintenance. Percentage of Correct Writing Sequences (%CWS ). Percentage of Correct Writing Sequences (%CWS) is a n index of studentsÕ writing accuracy ( Jewell & Malecki, 2005 ). Correct writing sequences refers to Òtwo adjacent correctly spelled words that are acceptable within the 39 context of the phrase to a native speaker of the English languageÓ (p. 11; Videen, Deno , & Marston, 1982). Therefore, %CWS is obtained by the number of correct writing sequences divided by total number of writing sequences in the written text multiplied by 100. This measure is strongly correlated to teachersÕ holistic ratings of writing qual ity (r = .75; Tindal & Parker, 1989). Jewell and Malecki (2005) suggested that using only production -dependent indices (e.g., TWW or w ords spelled correctly) was not enough to assess writing performance when students are in higher elementary grades or midd le school. Therefore, %CWS, together with TWW, provide valid measures to assess both the quantity and accuracy of studentsÕ writing performance. Percent CWS w as scored for papers produced during pretest, posttest, and maintenance. Text structure elements . Compare -contrast text structure elements were scored using the scoring procedures adapted from MacArthur and Philippakos (2010). Elements included introduction, hook, comparisons, traits, supporting details, summary of all the traits, conclusion of what the reader should learn, and use of transition words. No credit was awarded if (a) sentences simply replicated earlier statements or (b) information provided was not relevant to the comparisons. Text structure elements w ere scored during pretest, posttest, and maintenance. Each text structure element was awarded points based on whether the element was included, with 0 representing Ònot includedÓ, 1 representing Òpartially includedÓ, and 2 representing Òfully presentedÓ. Some elements may have occurred more t han once and thus obtain ed additional points (comparisons, traits, and details). See Appendix A Text Structure Elements for Scoring Compare/Contrast Essay for further details . Writing quality . Each studentÕs essay quality was evaluated using a 6-point rub ric developed by Education Northwest for four key traits : ideas, organization, word choice, and 40 sentence fluency ; these trait scores were summed to create a total writing quality score out of 24 points possible. Prior to scoring, t he studentsÕ papers w ere typed and identi fying information was removed, with any grammar or mechanical errors being corrected. The raters first read the studentsÕ essays to gain a general impression, and then rated the writing quality for each of the four traits. Writing quality w as scored during pretest, posttest, and maintenance. Self -efficacy for writing . A writing self -efficacy scale adapted from the items used by Troia et al. (unpublished data) was administered during baseline and posttest. These items measured the studentsÕ perceived competence in writing processes such as planning, drafting, and revising a paper in general (e.g., ÒI believe I could write an informative article that would help others learn about my topicÓ, ÒI would be able to come up with great ideas and incl ude lots of details for this articleÓ) and writing a compare -contrast essay in particular (e.g., ÒI can write a good compare -contrast essayÓ). The students were asked to rate how well they agreed or disagreed with the statements on a 7 -point Likert -type sc ale (0 = Totally Disagree, 1 = Mostly Disagree, 2 = Disagree A Little, 3 = DonÕt Agree or Disagree, 4 = Agree A Little, 5 = Mostly Agree, and 6 = Totally Agree) . See Appendix B Writing Self -Efficacy Rating Scale for items . Self -efficacy for writing was eva luated at pretest and posttest following revising in struction . A graduate student who majored in special education with experiences in literacy (particular writing) teaching and was unfamiliar with the studyÕs research design independently scored all the written plans and essays (for TWW, %CWS, text structure elements, and text quality) for compare -contrast and explanation . To establish the interrater reliability, the instructor also scored all the written plans and essays. Before independently scoring th e studentsÕ writing products, the graduate student w as trained to use the rubrics first and then scored 3 written plans and 3 essays together with the instructor to attain at least 80% agreement . Interrater 41 reliabilities for written plans, %CWS, text struc ture elements (for compare -contrast essays only), and overall writing quality were .89, .86, .84, and .90, respectively. Treatment Integrity A treatment integrity checklist that described every detailed instructional step was developed to ensure that i ntervention procedures were implemented as intended. The instructor checked off each step as it was completed. All the instructional lessons were audiotaped, and the graduate student who scored all the wr itten plans and essays listened to half of the taped lessons selected at random and checked off the steps on the checklist. At the end of the study, the examination of the checklist showed that the instructor completed 94% of the planning instruction lessons steps and 96% of the revising instruction lessons steps . Experimental Design A multi ple probes, multiple baseline across pa rticipants during baseline, posttest, and maintenance was adopted for experimental control . The three students received baseline probes , the strategy instruction, posttest probes , and a maintenance probe, with planning strategy instruction preceding revising strategy instruction and each followed by a posttest phase . Baseline. During the baseline phase, each participant was asked to compose a compare -contrast text based on a given writing probe in 40 minutes. Lined paper and a pencil were provided. The instructor didnÕt provide any help for writing mechanics or feedback on the text quality. Once a stable baseline was established (i.e., given at least three probes, each student demo nstrated consistent performance on the measure of text structure elements in terms of level and trend), the planning strategy instruction was introduced to the student. Additionally, planning time was recorded and any written plans generated were evaluated . Essays were also scored for TWW, %CWS, text structure elements, and overall quality. Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla 42 completed 3, 5, and 6 compare -contrast baseline essays, r espectively . Each student also wrote one explanation essay and completed the writing sel f-efficacy scale during the baseline phase. Instruction. Two instructional conditions (i.e., planning and revising strategy instruction) were included in the intervention. During the instructional phase, each student received a 40 -minute individual inst ructional session three times a week. The planning and revising strategy instruction both included the six stages of SRSD described previously. It is worth noting that some stages took more than one session to complete. The instruction continued until the student demonstrated mastery of the strategy, defined as 100% correct on oral questions regarding key instructional elements for each session. For example, the students needed to correctly answer questions such as , ÒWhat are the words representing the four parts of a compare -contrast essay as well as how to write a good compare -contrast essay using the words as a reminder for brainstorming ideas, setting goals, organizing information, and checking possible errors? What does each letter represent? What are t he steps of the strategy?Ó If the student was unable to meet the session criterion for mastery , additional instructional sessions were added to help strengthen understanding and use of the strategy. Only when the first student demonstrated improvement and the second student maintained a stable baseline did the instruction for the second student begin, and so on for the third student. For planning strategy instruction, Sarah took 14 sessions, Ethan took 10 sessions, and Kayla took 11 sessions. For revising s trategy instruction, Sarah took 10 sessions, Ethan took 6 sessions, and Kayla took 9 sessions. Posttest. Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla completed 3 compare -contrast probes for posttest 1 immediately a fter the planning instruction and 3 compare -contrast probes f or posttest 2 immediately after the revising instruction to examine the efficacy of t he planning instruction alone and the sequential effects of planning and revising instruction , respectively . The posttest 43 writing probes were administered in the sa me mann er as the baseline probes. Each student also wrote one explanation essay during posttest 1 after planning instruction and during posttest 2 after the revising instruct ion to examine possible generalization effects. They also complete d the writing self -effi cacy scale and attitudes survey during posttest 2 . Maintenance . Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla completed 2 maintenance compare -contrast essays four weeks following the revising instruction to investigate to what extent the strategy training gains were maintaine d. The compare -contrast maintenance probes were administered in the same manner as during baseline. Each student also completed an explanation essay to examine the poten tial maintenance of the generalization effects. Instructional Procedures Both the pla nning and revising strategy instruction were implemented using the SRSD framework, including the following six steps . First, t he instructor helped the student develop background knowledge related to the taught strategy and self -regulation skills. For examp le, prior to teaching TREE BRANCH to facilitate planning and writing compare -contrast essays, the instructor discussed with students what compare -contrast essay s accomplish . The instructor also discussed with students what self -talk is and why self -talk is needed during writing . Second, t he instructor discussed with the student the strategy in detail. For example, the instructor briefly introduced the strategy, prompted the student to think about why they needed the strategy to help write good compare -contr ast essays, and explained how the strategy can help with making compar isons and contrasts used in daily decision -making situations . Third, t he instructor modeled the strategy use step -by-step. Fourth , the instructor gradually ceded control for strategy implementation to the student with feedback and coaching. Fifth, t he student was required to memorize the acronyms for the strateg y steps and what each strategy step entailed. Sixth, t he 44 student was asked to independently write on a given prompt using the tau ght strategy and provided feedback (see A ppendix C Lessons Plans for the planning and revising lesson scripts ). Planning Strategy I nstruction . The participants were provided with a strategy reminder card and a planning sheet (see Appendix D Planning Shee t). The strategy mnemonic developed by Troia (2013) , TREE BRANCH (TREE = Tell What You Are Comparing and Why, Report Important Similarities and Differences, Elaborate on Each Point, End with What the Reader Should Learn; BRANCH = Brainstorm Idea Words, Rec ite Self -Talk, Ask if Ideas Will Meet Goals, Now Write with Good Organization, Powerful Words, and Accurate Information, Challenge Myself to Come Up with More Ideas, Have A Look for Mistakes) , was used to help students not only plan and write compare -contr ast papers, but also engage in self -regulation of cognitive processes like goal setting, self -evaluation, and self -encouragement that are highlighted by the SRSD model of strategy instruction. The planning instruction lesson plans were adapted from MacArth ur and Philippakos (2010). Lesson 1 : Activating background knowledge. The instructor introduced compare -contrast expository writing and the TREE BRANCH planning strategy and discussed with the student the importance of learning the planning strategy to he lp with writing good compare -contrast essays (e.g., connecting compare -contrast writing to both school learning and everyday decision -making situations). The instructor then showed two good examples of compare -contrast essays representing two different way s to organize similarities and differences, one at a time, and discussed with the student how each of the TREE parts was well presented in the essays. Throughout the discussion of the good examples, the instructor asked the student to highlight the trait o f each paragraph as well as the transition words throughout the essay. A negative example was then shown to the student as a contrast and the student was asked to think about how this 45 essay missed key TREE parts that prevented it from being a good compare -contrast paper. When finishing the discussion of all the essay examples, the instructor first modeled to track the number of the TREE parts and traits (included in the essay examples) using a progress -tracking chart. The student was then given one of his/h er compare -contrast essay s produced during the baseline phase , and learned to record the TREE parts and traits for his/her baseline performance on the progress -tracking chart with the help of the instructor. Lesson 2 : Modeling. The instructor reviewed the previous lesson and the student needed to correctly answer all the questions (regarding their understanding of what a compare -contrast essay is and its importance to schooling and decision -making in daily life) so as to continue the lesson. The instructor then modeled using TREE BRANCH step -by-step, from completing the planning sheet by establishing quality and quantity goals, brainstorming and organizing ideas based on the text structure, and writing down self -talk statements, to composing a compare -contr ast essay on a given topic. After modeling, the instructor modeled recording the number of TREE parts and traits included in this compare -contrast essay on the progress -tracking chart. At the end of this lesson, the instructor discussed with the student th e improvement in writing performance by comparing the paper the instructor just wrote using TREE BRANCH to the studentÕs own pretest paper. The student was also asked to think of other tasks to which s/he could apply TREE BRANCH to promote generalization o f the taught strategy. Lesson 3 : Guided practice. The instructor first reviewed the TREE BRANCH mnemonic with the student. During this lesson, the instructor practiced using TREE BRANCH to plan and compose a compare -contrast essay collaboratively with th e student. The instructor and the student then evaluated this essay together by recording the number of TREE parts and traits included on the progress -tracking chart. At the end of this lesson, the instructor discussed with 46 the student the improvement in w riting after using TREE BRANCH and promoted generalization of the strategy to other tasks. Lesson 4 : Memorization. The instructor told the student that s/he needed to memorize the TREE BRANCH mnemonic aid and the planning sheet so as to use them for writ ing compare -contrast essays in the future. The instructor encouraged the student to memorize the mnemonic aid and planning sheet using his/her own way. At the end of the lesson, the instructor rehearsed TREE BRANCH with the student and checked the studentÕ s drawing of the planning sheet on a blank paper to make sure s/he memorize d to criterion (defined as writing down TREE BRANCH, including the quality goal and quantity goal, and drawing the graphic organizer that reflected the compare -contrast text structu re). Lesson 5 : Independent practice with mnemonic chart . The student was asked to ind ependently use the TREE BRANCH mnemonic aid and the planning sheet to plan and compose a compare -contrast essay on a given topic. The student w as also asked to evaluate t his essay by recording the TREE parts and traits included on the progress -tracking chart. The instructor provided help and feedback as needed. At the end of this lesson, the instructor discussed with the student the improvement in writing after using TREE BRANCH and promoted generalization of the strategy to other tasks. Lesson 6. Independent practice without mnemonic chart. The instructor first reviewed the TREE BRANCH mnemonic aid with the student and told the student that this lesson focused on weaning off the mnemonic aid and the planning sheet. The student was given a blank paper and asked to individually plan and compose a compare -contrast essay on a given topic without using the mnemonic aid and the planning sheet. The student was encouraged to write down the TREE BRANCH on top of the blank paper, and then write down goals and self -talk verbiage , and draw 47 the graphic organizer for use during the writing process. The instructional phase was ended when the student independently plan ned and wr ote a compa re-contrast essay including all four parts of TREE, following all steps of BRANCH, and including at least three important traits with supporting details for similarities and differences. Revising Strategy I nstruction . The students were taught two cycles of revisin g using the SEARCH checklist (Set goals, Examine paper to see if it makes sense, Ask if you said what you meant, Reveal picky errors, Copy over neatly, and Have a last look at errors) (Ellis & Friend, 1991) to address both content and writing mec hanics. In cycle 1, after the instructor modeled how to use the SEARCH checklist to revise essays, the student was first given the checklist and asked to practice revising his/her essay using the checklist together with the instructor. In cycle 2, the stud ent was asked to practice revising essays using the SEARCH checklist individually. Lesson 1 : Activating background knowledge. The instructor introduced the lesson and discussed the purpose for learning the revising strategy. The instructor asked the stude nt to think about why and when people need to revise papers, as well as shared any previous revising experiences s/he had. The instructor then provided comments on the studentÕs response and pointed out that key purpose of the revising was to substantially improve the writing quality, at both content and mechanics level s. The instructor then showed the student the SEARCH checklist and explained each step of SEARCH to the student. Self -talk statements to facilitate the use of the revising strategy w ere discu ssed, and the student was reminded to use his/her self -talk consistently to encourage, instruct, and praise him or herself throughout the revising process. The instructor then presented a compare -contrast essay quality scoring sheet (see Appendix E Evaluat ion for Compare -Contrast Essay Quality ), explained the rubric in details and modeled scoring the quality of the ex ample compare -contrast essay s used in the planning instruction (one 48 good example vs. one poor example). Lesson 2 : Modeling. The instructor re viewed the previous lesson and asked the student to explain the purpose and the importance of using the revising strategy. The instructor then presented the student with the first compare -contrast essay s/he wrote during the posttest immediately after plan ning instruction, and modeled using the compare -contrast essay quality scoring sheet to evaluate the quality of this essay. The instructor then modeled using the SEARCH checklist step -by-step to locate problems and revise accordingly. When finish ed revisin g, the instructor used the same essay quality scoring sheet to evaluate the essay a second time and discussed the improvement due to the use of the revising strategy. At the end of this lesson, the student was also asked to think about other tasks for whic h s/he could use this strategy. Lesson 3 : Guided practice. The instructor reviewed the SEARCH checklist with the student at the beginning of the lesson. The student was then given the second paper s/he wrote during the posttest immediately following plann ing instruction, and was asked to help the instructor to revise using the SEARCH checklist. The instructor guided the whole revising process, but the student was asked to engage actively by responding to the instructorÕs prompting questions when going thro ugh each step of the SEARCH checklist and providing suggestions for revising accordingly. Lesson 4 : Memorization. The instructor told the student that s/he needed to memorize the SEARCH checklist so as to use it for effectively revising his/her essays in the future. The instructor encouraged the student to memorize the SEARCH checklist using his/her own way. At the end of the lesson, the instructor rehearsed the SEARCH checklist with the student and made sure s/he memorized all the steps to criterion (def ined as reciting the acronym and all associated 49 steps for SEARCH with 100% accuracy ). Lesson 5 : Independent practice with mnemonic chart. The student was given the third compare -contrast essay that s/he wrote during posttest immediately after planning ins truction and was asked to individually use the SEARCH checklist to revise this paper. The student also used the quality scoring sheet to evaluate and compare the essay before and after applying the revising strategy. The instructor provided help and feedba ck as needed. At the end of this lesson, the instructor discussed with the student the improvement in writing quality after using the SEARCH checklist and promoted generalization of the revising strategy to other tasks. Lesson 6 : Independent practice with out mnemonic chart. The instructor first reviewed the SEARCH checklist with the student and told the student that this lesson focused on weaning off the checklist. The student was given a blank paper and encouraged to write down the SEARCH mnemonic on top of the blank paper, together with all the key steps. The student then revised one of the compare -contrast essays that s/he wrote during baseline and also used the quality scoring sheet to evaluate and compare the essay quality before and after applying the revising strategy. The instructional phase was ended when the student c ould independently revise an essay following all the steps of SEARCH. Effect Size Because the current study adopts a single -subject experimental design, effect sizes w ere calculated u sing the percentage of non -overlapping data (PND) points ; the proportion of data points in the planning and revising strategy instructional condition s that exceed the highest value in the baseline phase. As recommended by Scruggs and Mastropieri (2001), PN D scores above 90% indicate a very effective treatment while scores between 70% and 90% represent an effective treatment. PND for compare -contrast essay text structure elements and compare - 50 contrast essay quality are reported in the result s section below . Social Validity A student satisfaction survey was given after the intervention package ( sequential planning and revising instruction) to determine how well participants believed each kind of strategy instruction worked. The students were asked to respond t o these items: 1) whether s/he liked the writing instruction; 2) whether s/he thought s/he benefited from this intervention; 3) whether s/he wanted to keep using the TREE BRANCH strategy to help plan and write in the future; and 4) whether s/he wanted to k eep using the SEARCH checklist to help revise papers in the future. When responding to the survey, the students were asked to read each statement and indicate their agreement or disagreement on a 7 -point scale Likert -type scale (0 = Totally Disagree, 1 = M ostly Disagree, 2 = Disagree A Little, 3 = DonÕt Agree or Disagree, 4 = Agree A Little, 5 = Mostly Agree, and 6 = Totally Agree) (See Appendix F Student Satisfaction Survey ). !! 51 !Table 1 Participant Information Name (Pseudonym) Age (in months) Grade Gender Ethnicity TONI-3 OWLS-LC OWLS-OE OWLS-WE Sarah 115 4 Female Caucasian 115 103 90 40 Ethan 138 6 Male Caucasian 105 86 91 40 Kayla 129 5 Female African -American 92 73 81 40 Note. TONI -3 = Test of Nonverbal Intelligence -Third Edition; OWLS -LC = Oral and Written Language Scales -Second Edition, Listening Comprehension subtest; OWLS -OE = Oral and Written Language Scales -Second Edition, Oral Expression subtest; OWLS -WE = Oral and Written Language Sc ales-Second Edition, Written Expression subtest; all scores are standard scores with a mean of 100 and SD of 15 . 52 CHAPTER FOUR RESULTS The results are reported for the writing process measures (i.e., planning time, written plans, and revising behaviors) a nd writing product measures (i.e., length, accuracy, text structure elements, and overall writing quality) for compare -contrast essays across the baseline, posttest 1 (immediately after planning instruction), posttest 2 (immediately after revising instruct ion), and maintenance four weeks later. The writing self-efficacy scores are reported for baseline and posttest 2 to evaluate effects of the writing instruction on the studentsÕ perceived competence for writing expository essays in general and compare -cont rast essays in particular. The studentsÕ writing performance on the uninstructed explanation writing genre across all phases of the study are then reported to examin e generalization effects of the planning and revising instruction. Finally , the result s for the social validity questionnaire are reported to investigate the studentsÕ attitude s towards the writing instruction. Compare -Contrast Writing P rocess Measures Planning Time None of the three students were found to spend time on planning during the base line phase of the study . All three students were found to engage in advanced planning across posttest 1, posttest 2, and maintenance compared to no planning during baseline. After learning TREE BRANCH to help with planning and composing compare -contrast es says, all three students were found to plan prior to writing during posttest 1, with average planning time of 12.67 minutes, 12.67 minutes, and 8.33 minutes for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla, respectively. After learning the SEARCH checklist to help with revisin g, all three students were found to spend relatively less time planning during 53 posttest 2, with average planning time of 3.67 minutes, 4.33 minutes, and 7.67 minutes for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla, respectively. During maintenance probes given four weeks afte r the writing instruction ceased, all three students were still found to engage in planning, with average planning time of 8 minutes, 3 minutes, and 8.5 minutes for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla, respectively. Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla showed a consistent pattern of significant increase in planning time from the baseline to posttest 1, and then some decrease from posttest 1 to posttest 2. Sarah and Kayla showed increased planning time from posttest 2 to maintenance, whereas Ethan was found to spend less time on pla nning during the maintenance compared to posttest 2 (see Table 2). Written P lans None of students were found to generate any written plans during baseline. All three students were found to generate acceptable to good written plans across posttest 1, post test 2, and maintenance. After receiving planning strategy instruction, all three students were found to generate good written plans prior to writing during posttest 1, with average scores for written plans of 4.33, 4.67, and 4.00 for Sarah, Ethan, and Kay la, respectively. After receiving revising instruction, all three students were found to generate written plans with average scores of 3.33, 2.33, and 4.00 for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla, respectively during posttest 2. During maintenance, all three students were found to generate written plans with average scores of 3.50, 2.00, and 4.00 for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla, respectively. Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla showed a consistent pattern of significant increase in quality of written plans from baseline to posttest1. From posttest 1 to posttest 2, Sarah and Ethan showed slightly decreased quality of written plans, whereas KaylaÕs written plan s maintained the same quality. From posttest 2 to maintenance, the average 54 scores of SarahÕs written plans showed a slight increa se; t he average scores of Ethan Õs written plans showed a slight decrease; and the a verage score of Kayla Õs written plans maintained the same (see Table 2). Descriptively, during posttest 1, Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla wr ote down the quality goal (i.e., inclu ding four parts of the TREE) and quantity goal (i.e., including at least three important traits), drew the graphic organizer that reflected the compare -contrast text structure, and generated three traits and appropriate supporting details for reporting similarities and differences. During both posttest 2 and maintenance, KaylaÕs written plans included the same key elements as in posttest 1. Sarah generated acceptable written plans that included the compare -contrast graphic organizer, three traits and suppor ting details, but no specific quality or quantity goal s were written down. Ethan included three key traits with some supporting details in the written plans, but didnÕt draw the compare -contrast graphic organizer or include any writing goals. Revising Beh aviors None of the students were found to engage in any revising during either baseline or posttest 1. After learning the SEARCH checklist, the three students were all found to purposefully allot time at the end of the writing lesson for revising their es says during both posttest 2 and maintenance. However, all the revisions made by the students focused mostly on mechanical errors (e.g., spelling, capitalization, punctuation), except that Sarah corrected a few errors that altered meaning for one essay duri ng posttest 2 and one essay during maintenance. 55 Compare -Contrasting Writing Product Measures Total Words Written (TWW) TWW represented the length of the studentsÕ compare -contrast essays. During baseline, the average length of the essays written by Sara h, Ethan, and Kayla were 23, 54, and 106 words , respectively. During posttest 1, the average length of the essays written by Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla were 155, 149, and 282 words, respectively . Therefore, the average length increases for Sarah, Ethan, and K ayla from baseline to posttest 1 were about 574%, 176%, and 166%, respectively. During posttest 2, the average length of essays written by Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla were 104, 120, and 192 words , respectively. Though a ll three students Õ essays demonstrated a decline in text length from p osttest 1 to posttest 2 , the average length of their papers written during posttest 2 were still about 352%, 122%, and 81% greater than those written in baseline for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla , respectively . During maintenance, th e average length of the essays that Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla wrote were 227, 86, and 213 words , respectively. Comparing to posttest 2, Sarah and Kayla showed an increase in text length at maintenance, whereas Ethan demonstrated a decrease. However, the y wer e still substantially longer than those written in baseline: 887%, 59%, and 101% for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla , respectively (see Table 2 ). Percentage of Correct Writing Sequences (%CWS) Percentage CWS represented the accuracy of the compare -contrast essays . During baseline, the average %CWS of the essays written by Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla were 46.9%, 54.5%, and 71.8%, respectively. During posttest 1, the average %CWS of the essays written by Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla were 69.9%, 74.9%, and 67.3%. Therefore, Sarah and Ethan showed av erage increases in %CWS of 23% and 20.4% , respectively, 56 from baseline to posttest 1, while Ka yla showed a decrease in %CWS of 4.5% . During posttest 2, the average %CWS of the essays that Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla wrote were 68.8%, 91.3%, and 81.5%, respectively. Sarah demonstrated a slight decrease in %CWS from posttest 1 to posttest 2, whereas Ethan and Kayla both showed some increase. The average increases in %CWS during posttest 2 for Sarah, E than, and Kayla were 21.9%, 36.8%, and 9 .7%, respectively, compared to baseline. During maintenance, the average %CWS of the essays that Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla wrote were 74.9%, 81.1%, and 77.0%, respectively. Comparing to posttest 2, Sarah showed an increase in %CWS for maintenance, whereas Et han and Kayla demonstrated some decrease in %CWS. However, the average increases in %CWS during maintenance for Sa rah, Ethan, and Kayla were 28.0%, 26.6%, and 5.2 %, respectively, c ompared to baseline (see Table 2 ). Text Structure Elements During baseline, Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla established a stable baseline with mean scores of 4.3, 7.0, and 11.2, respectively, for the compare -contrast text structure elements. During posttest 1, all three studentsÕ essay structure scores were higher than baseline, with aver age scores of 20.7, 22.7, and 26.7 for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla, respectively. Therefore, the average gains for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla were 16.4, 15.7, and 15.5, respectively, and the percentage of non -over -lapping data (PND) for each was 100%. During post test 2, all three students showed some decre ments in text structure elements, with Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla obtaining mean scores of 13.0, 17.3, and 24.7, respectively. Therefore, Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla demonstrated average decreases in te xt structure element scores of 7.7, 5.4, and 2.0, respectively, from posttest 1 to posttest 2. Therefore, the PND for each was 0 % for posttest 2 , compared to posttest 1. However, the mean 57 scores for all three students were still higher than their baseline performance. Duri ng maintenance, the mean scores that Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla obtained were 14.0, 16.0 and 26.0, respectively. Therefore, Sarah and Kayla demonstrated increased performance from posttest 2 to maintenance (average increase of 1 for Sarah and 2.7 for Kayla), whereas Ethan showed decreased performance (average decrease of 1.3). However, the mean scores for all three students during maintenance were higher than their baseline performance and the PND for each was 100% for maintenance , compared to the baseline (se e Table 2 and Figure 1). Further component s analysis was conducted to examine how the writing instruction affected each of the compare -contrast text structure elements as well as maintenance of the gains. The results showed that after receiving the planni ng instruction, Sarah obtained most gains in comparisons, traits, details, and conclusion (mean score increase s of 7.0, 6.7, 1.67, and 1, respectively); Ethan showed most increases in comparisons, traits, summary, and use of transition words (mean score in crease s of 4.5, 2.7, 2,0, and 2.0, respectively); and Kayla gained most in traits, supporting details, and hook (mean score increase s of 5.3, 4.8, and 2.0, respectively). After receiving the revising instruction, Sarah showed major decreases in comparisons and traits, although both elements still scored higher than baseline (mean score increase s of 4.3 and 1.3, respectively). Ethan demonstrated major decreases in comparisons, and scored slight ly lower than baseline performance (mean score decrease of 0.5), followed by decreases in traits and summary, which were still scored higher compared to baseline (mean score increase s of 1.67 and 0.7, respectively). However, Ethan showed a significant increase in the number of supporting details after receiving the revi sing instruction, with mean score 58 increase of 3.3 compared to baseline. Kayla showed major decreases in traits and details, which were also scored higher than baseline performance (mean score increase s of 3.3 and 3.1, respectively). The gains for all the e lements were well maintained for all three students (see Table 3) , except that SarahÕs scores on traits fell back to her baseline level as well as KaylaÕs scores on the number of comparisons (mean score decrease s of 1.2 compar ed to the baseline) . Writing Quality During baseline, Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla established a stable baseline with mean scores of 9.0, 10.4, and 10.6, respectively, out of maximum 24 for overall writing quality. During posttest 1, all three students wrote better quality papers than in baseline, with average scores of 17.0, 18.3, and 18.3 for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla, respectively. Therefore, the average gains in quality were 8.0, 7.9, and 7.7 for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla, and the percentage of non -over -lapping data (PND) was 100%. Durin g posttest 2, all three students showed slightly decreased performance in overall writing quality compared to posttest 1, with Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla obtain ing mean scores of 16.0, 17.7, and 18.0, respectively. Therefore, the PND for each was 0% for postt est 2, compared to posttest 1 . However, the mean scores for all three students during posttest 2 were still higher than their baseline writing quality , During maintenance, the mean quality scores that Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla obtained were 16.0, 16.0 and 18 .5, respectively. Therefore, SarahÕs performance in posttest 2 was maintained ; EthanÕs performance showed a slight decrease from posttest 2 (with average decrease of 1.7), whereas KaylaÕs performance demonstrated a slight increase (with average increase of 0.5). However, the mean scores for all three students during maintenance were higher than their baseline performance , 59 and the PND for each was 100% for maintenance , compared to the baseline (see Table 2 and Figure 2). Explanation Writing Process Measure s Planning None of the students were found to engage in any planning during baseline performance. During posttest 1, Sarah still didnÕt engage in any planning, whereas Ethan and Kayla were found to spend 7 minutes and 6 minutes, respectively, for planning prior to writing the ir explanation essays. During posttest 2, Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla spent 4 minutes, 4 minutes, and 7 minutes, respectively on planning. And during the maintenance probes four weeks later, Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla spent 5 minutes, 2 minut es, and 4 minutes on planning prior to composing the explanation essays (see Table 4 ). Revising None of the students were found to engage in any revising during either baseline or posttest 1. The three students were all found to spend about five minutes on average at the end of the writing lesson to revise their explanation essays during both posttest 2 and maintenance. However, all the revisions (8 revisions per essay on average) made by the three students focused on mechanical errors , except that Sarah co rrected two errors that changed meaning for o ne explanation essay during posttest 2. Explanation Writing Product Measures Total Words Written (TWW) During baseline, the length of the explanation essays that Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla wrote were 20, 26, and 8 8 words , respectively. During posttest 1, the length of the explanation essays written by Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla were 134, 68, and 309 words . 60 Therefore, the average length increases for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla from baseline to posttest 1 were about 570%, 162%, and 215%, respectively. During posttest 2, the length of the explanation essays that Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla wrote were 143, 78, and 164 words , respectively. Sarah and Ethan were found to show increased essay length from posttest 1 to posttest 2, whe reas Kayla showed some decrease in length. However, all the essays written in the second posttest were still longer than in baseline, with increases of about 615%, 200%, and 86%, respectively, for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla. During maintenance, the length of the explanation essays that Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla wrote were 107, 60, and 107 words , respectively. Comparing to posttest 2, all three students showed a decrease in essay length during maintenance. However, the length of all maintenance essays were still higher than those written in baseline, with increases being 435%, 131%, and 21.6%, respectively (see Table 4 ). Percentage of Correct Writing Sequences (%CWS) During baseline, the %CWS of the explanation essays written by Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla were 81 .0%, 41.4%, and 70.4%, respectively. During posttest 1, the %CWS of the explanation essays written by Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla were 66.7%, 82.7%, and 77.4%. Therefore, Ethan and K ayla showed increases in %CWS of 41.3% and 7.0 %, respectively, from baseline to p osttest 1, whereas Sa rah showed a decrease in %CWS of 14.3%. During posttest 2, the %CWS of the explanation essays that Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla wrote were 75.6%, 84.5%, and 84.1%, respectively. All three students demonstrated increases in %CWS from posttes t 1 to posttest 2. Compared to baseline, the increases in %CWS fo r Ethan and Kayla were 43.1% and 13.7 %, respectively, while the decr ease in %CWS for Sarah was 5.4 %. During maintenance, the %CWS of the 61 explanation essays that Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla wrote were 76.6%, 96.8%, and 75.4%, respectively. However, the increases in %CWS during maintenance for Ethan and Kayla were 55.4 % and 5.0%, respectively, compared to baseline. Whereas Sarah showed a decrease in main tenance of 4.4 (see Table 4). Writing Quality During baseline, Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla established a stable baseline with scores of 9, 11, and 11, respectively, out of maximum 24 for overall writing quality. During posttest 1, all three students wrote qualitatively better explanation essays than in baseline, with the score of 14, 16, and 16 for Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla, respectively. Therefore, Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla each made gains in quality of 5 points from baseline to posttest 1. During posttest 2, all three students showed further enhanced per formance in overall writing quality compared to posttest 1, with Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla obtain ing scores of 17, 18, and 18, respectively. The gains of scores in quality for all three students were 8, 7, and 7, respectively, compared to their baseline perf ormance. During maintenance, the scores that Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla obtained were 14, 17 and 16, respectively. Therefore, all three students demonstrated decreases in writing quality for their explanation papers from posttest 2 to maintenance , but compare d to baseline , the gains in quality for Sarah, Ethan, and Kay la were 5, 6, and 5 (see Table 4 ). Self-efficacy for Writing All the students were asked to complete the writing self -efficacy scale prior to writing instruction (i.e., baseline) and after the completion of all writing instruction (i.e. posttest 2). During baseline, Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla obtained self -efficacy scores of 28, 62 22, and 51, respectively, out of 54 possible. After receiving the sequential planning and revising instruction, Sarah, Etha n, and Kayla obtained self -efficacy scores of 34, 26, and 48, respectively. Therefore, Sarah and Ethan made gains in self -efficacy scores of 6 and 4 points , respectively, whereas Kayla showed a decrease in her self-efficacy of 3 points . Social Validity Sarah, Ethan, and Kayla obtained scores of 14, 18, and 23 (out of 24), respectively on the student satisfaction survey after receiving the sequential planning and the revising instruction . In responding to the questions on the survey, both Ethan and Kayla in dicated that they liked the writing instruction very much. Sarah held a neutral attitude towards the writing instruction. All three students believed they benefited from the writing instruction. Kayla indicated she would like to keep using the TREE BRANCH strategy to help with planning and writing in the future. Sarah and Ethan said they were not sure whether they would like to keep using the TREE BRANCH strategy as they couldnÕt remember all about this strategy at the point of completing the survey, but th ey both believed TREE BRANCH w as very helpful. All three students also indicated willingness to keep using the SEARCH checklist to h elp revise papers in the future. 63 Table 2 Results for Compare -Contrast Essays: Writing Process and Pr oduct Measures Student (number of compositions) Average Planning Time (in minutes) Written Plans (max. 5) TWW %CWS Text Structure Elements Quality (max. 24) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) Sarah Baseline (3) 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 23 (3.05) 46.9 (7.17) 4.3 (2.08) 9.0 (1.73) Posttest 1 (3) 12.67 (4.62) 4.33 (0.58) 155 (37.02) 69.9 (3.29) 20.7 (3.06) 17.0 (2.00) Posttest 2 (3) 3.67 (1.53) 3.33 (0.58) 104 (13.61) 68.8 (7.55) 13.0 (2.00) 16.0 (1.00) Maintenance (2) 8.00 (0.00) 3.50 (0.71) 227 (59.40) 74.9 (7.85) 14.0 (4.24) 16.0 (1.41) Ethan Baseline (5) 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 54 (13.43) 54.5 (15.33) 7.0 (1.87) 10.4 (0.55) Posttest 1(3) 12.67 (2.52) 4.67 (0.58) 149 (33.47) 74.9 (2.53) 22.7 (1.15) 18.3 (1.15) Posttest 2 (3) 4.33 (0.58) 2.33 (0.58) 120 (14.47) 91.3 (7.40) 17.3 (1.53) 17.7 (0.58) Maintenance (2) 3.00 (1.41) 2.00 (0.00) 86 (26.87) 81.1 (11.24) 16.0 (5.66) 16.0 (1.41) Kayla Baseline (6) 0.00 (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 106 (17.70) 71.8 (4.39) 11.2 (1.47) 10.6 (0.52) Posttest 1 (3) 8.33 (2.08) 4.00 (0.00) 282 (26.50) 67.3 (8.35) 26.7 (0.58) 18.3 (0.58) Posttest 2 (3) 7.67 (2.08) 4.00 (1.00) 192 (19.66) 81.5 (7.79) 24.7 (2.31) 18.0 (1.00) Maintenance (2) 8.50 (2.12) 4.00 (0.00) 213 (11.31) 77.0 (9.19) 26.0 (1.41) 18.5 (0.71) Note. Posttest 1: Immediate posttest after planning instruction; Posttest 2: Immediate posttest after revising instruction; Maintenance: M aintenance test four weeks after revising instruction. 64 Table 3 Results for Compare -Contrast Essays: Component Analysis for Text Structure Elements Student (number of compositions) Introduction Hook Comparisons Traits Details Summary Conclusion Transition Words M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) Sarah Baseline (3) 0.0 (0.00) 0.3 (0.58) 3.0 (2.65) 0.0 (0.00) 0.0 (0.00) 0.0 (0.00) 0.0 (0.00) 1.0 (0.00) Posttest 1 (3) 1.0 (1.00) 0.7 (0.58) 10.0 (2.00) 4.7 (1.15) 1.67 (1.53) 0.0 (0.00) 1.0 (1.00) 1.7 (0.58) Posttest 2 (3) 1.0 (1.00) 0.3 (0.58) 7.3 (3.06) 1.3 (1.16) 0.67 (1.16) 0.0 (0.00) 1.3 (0.58) 1.7 (0.58) Maintenance (2) 0.5 (0.71) 1.5 (0.71) 7.0 (4.24) 0.0 (0.00) 2.0 (0.0) 0.0 (0.00) 2.0 (0.00) 1.0 (0.00) Ethan Baseline (5) 0.0 (0.00) 0.0 (0.00) 6.2 (1.64) 0.0 (0.00) 0.4 (0.55) 0.0 (0.00) 0.0 (0.00) 0.6 (0.55) Posttest 1(3) 1.7 (0.58) 1.0 (0.00) 10.7 (1.15) 2.7 (0.58) 1.3 (1.53) 2.0 (0.00) 1.3 (0.58) 2.0 (0.00) Posttest 2 (3) 1.3 (0.58) 1.0 (0.00) 5.7 (2.52) 1.7 (1.53) 3.7 (2.08) 0.7 (1.15) 1.3 (0.58) 2.0 (0.00) Maintenance (2) 2.0 (0.00) 1.0 (0.00) 7.0 (1.41) 1.5 (2.12) 1.5 (0.71) 1.0 (1.41) 1.0 (0.00) 1.0 (0.00) Kayla Baseline (6) 0.8 (0.41) 0.0 (0.00) 8.7 (1.63) 0.0 (0.00) 0.2 (0.41) 0.0 (0.00) 0.7 (0.52) 0.8 (0.41) Posttest 1 (3) 1.7 (0.58) 2.0 (0.00) 8.3 (1.53) 5.3 (1.15) 5.0 (1.73) 1.3 (1.15) 1.0 (1.00) 2.0 (0.00) Posttest 2 (3) 1.7 (0.58) 2.0 (0.00) 9.0 (2.65) 3.3 (1.53) 3.3 (1.15) 2.0 (0.00) 1.3 (0.58) 2.0 (0.00) Maintenan ce (2) 1.0 (0.00) 1.0 (0.00) 7.5 (3.54) 6.0 (0.00) 5.0 (1.41) 2.0 (0.00) 1.5 (0.71) 2.0 (0.00) Note. Posttest 1: Immediate posttest after planning instruction; Posttest 2: Immediate posttest after revising instruction; Maintenance: M aintenance test four weeks after revising instruction. 65 Table 4 Results for Explanation Essays: Writing Process and Product Measures Student (number of compositions) Average Planning Time (in minutes) TWW %CWS Quality Sarah Baseline (1) 0 20 81.0 9 Posttest 1 (1) 0 134 66.7 14 Posttest 2 (1) 4 143 75.6 17 Maintenance (1) 5 107 76.6 14 Ethan Baseline (1) 0 26 41.4 11 Posttest 1(1) 7 68 82.7 16 Posttest 2 (1) 4 78 84.5 18 Maintenance (1) 2 60 96.8 17 Kayla Baseline (1) 0 88 70.4 11 Posttest 1 (1) 6 309 77.4 16 Posttest 2 (1) 7 164 84.1 18 Maintenance (1) 4 107 75.4 16 Note. Posttest 1: Immediate posttest after planning instruction; Posttest 2: Immediate posttest after revisin g instruction; Maintenance: M aintenance test four weeks after revising instruction. 66 !! Figure 1 Compare -Contrast Text Structure Elements !"#!#"$!$"%!#$%&"'()*#!###$#%#&#"#'#(#)#*$!$#$$$%+,-./01. 23-44.-4# 23-44.-4$ 5,014.1,16. 7,8,9 !"#!#"$!$"%!#$%&"'()*#!###$#%#&#"#'#(#)#*$!$#$$$%:49,1 !"#!#"$!$"%!#$%&"'()*#!###$#%#&#"#'#(#)#*$!$#$$$%;, %ile Your Name: _______________________________ Your Grade: _______________________ Your TeacherÕs Name: _______________________ Your School: ______________________ Circle Your Gender: Male Female Circle Your Race/Ethnicity: Black Asian White Native American Hispanic Other Please respond to each statement under each wri ting assignment that is described by circling the number that matches how well you agree or disagree with the statement. There are no right or wrong answers and it is important to be as honest as possible . Your teacher will not use your answers to grade yo u. If you need help reading an item, just ask your teacher. Please respond to every statement . Your teacher asks you to write a feature article about something at which you are an expert, like a sport, hobby, person, or place, although you will need to d o some additional research for your article. Your article will be published in a class newspaper to be circulated throughout the school. You will want to write an informative article that will help others learn about your topic. Now, respond to the stateme nts below about this assignmentÉ 1. My article would be well organized Ñthe ideas would be in order and go together. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Totally Mostly Disagree DonÕt Agree Agree Mostly Totally Disagree Disagree A Little or Disagree A Little Agree Agree 2. I would not be able to find mistakes and confusing or weak spots in my article and change them to improve my work. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Totally Mostly Disagree DonÕt Agree Agree Mostly Totally Disagree Disagree A Little or Disagree A Little Agree Agree 3. I would be able to come up with great ideas and include lots of details for this article. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Totally Mostly Disagree DonÕt Agree Agree Mostly Totally Disagree Disagree A Little or Disagree A Little Agree Agree 89 4. I believe I could write an informative article that would help others learn about my topic... 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Totally Mostly Disagree DonÕt Agree Agree Mostly Totally Disagree Disagree A Little or Disagree A Little Agree Agree 5. I would not be a ble to include precise and interesting vocabulary words in my article. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Totally Mostly Disagree DonÕt Agree Agree Mostly Totally Disagree Disagree A Little or Disagree A Little Agree Agree 6. I would be able to use correct spelli ng, punctuation, and capitalization in my article. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Totally Mostly Disagree DonÕt Agree Agree Mostly Totally Disagree Disagree A Little or Disagree A Little Agree Agree 7. My sentences in this article would show I can express my ideas clearly and use language in a variety of ways. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Totally Mostly Disagree DonÕt Agree Agree Mostly Totally Disagree Disagree A Little or Disagree A Little Agree Agree 8. I can write a good compare -contrast essay. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Totally Mostly Disagree DonÕt Agree Agree Mostly Totally Disagree Disagree A Little or Disagree A Little Agree Agree 9. I can write a good informative article. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Totally Mostly Disagree DonÕt Agree Agree Mostly Total ly Disagree Disagree A Little or Disagree A Little Agree Agree (Adapted from Troia et al., unpublished data) 90 Appendix C. Lesson Plans (Planning & Revising Strategy Instruction) Planning Strategy Instruction Lesson Plan # 1 Objectives: 1. Introduct ion to Compare Contrast Writing and The Strategy Materials: 1. Mnemonic aids (TREE, BRANCH) 2. Sample compare -contrast essays 3. Transition word list 4. Papers and pencils 5. Audio -recorder 1. Background information ____ÒIn the next couple of weeks, IÕm going to teach you a strategy for writing better compare -contrast essays. The first step is to learn what a compare -contrast essay is. Do you know what a compare -contrast is?Ó ____The teacher waits for studentÕs responses, discusses the answers and continues: ÒA compare -contrast essay explains how two things are the same and different. Compare means to tell how two things are the same, and contrast means to tell how two things are di fferent. Therefore, a compare -contrast paper is a paper, which tells how two things are the same and different.Ó 2. Purpose of learning the strategy ____ÒLetÕs talk about why it is important to learn how to write compare -contrast essays. Why do people w rite compare -contrast papers? When might you write a compare -contrast paper?Ó If needed, probe with additional questions: Did you ever write a compare -contrast paper? Can you think of times you might compare things? ____The teacher listens to her student Õs responses and comments on them. The key purposes of compare -contrast to be drawn out of the discussion and highlighted in the teacherÕ own examples are: (a) to learn about two things by comparing them; (b) to help us make good decisions such as what to buy, which class to take, where to go for a trip, etc. based on comparisons. ____ÒCompare -contrast papers are used in school to help students learn about things by comparing them. For example, when you read a book, the teacher might ask you to write a compare -contrast paper comparing two of the bookÕs characters. By writing this essay, you will think about the two characters Ð their personality, behavior, and so forth. And it will help you understand the characters better and why they did what they did. In science class you might be asked to compare and contrast two groups of animals, for example, mammals and reptiles. By comparing and contrasting them, you will learn what makes 91 each kind of animal special. For example, mammals are warm -blooded and rep tiles are cold blooded. In Social Studies you might be asked to compare how life conditions are today and how they were in the time of pilgrims. This will help you understand and remember better how the Pilgrims lived and what they were like.Ó ____ÒS o one reason to compare and contrast is to understand things by understanding how they are the same and different.Ó 3. Connecting the purpose with everyday situations ____ÒAs you see knowing this compare -contrast strategy will be useful for you at school . However, if you think of it we might use this compare -contrast strategy in everyday situations.Ó ____ÒLet me give you an example: I would like to buy a new storybook. There were two books that I was considering to choose between. In order to decide whi ch book to buy, I compared and contrasted them and try to find out how they are the same and different. I will compare them on a lot of different categories. What are some categories that you might use to compare two books?Ó Listen to studentsÕ response s and fill in more as needed. ÒRight, we might compare them on appeal of illustrations, review or summaries, price....Ó Comparing and contrasting them helped us to make a decision of which storybook to get. If we havenÕt done that, I might not have gotten the storybook that I wanted!Ó ____ÒDo you think of similar experiences, where you or someone could use compare and Contrast in everyday situations?Ó The teacher waits for student responses and concludes by pointing out the utility of Compare and Contra st knowledge in everyday life. Other examples if the students canÕt think of any: comparing and contrasting two people running for class president; comparing and contrasting two places you might go for vacation. ____ÒComparing and contrasting things can help us to learn more about the things we compare. Sometimes we can use what we learn to make decisions. You can see that learning about comparing and contrasting is important.Ó ____ÒHow do we write a good compare -contrast essay in general? ItÕs just like how we compare and contrast two things in our daily life. The key is to come up with important characteristics or traits on which similarities and differences for the two things can be compared and contrasted. ÒCompareÓ means to find similarities, and Òco ntrastÓ means to tell differences. Remember that we will always want to figure out key characteristics or traits and report important similarities and differences. And these will be important parts of a compare -contrast essay.Ó 92 4. Compare -contrast struct ure: Example of good essay ____ÒNext we are going to learn how to organize a compare -contrast paper. When you compare and contrast things, it is very important to be organized so you can see exactly how two things are the same and different. And when we w rite a paper, it has to be organized so other people can understand what we are saying. We are going to look at a compare -contrast paper that is very well organized. It will be a good example to see how to organize a paper.Ó ___ ÒA compare -contrast paper has an introduction, several body paragraphs that report similarities and differences with details, and a conclusion.Ó ___ ÒThese parts are listed on this chart and spell the word TREE; if you think of this word and what each letter represents, you will be able to remember the parts of a good compare -contrast essay.Ó Tell What You Are Comparing and Why ____ÒA compare -contrast paper has an introduction, which tells the topic of the paper. The introduction should tell what is being compared to what and wh y, and at the same time it should ÒhookÓ my reader, grab his/her attention. So, the introduction needs to do these things: 1. Hook the reader and keep him/her engaged and interested and 2. Tell what is being compared to what and why.Ó ____ÒIÕm going to re ad the introduction to this paper. Listen to see if it hooks the reader and tells what two things are being compared and the reason for the comparison.Ó The teacher reads the title and introduction of the ÒDinosaurs/BirdsÓ paper. ____ÒDoes the introduct ion tell what two things are being compared?Ó [Yes] ____ÒDoes it hook the reader? How?Ó [Yes, it says Òthey ruled the earthÓ, and raises an interesting question.] ____ÒWhy did the author write this paper?Ó [To understand how dinosaurs and birds are simil ar to see if it makes sense that birds evolved from dinosaurs.] Report Important Similarities and Differences ____ÒAfter the introduction, a compare -contrast paper has one or more body paragraphs. Each body paragraph tells one important trait. Therefore, we need to come up with several key traits so that we can further talk about either similarities or differences around these traits for the two things we are comparing and contrasting.Ó ____ÒWhat traits did he come up with? He reported three traits. LetÕ s look at the first trait. He reported that birds and dinosaurs are similar in how they raise their young. WhatÕs the second trait? He reported that birds and dinosaurs are different in how they look like.Ó 93 ____ÒRemember, we need to always come up with i mportant traits about the two things we compare and contrast so we can talk more by adding details.Ó Elaborate on Each Point ____ÒNow we have reported the key traits for birds and dinosaurs, we need to provide relevant details to elaborate on similariti es and differences for each trait.Ó ____ÒLetÕs see how he elaborated on the first trait of Òraise their youngÓ by talking about similarities of birds and dinosaurs on this trait. He said that both birds and dinosaurs lay eggs in nests. He said that both c are for their young by bringing them food when they hatch. He also added that both birds and dinosaurs protect their young from other animals that might eat them.Ó ____ÒWe can see that he elaborated on the first trait and the elaborated details let us be tter understand how birds and dinosaurs are similar for raising their young.Ó ____ÒNow letÕs move to the next paragraph.Ó The teacher reads the paragraph to the students. ____Repeat for the remaining body paragraphs. End with What the Reader Should Lea rn ____ÒThe last paragraph is the conclusion. In the conclusion, the writer summarizes the ideas in the paper to help the reader remember what was most important.Ó ____ÒLetÕs read the conclusion to see if it mentions the important points of what the read ers should know, and if it has transition words.Ó Teacher reads the conclusion. ____ÒDid the author use transition words?Ó [yes] ÒWhat do those words, Ôin conclusionÕ tell the reader?Ó [That the paper is done and a summary is coming.] ____ÒDo you think that the writer ended his paper successfully? Did he mention the most important things without repeating everything?Ó [Student response. Note: Students may point out that none of the actual differences or similarities are mentioned. But she did summarize t he purpose of the paper.] ÒYes, he did a good job, as he did not write a lot, he just restated in a way what he had said in his introduction and he also used a key word to show to the reader that he had reached the end of the paper.Ó 5. Compare -contrast s tructure: Bad example ____ÒNow, letÕs read a compare -contrast paper which is not as well organized.Ó The teacher or the student reads the whole paper aloud. ____ÒHis paper is on Restaurants. He was asked to choose two restaurants that he knows and comp are and contrast them. LetÕs see whether he tells what he was comparing and why. What are the questions about this part?Ó [Student answers.] 94 ____Teacher and student evaluate the Introduction. ÒSo, he does say that he will compare two restaurants the P eace of Pizza and the GrottoÕs. He says that they both sell pizza, but they make different kinds of pizza. So, the student does say what is being compared. Does this part ÒhookÓ the reader and make him interested in reading the rest of the paper? No, he does not.Ó ____ÒHow do you think that he could have begun his paper to make the reader interested?Ó Discuss student answers. ____ÒLetÕs see how he reported the similarities and differences and whether he elaborated on each point. LetÕs start with the first trait.Ó The teacher reads the first body paragraph. ÒWhat are the questions about this part? [Student answers.] ____ÒDoes the topic sentence tell an important characteristics or trait on which the two things are the same or different? [No] No, he d oes not; instead he talks about one of the restaurants.Ó ____ÒDoes he have interesting and relevant details? [Student answers.] He does have details. However, they donÕt compare the two restaurants. ____Repeat for next paragraph. ____ÒWhat about his co nclusion? Does he end with what readers should learn from this topic? No, he does not. What he does is stating his opinion. However, this was not an opinion essay, but rather a compare -contrast essay.Ó ____ÒWhat do you think that this student should impro ve on his next writing?Ó Main point is that the paragraphs donÕt come up with important traits and donÕt report similarities and differences either. 6. Evaluating baseline performance ____The teacher gives each student a compare -contrast essay he/she wro te during the baseline. The teacher asks him/her to read the essay aloud and see which parts his/her essay contains and which parts are missing based on the four key parts of a good compare -contrast essay as represented by TREE. ____The teacher also asks the student to record on the progress -tracking sheet how many traits he or she included in the essays they wrote during baseline. 95 Planning Strategy Instruction Lesson Plan # 2 Objectives: 1. Model use of TREE BRANCH strategy (use #1 planning sheet) Materials: 1. Mnemonic aids (TREE, BRANCH) 2. Compare -contrast essay prompt 3. Transition word list 4. Papers and pencils 5. Audio -recorder 1. Review of the previous lesson ____ÒDo you remember what we discussed in our last lesson?Ó ____ÒWe learned what a compare -contrast paper is and how it is organized. We also practiced evaluating compare -contrast papers. What is a compare -contrast paper? [SA] ____ÒWhat do you remember about how it is organized?Ó [SA] ÒGood, weÕll go over all the parts again today.Ó ____ÒIs it important to learn how to write compare -contrast papers? Why do you think that such a knowledge might be helpful in school and in your life?Ó [Student responds] [The studen tÕs responses to the three questions should include the key points so as to continue this lesson] ÒCompare -contrast papers are used in school to help students learn about things by comparing them. For example, when you read a book, the teacher might ask you to write a paper comparing two of the bookÕs characters. By writing this essay, you will think about the two characters Ð their personality, behavior, and so forth. And it will help you understand the characters better and why they did what they did. In science class you might be asked to compare and contrast two groups of animals, for example, mammals and reptiles. By comparing and contrasting them, you will learn what makes each kind of animal special. For example, mammals are warm -blooded and re ptiles are cold blooded. There are occasions you might be asked to compare and contrast two of your best friends. You will think of how they are similar in some ways, for example, they both are so nice; and different in other ways, for example, Julie l ikes to read poems and Katie likes to play video games. Another example is, you might be asked to compare and contrast Monday and Friday. You may think of that they are similar in the fact that they are both school days. So you go to school on both Mondays and Fridays. They are also different and you may have different feelings for Monday and Friday. You might feel that Monday means the start of a whole week whereas Friday means the start of weekend break.Ó 96 ____ÒSo one reason to compare and cont rast is to understand things by understanding the key traits so we can talk about how things are the same or different on these traits.Ó ____ÒMoreover, comparing and contrasting things can help us to learn more about the things we compare. Sometimes we ca n use what we learn to make decisions. Remember last time we talked about how compare and contrast could help us decide which storybook to buy, which place to go for a fun trip? You can see that learning about comparing and contrasting is important, and it can help us make a good decision in daily life.Ó 2. Introducing Mnemonic Aid & Model Using TREE BRANCH to Plan and Write ____ÒToday we will learn about a strategy for planning and writing compare contrast papers.Ó ____ÒThere are two ways to organize yo ur ideas for your compare -contrast papers using the TREE BRANCH. IÕll show you how to use the #1 planning sheet that will report all similarities followed by the differences for the comparing and contrasting for this lesson. Then weÕll learn to use the #2 planning sheet that will report similarities and differences around each trait during the next lesson.Ó ____ÒTo show you the strategy, I will Ôthink aloud.Õ That means that IÕll say what I am thinking. By thinking aloud I can show you how I am using this strategy.Ó ____ÒThis strategy has six steps, listed on this chart and spell the word BRANCH; if you think of this word and what each letter represents, you will be able to plan and write good compare -contrast essays.Ó The teacher shows student the chart of the Ò BRANCH = Brainstorm Idea Words, Recite Self -Talk, Ask if Ideas Will Meet Goals, Now Write with Good Organization, Powerful Words, and Accurate Information, Challenge Myself to Come Up with More Ideas, Have A Look for Mistakes. " ____ÒWe will star t with Brainstorming Idea Words before writing. What we do is to write down everything we know on our topic. It is a storm of thoughts and knowledge happening in our brain: that is why we call it brainstorm.Ó ____ÒSo, I am a student and my teacher asked m e to write a compare -contrast paper on XXX and XXX.Ó [The specific topic will be determined together with the student.] ____ÒLetÕs see, how am I supposed to start? First, I have to brainstorm. That means I need to think and write everything I know on thi s topic.Ó While brainstorming the teacher will write everything she and the student know about the topic. ____The teacher also models how to generate traits. The teacher reminds that at least three traits need to be generated. ____The teacher writes dow n on the planning sheet the traits and the details that supports the trait, for both similarities and differences. 97 ____ÒDo you notice how I recorded my ideas on the planning sheet? Did I write a lot on this sheet?Ó [Student Responds.] ÒYes, I only wrote s ingle words or short phrases to record my ideas here. IÕd like to use these ideas as reminders only.Ó ____ÒNext, we Recite Self -Talk on the planning sheet. So, what is self -talk? Self -talk is what we talk to ourselves during writing. Why do we need self -talk when writing? Because sometimes we may find some parts of writing very tough, and self -talk can help us get through these tough parts.Ó ____ÒFor example, when I find some parts of writing really difficult and I do not feel like I can do this, I can a sk myself: Am I trying best to keep working hard? By talking to ourselves, we are encouraging ourselves to keep working hard and getting through the difficult parts of the writing.Ó ____ÒFor example, I am looking at my compare -contrast essay and I can ask myself: OK. Are these the most important things to be comparing? These are things that good writers tell themselves while writing to keep them coming up with important traits to report similarities and differences.Ó ____ÒI can also complement myself by s aying ÒGreat job!!Ó when I have finished my writing and I am happy with my work. These are self -statements that I used to encourage myself.Ó ____ÒWhat self -statements you can think of that you will use while writing?Ó The teacher writes down self -statements on the planning sheet. ÒRemember, you will want to use them while writing, because this will help you be focused and also help you express your feelings about a situation you are in. By doing that you will be able to find a way to a solution.Ó ____ÒAls o, you will practice saying your self -talk aloud when writing and I will be listening for you. I will show you how to do this in a few minutes, so make sure you pay attention to how I talk to myself during writing.Ó ____ÒAfter we have developed self -talk that works for us, we look at the ideas we came up with and set our goals. LetÕs set our writing goals by asking two questions: What is my quality goal for this compare -contrast essay? I need to set my quality goal as including all the parts of TREE to wri te a good compare -contrast essay. What is my quantity goal for this essay? I need to set my quantity goal as including at least three important traits around which we do the comparisons. And I will write one body paragraph for each trait.Ó The teacher writ es down quality and quantity goals on the planning sheet. ____ÒNext, since I have generated some ideas about XXX and XXX, I will examine these ideas carefully and Ask if Ideas Will Meet Goals.Ó The teacher models setting the quality goal to be Òincluding four parts of the TREEÓ and the quantity goal to be Òincluding at least three important traitsÓ and writes them down on the planning sheet. 98 ____ÒDo I have enough ideas to make sure I will report at least three important traits about the XXX and XXX? Do I need to generate more ideas so that I also will have enough details for each of these traits? Will these ideas possibly help me write a good compare -contrast essay?Ó ____ÒNext step, Now Write with Good Organization, Powerful Words, and Accurate Informati on. I will have to place these ideas of mine from the planning sheet to the lined paper. This will help me organize my ideas and have clear comparisons. I will use TREE to make sure I include all the important parts of a good compare -contrast essay.Ó ____The teacher models using TREE to help write an organized paper. ÒFirst, Tell What You Are Comparing and Why. So I will tell that I am comparing XXX and XXX and explain why I would like to compare them. I will make this as my first paragraph. Ó ____ÒThen, I will Report Important Similarities and Differences . I will start using the information I brainstormed and wrote down on the planning sheet.Ó The teacher points out each trait should be explicitly stated as the topic sentence for each body paragraph. The organization of the paper reflects the fact that all similarities are reported followed by all the differences. ____The teacher also models using the self -talk. ÒCan I think of anything else? Not really. So I can use the self -talk I wrote on my planning sheet and ask myself: Am I trying best to keep working hard? Well, I think I will try harder to come up with a few more ideas. So maybe you can help me a bit. On what else do you think that I can compare XXX and XXX?Ó ____ÒWhat do I have to do next? I wi ll need to Elaborate on Each Point. Now I need to put details to each of the similarities and differences. ItÕs good to have at least 3 body paragraphs that focus on at least three key traits for comparisons.Ó ____ÒNow when I am writing, I will make sure to use powerful words and provide accurate information in my essay .Ó ____ÒIf I donÕt have enough ideas that I could use to develop similarities and differences or to provide details for each comparison category, I will need to Challenge Myself to Come Up with More Ideas . I will ask myself: what ideas can I add? What other aspects that I find XXX and XXX are similar? Different? I will try best to come up with more ideas so I can meet my quality and quantity goals. ____The teacher models coming up with a c ouple of more traits and supporting details for reporting similarities and differences. ____ÒSo, finally, I need to End with What the Reader Should Learn. So I need to write my conclusion. LetÕs see the conclusion should be a summary that tells about the three traits we reported in the texts above and also tell what readers should learn about this topic.Ó The teacher writes down. ____ÒNow I have a draft that looks pretty good. Am I done with this paper? Not yet. LetÕs Have A Look for Mistakes and try to see whether there are some mistakes in the essay we can correct 99 to make it look better. Do I have an introduction paragraph that tells what was compared and why? Do I have three body paragraphs on similarities and differences around traits? Do I have enoug h details for each comparison category? Do I have any spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar errors? I will make sure to address these problems if there is any.Ó ____The teacher shows the list of key transition words, explains the importance o f these words on contributing to the fluency of the paper, and models using appropriate transition words throughout the paper. 3. Evaluating current performance ____The teacher asks the student to read this compare -contrast essay carefully. ____The tea cher asks the student to record on the progress -tracking chart how many traits he or she included in this current essay they wrote during baseline. 4. Discussing improvement & Generalizing ____The teacher asks the student to compare the current essay and the baseline essay he or she wrote and evaluated earlier on the compare -contrast essay parts he or she included as well we number of traits he or she identified. ____ÒNow looking at the essay you wrote earlier and the essay I just wrote using the TREE BRANCH, do you think the strategy can help us write a better compare -contrast essay? Why?Ó ____ÒDo you think TREE BRANCH help meeting your quality goal and quantity goal?Ó ____ÒIf I hadnÕt used the TREE BRANCH strategy, would I have written as good a compa re-contrast essay as you did? Why or why not?Ó ____ÒTell me some other tasks for which you could use this strategy?Ó 100 Planning Strategy Instruction Lesson Plan # 3 Objectives: 1. Model use of TREE BRANCH strategy (use #2 planning sheet) Materials: 1. Mnemonic aids (TREE, BRANCH) 2. Compare -contrast essay prompt 3. Transition word list 4. Papers and pencils 5. Audio -recorder 1. Review of the previous lesson ____ÒDo you remember w hat we discussed in our last lesson?Ó ____ÒWe learned what a compare -contrast paper is and how it is organized. We also practiced evaluating compare contrast papers. What is a compare -contrast paper? [SA] ____ÒWhat do you remember about how it is organ ized?Ó [SA] ÒGood, weÕll go over all the parts again today.Ó ____ÒIs it important to learn how to write compare -contrast papers? Why do you think that such a knowledge might be helpful in school and in your life?Ó [Student responds.] [The studentÕs respon ses to the three questions should include the key points so as to continue this lesson] 2. Introducing Mnemonic Aid & Model Using BRANCH to Plan and Write ____ÒAs we know there are two ways to organize your ideas for your compare -contrast papers using th e TREE BRANCH. During the last lesson, IÕve shown you how to use the #1 planning sheet that will report all similarities followed by the differences for the comparing and contrasting for this lesson. So today weÕll learn to use the #2 planning sheet that w ill report similarities and differences around each trait during the next lesson.Ó ____ÒTo show you the strategy, I will Ôthink aloud.Õ That means that IÕll say what I am thinking. By thinking aloud I can show you how I am using this strategy.Ó ____ÒThi s strategy has six steps, listed on this chart and spell the word BRANCH; if you think of this word and what each letter represents, you will be able to plan and write good compare -contrast essays.Ó The teacher shows students the chart of the Ò BRANCH = Bra instorm Idea Words, Recite Self -Talk, Ask if Ideas Will Meet Goals, Now Write with Good Organization, Powerful Words, and Accurate Information, Challenge Myself to Come Up with More Ideas, Have A Look for Mistakes ". 101 ____ÒWe will start with Brainstormin g Idea Words before writing. What we do is to write down everything we know on our topic. It is a storm of thoughts and knowledge happening in our brain: that is why we call it brainstorm. Ó ____ÒSo, I am a student and my teacher asked me to write a compa re-contrast paper on XXX and XXX.Ó [The specific topic will be determined together with the student.] ____ÒLetÕs see, how am I supposed to start? First, I have to brainstorm. That means I need to think and write everything I know on this topic.Ó While br ainstorming the teacher will write everything she and the student know about the topic. ____The teacher also models how to generate traits. The teacher reminds that at least three traits need to be generated. ____The teacher wrote down on the planning s heet the traits and the details that supports the trait, for both similarities and differences. ____ÒDo you notice how I recorded my ideas on the planning sheet? Did I write a lot on this sheet?Ó [Student Responds] ÒYes, I only wrote single words or short phrases to record my ideas here. IÕd like to use these ideas as reminders only.Ó ____ÒNext, we Recite Self -Talk on the planning sheet. So, what is self -talk? Self -talk is what we talk to ourselves during writing. Why do we need self -talk when writing? Be cause sometimes we may find some parts of writing very tough, and self -talk can help us get through these tough parts.Ó ____ÒFor example, when I find some parts of writing really difficult and I do not feel like I can do this, I can ask myself: Am I tryi ng best to keep working hard? By talking to ourselves, we are encouraging ourselves to keep working hard and getting through the difficult parts of the writing.Ó ____ÒFor example, I am looking at my compare -contrast essay and I can ask myself: OK. Are the se the most important things to be comparing? These are things that good writers tell themselves while writing to keep them coming up with important traits to report similarities and differences.Ó ____ÒI can also complement myself by saying ÒGreat job!!Ó when I have finished my writing and I am happy with my work. These are self -statements that I used to encourage myself.Ó ____ÒWhat self -statements you can think of that you will use while writing?Ó The teacher writes down self -statements on the planning s heet. ÒRemember you will want to use them while writing, because this will help you be focused and also help you express your feelings about a situation you are in. By doing that you will be able to find a way to a solution.Ó 102 ____ÒAlso, you will practice saying your self -talk aloud when writing and I will be listening for you. I will show you how to do this in a few minutes, so make sure you pay attention to how I talk to myself during writing.Ó ____ÒAfter we have developed self -talk that works for us, we look at the ideas we came up with and set our goals. LetÕs set our writing goals by asking two questions: What is my quality goal for this compare -contrast essay? I need to set my quality goal as including all the parts of TREE to write a good compare -con trast essay. What is my quantity goal for this essay? I need to set my quantity goal as including at least three important traits around which we do the comparisons. And I will write one body paragraph for each trait.Ó The teacher writes down quality and quantity goals on the planning sheet. ____ÒNext, since I have generated some ideas about XXX and XXX, I will examine these ideas carefully and Ask if Ideas Will Meet Goals.Ó The teacher models setting the quality goal to be Òincluding four parts of the TR EEÓ and the quantity goal to be Òincluding at least three important traitsÓ and writes them down on the planning sheet. ____ÒDo I have enough ideas to make sure I will report at least three important traits about the XXX and XXX? Do I need to generate mor e ideas so that I also will have enough details for each of these traits? Will these ideas possibly help me write a good compare -contrast essay?Ó ____ÒNext step, Now Write with Good Organization, Powerful Words, and Accurate Information . I will have to pl ace these ideas of mine from the planning sheet to the lined paper. This will help me organize my ideas and have clear comparisons. I will use TREE to make sure I include all the important parts of a good compare -contrast essay.Ó ____The teacher models u sing TREE to help write an organized paper. ÒFirst, Tell What You Are Comparing and Why. So I will tell that I am comparing XXX and XXX and explain why I would like to compare them. I will make this as my first paragraph. Ó ____ÒThen, I will Report Import ant Similarities and Differences . I will start using the information I brainstormed and wrote down on the planning sheet.Ó The teacher points out each trait should be explicitly stated as the topic sentence of each body paragraph. The organization of the p aper reflects the fact that the similarities and differences are reported around each trait. ____The teacher also models using the self -talk. ÒCan I think of anything else? Not really. So I can use the self -talk I wrote on my planning sheet and ask mysel f: Am I trying best to keep working hard? Well, I think I will try harder to come up with a few more ideas. So maybe you can help me a bit. On what else do you think that I can compare XXX and XXX?Ó ____ÒWhat do I have to do next? I will need to Elaborate on Each Point. Now I need to put details to each of the similarities and differences. ItÕs good to have at least 3 body paragraphs that focus on at least three key traits for comparisons. ____So Ònow when I am writing, I will make sure to use powerful w ords and provide accurate information in my essay .Ó 103 ____ÒIf I donÕt have enough ideas that I could use to develop similarities and differences or to provide details for each comparison category, I will need to Challenge Myself to Come Up with More Ideas . I will ask myself: what ideas can I add? What other aspects that I find XXX and XXX are similar? Different? I will try best to come up with more ideas so I can meet my quality and quantity goals. ____The teacher models coming up with a couple of more trai ts and supporting details for reporting similarities and differences. ____ÒSo, finally, I need to End with What the Reader Should Learn. So I need to write my conclusion. LetÕs see the conclusion should be a summary that tells about the three traits we reported in the texts above and also tell what readers should learn about this topic.Ó The teacher writes down. ____ÒNow I have a draft that looks pretty good. Am I done with this paper? Not yet. LetÕs Have A Look for Mistakes and try to see whether there are some mistakes in the essay we can correct to make it look better. Do I have an introduction paragraph that tells what was compared and why? Do I have three body paragraphs on similarities and differences around traits? Do I have enough details for each comparison category? Do I have any spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar errors? I will make sure to address these problems if there is any.Ó ____The teacher shows the list of key transition words, explains the importance of these words on contributing to the fluency of the paper, and models using appropriate transition words throughout the paper. ____In the end, the teacher asks whether student has any preference between the two ways of organizing the compare -contrast paper. Once the studen t makes a selection, the following lessons will focus on using the studentÕs preferred planning sheet as well as writing that reflects the corresponding organization of traits and supporting ideas. 3. Evaluating current performance ____The teacher asks the student to read this compare -contrast essay carefully. ____The teacher asks the student to record on the progress -tracking chart how many traits he or she included in this current essay they wrote during baseline. 4. Discussing improvement & General izing ____The teacher asks the student to compare the current essay and the baseline essay he or she wrote and evaluated earlier on the compare -contrast essay parts he or she included as well as number of traits he or she identified. ____ÒNow looking at the essay you wrote earlier and the essay I just wrote using the TREE BRANCH, do you think the strategy can help us write a better compare -contrast essay? Why?Ó 104 ____ÒDo you think TREE BRANCH help meeting your quality goal and quantity goal?Ó ____ÒIf I ha dnÕt used the TREE BRANCH strategy, would I have written as good a compare -contrast essay as you did? Why or why not?Ó ____ÒTell me some other tasks for which you could use this strategy?Ó 105 Planning Strategy Instruction Lesson Plan # 4 Objectives: 1. Rehearse the mnemonic aid for the strategy 2. Provide guided practice of the strategy with the students Materials: 1. Mnemonic aids (TREE, BRANCH) 2. Compare -contrast essay prompt 3. Transition word list 4. Papers and pencils 5. Audio -recorder 1. Rehearsing Mnemonic Aid ____ÓDo you remember last time I showed you the words representing the four parts of a compare -contrast essay as well as how to write a good comp are -contrast essay using the words as a reminder for brainstorming ideas, setting goals, organizing information, and checking possible errors?Ó ____ÒIf you think of these words and what each letter represents, you will be able to remember all the key part s of a compare -contrast essay as well as the things you have to plan and write a good compare -contrast essay.Ó ____ÒNow tell me the words and what each letter represents. [Student needs to correctly articulate TREE (which stands for the parts for a good c ompare -contrast essay) and BRANCH (which stands for the process of writing good compare -contrast essay) and explain what each letter represents.] ____After the student responds, the teacher shows the TREE BRANCH chart and reviews them with the student. 2. Guided practice: Student and teacher producing a paper together ____ÒLast time youÕve seen how I used the strategy to write a good compare -contrast essay on XXX and XXX. Today, letÕs practice using the strategy together. LetÕs write an essay comparing and contrast XXX and XXX.Ó [The topic of the essay is determined jointly by the teacher and the student.] ____The teacher leads the student through the strategy, asking the student what the next step is and how to do each step. The student comes up with all the ideas and do the writing for the planning. But the teacher can do the writing of the paper to speed up the process. ____ÒSo, lets remember, which are the steps of our strategy? What do we do first? Excellent! We plan. And how exactly do we plan? We brainstorm our ideas. What is next? We write down the self-talk that works for us. I will use the self -talk to guide and encourage my writing. Then what do we do? We set goals and decide whether the ideas meet our goals. What about next? We write with good organization, and make sure we use powerful words and provide accurate information in our paper. What if we donÕt have enough ideas? We challenge ourselves and think of more 106 ideas that we can use. WhatÕs the last step? We look back our essay and see if th ere are any errors and whether they look good.Ó ____ÒSo, letÕs begin with the first step which is to Brainstorm Idea Words. Do you think that you can draw on your own this step? Yes, it is easy. What is our topic? What do we know about our topic? LetÕs br ainstorm!Ó ÒWhat are you comparing to what? Which things are similar for both topics? What are your traits?Ó (Which things are different for both topics?) ____Student comes up with ideas (traits and details) and writes them down on their planning sheets w ith teacher guidance. ____ÒWhat is the next? We need to Recite Self -Talks. What do we say to ourselves when we are not sure what to do next? What do we say to encourage ourselves if this seems difficult? What do we say to ourselves when we write a good essay?Ó The teacher guides student to write down his or her self -talks and provide help if needed. ____ÒThen we Ask if Ideas Will Meet Goals. LetÕs set our quality goal and quantity goal for our essay firstÓ. The teacher guides the student to write down h is or her goals on the planning sheet. ____ÒWhat do we do next? Now Write with Good Organization, Powerful Words, and Accurate Information . How do we do that? We write using the TREE. We also said that we should use self-talks to help us stay focus and be confident. Great! What is the first thing we should do in our TREE strategy? Tell what we are comparing and why. What shall I have here? How can I begin? What else shall I do? Write what I am comparing to what and explain why. Excellent!Ó ____Write Intro duction. Teacher takes dictation. ____ÒWhat comes next? Report the important similarities and differences! What shall I have here? I should have an interesting topic sentence that explicitly tells about the trait. How shall I begin my sentence? We always begin with a transition word. Which one shall we use? LetÕs look at the transition word list. What else I should do? I should use the information in the planning sheet and write sentences with powerful words and relevant details that are accurate. DonÕt forget our statements!Ó ____Write Body Paragraphs, one at a time. The teacher emphasizes the importance to write down the trait in the topic sentence for each of the body paragraphs. ____ÒNow, letÕs see whether we have enough ideas. We need to Challenge M yself to Come Up with More Ideas. What else can I add to my essay so I can have more information for this comparison?Ó ____ÒWhat is last? End with What the Reader Should Learn. What should I have here? I should sum up the three traits IÕve talked about in my paper. I should tell the readers what they should learn from this topic. Let Õs see how we can do that.Ó 107 ____ÒDid we finish? What is left to do? We need to Have A Look for Mistakes. How do we do that? We examine our essay and check whether it follows a good compare -contrast structure, whether it meets our quality goal to include four parts of the TREE and quantity goal to include at least three important traits, whether it has any spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar errors. Excellent! Le tÕs have a look of our essay.Ó ____ÒAlso, did I use good transition words throughout paper?Ó 3. Evaluating current performance ____ÒNow, letÕs evaluate the essay we wrote together using the TREE BRANCH.Ó ____The teacher asks the student to read the e ssay they wrote together and see which parts the essay contains and which parts are missing based on the four key parts of a good compare -contrast essay as represented by TREE. ____The teacher also asks the student to record on the progress -tracking chart how many traits he or she included in the essays. 4. Discussing improvement & Generalizing ____The teacher asks the student to compare the current essay and the baseline essay he or she wrote and evaluated earlier on the compare -contrast essay parts he or she included as well as number of traits he or she identified. ____ÒNow looking at the essay you wrote earlier and the essay we wrote together using the TREE BRANCH, do you think the strategy can help us write a better compare -contrast essay? Why?Ó ____ÒDo you think TREE BRANCH help meeting your quality goal and quantity goal?Ó ____ÒIf you hadnÕt used the TREE BRANCH strategy, would you have written as good a compare -contrast essay as you did? Why or why not?Ó ____ÒTell me some other tasks for which you could use this strategy?Ó 108 Planning Strategy Instruction Lesson Plan # 5 Objectives: 1. Rehearse the mnemonic aid for the strategy 2. Make sure student memorizes the mnemonics, planning sheet, and transition words to criteria Materials: 1. Mne monic aids (TREE, BRANCH) 2. Transition word list 3. Papers and pencils 4. Audio -recorder 1. Rehearsing Mnemonic Aid ____ÒDo you remember last time I showed you the words representing the four parts of a compare -contrast essay as well as how to write a good compare -contrast essay using the words as a reminder for brainstorming ideas, setting goals, organizing information, and check possible errors?Ó ____ÒIf you think of these words and what each letter represen ts, you will be able to remember all the key parts of a compare -contrast essay as well as the things you have to plan and write a good compare -contrast essay.Ó ____ÒNow tell me the words and what each letter represents.Ó [Student needs to correctly articu late TREE (which stands for the parts for a good compare -contrast essay) and BRANCH (which stands for the process of writing good compare -contrast essay) and explain what each letter represents.] ____After the student responds, the teacher shows the TREE BRANCH chart and review them with the student. ____The student was asked to fully memorize the TREE BRANCH mnemonic and the planning sheet (goals, graphic organizer, self -talk). [Note: ÒfullyÓ is defined as 100% correct.] The student also needs to memoriz e the transition word list: at least three transition words from the ÒSimilarities,Ó at least three from the ÒDifferences,Ó and at least one from the ÒConclusion.Ó ____At the end of the lesson, the teacher examines the studentÕs memorization of the TREE BRANCH mnemonic and the planning sheet as well as transition word list to the criteria before starting the next lesson of the independent practice. 109 Planning Strategy Instruction Lesson Plan # 6 Objectives: 1. Rehearse the mnemonic aid for the strat egy 2. Independent practice of the strategy Materials: 1. Mnemonic aids (TREE, BRANCH) 2. Compare -Contrast Essay Prompt 3. Transition word list 4. Papers and pencils 5. Audio -recorder 1. Rehearsing Mnemonic Aid ____ÒDo you remember last time I showed you the words representing the four parts of a compare -contrast essay as well as how to write a good compare -contrast essay using the words as a reminder for brainsto rming ideas, setting goals, organizing information, and check possible errors?Ó ____ÒIf you think of these words and what each letter represents, you will be able to remember all the key parts of a compare -contrast essay as well as the things you have to plan and write a good compare -contrast essay.Ó ____ÒNow tell me the words and what each letter represents.Ó [Student needs to correctly articulate TREE (which stands for the parts for a good compare -contrast essay) and BRANCH (which stands for the proces s of writing good compare -contrast essay) and explain what each letter represents.] ____After the student responds, the teacher shows the TREE BRANCH chart and review them with the student. ____ÒThis time, letÕs use this strategy to write a compare -contr ast essay on our own.Ó 2. Student practicing using the strategy independently ____The student selects a compare -contrast writing prompt and uses the strategy without assistance. ____The student writes a compare -contrast essay about the prompt. ____The t eacher asks the student to read his or her essay aloud. 3. Evaluating current performance ____ÒNow, letÕs evaluate the essay you just wrote all by yourself using the TREE BRANCH.Ó 110 ____The teacher asks the student to read the essay he or she wrote and see which parts the essay contains and which parts are missing based on the four key parts of a good compare -contrast essay as represented by TREE. ____The teacher also asks the student to record on the progress -tracking chart how many traits he or she inclu ded in the essay. 4. Discussing improvement & Generalizing ____The teacher asks the student to compare the current essay and the baseline essay he or she wrote and evaluated earlier on the compare -contrast essay parts he or she included as well as numbe r of traits he or she identified. ____ÒNow looking at the essay you wrote earlier and the essay you wrote all by yourself using the TREE BRANCH, do you think the strategy can help us write a better compare -contrast essay? Why?Ó ____ÒDo you think TREE BRA NCH help meeting your quality goal and quantity goal?Ó ____ÒIf you hadnÕt used the TREE BRANCH strategy, would you have written as good a compare -contrast essay as you did? Why or why not?Ó ____ÒTell me some other tasks for which you could use this strat egy.Ó 111 Planning Strategy Instruction Lesson Plan # 7 Objectives: 1. Independent practice of the strategy 2. Weaning the student off the mnemonic aid, the planning sheet, and the transition word list Materials: 1. Compare -Contrast Essay Prompt 2. Papers and pencils 3. Audio -recorder 1. Rehearsing Mnemonic Aid ____ÒDo you remember last time I showed you the words representing the four parts of a compare -contrast essay as well as how to write a good compare -contra st essay using the words as a reminder for brainstorming ideas, setting goals, organizing information, and check possible errors?Ó ____ÒIf you think of these words and what each letter represents, you will be able to remember all the key parts of a compa re-contrast essay as well as the things you have to plan and write a good compare -contrast essay.Ó ____ÒNow tell me the words and what each letter represents.Ó [Student needs to correctly articulate TREE (which stands for the parts for a good compare -cont rast essay) and BRANCH (which stands for the process of writing good compare -contrast essay) and explain what each letter represents.] ____After the student responds, the teacher shows the TREE BRANCH chart and reviews them with the student. 2. Weaning o ff the strategy chart and planning sheet ____The teacher explains to the student that they wonÕt usually have a TREE BRANCH mnemonic chart, a planning sheet, and the transition word list with them when they need to write compare -contrast essays. So they c an write down the mnemonic at the top of a blank sheet. The teacher reminds the student to make a space on the paper for notes for each part of TREE BRANCH. ____The teacher reminds the student to check off each step of TREE BRANCH on the sheet when he or she has completed that step. ____The teacher tells the student that he or she can develop his or her own planning sheet by writing down the quality and quantity goals, traits, supporting details, and self -talk. ÒYou may also write down transition words th at you can use in your essay.Ó 112 ____The student selects a topic and writes a compare -contrast paper on the topic. The student should write down TREE BRANCH on the blank paper, as well as develop the planning sheet that includes goals, traits, details for s imilarities and differences, and self -talk, and includes transition words in his or her paper. 3. Evaluating current performance ____ÒNow, letÕs evaluate the essay you just wrote all by yourself using the TREE BRANCH.Ó ____The teacher asks the student t o read the essay he or she wrote and see which parts the essay contains and which parts are missing based on the four key parts of a good compare -contrast essay as represented by TREE. ____The teacher also asks the student to record on the progress -tracki ng chart how many traits he or she included in the essay. 4. Discussing improvement & Generalizing & Wrap -up ____The teacher asks the student to compare the current essay and the baseline essay he or she wrote and evaluated earlier on the compare -contra st essay parts he or she included as well as number of traits he or she identified. ____ÒNow looking at the essay you wrote earlier and the essay you wrote all by yourself using the TREE BRANCH, do you think the strategy can help us write a better compare -contrast essay? Why?Ó ____ÒDo you think TREE BRANCH help meet your quality goal and quantity goal?Ó ____ÒIf you hadnÕt used the TREE BRANCH strategy, would you have written as good a compare -contrast essay as you did? Why or why not?Ó ____ÒTell me some other tasks for which you could use this strategy.Ó ____ÒI really have enjoyed working with you these past few weeks. Your goal now is to keep using the TREE BRANCH strategy whenever it can help you do something well, like when you write, etc.Ó 113 Revi sing Strategy Instruction Lesson Plan # 1 Objectives: 1. Introduction to revising and the strategy Materials: 1. SEARCH Checklist 2. Sample compare -contrast essays 3. Compare -contrast essay evaluation scale 4. Papers and pencils 5. Audio -recorder 1. Introducing the lesson & Discussing purpose for learning the strategy ____ÒDuring the past couple of weeks, we have learned TREE BRANCH to help us plan and write a good compare -contrast essay. You have done a great job! Now, we are going to learn another strategy for revising our essay to make it look better. The first step is to think about what is revising.Ó [Student responds] The teacher then discusses the studentÕs answers. ____ÒLe tÕs talk about why it is important to learn how to revise an essay. Why do people revise their papers? When might you revise a paper?Ó If needed, probe with additional questions: Did you ever revise a paper? Can you think of times you might need to revise your paper? ____The teacher listens to her studentÕs responses and comments on them. The key purposes of revising to be drawn out of the discussion and highlighted in the teacherÕs own examples are the following: ¥!Revising leads to good writing, which c an help students to earn better grades. ¥!A first draft will get the studentÕs ideas down on paper, but the essay is usually not yet finished. ¥!Readers sometimes have a hard time understanding what is written unless writers go back to fix their ideas. ¥!Good wr iters revise their work. ¥!Good writers revise at substantial level. They evaluate writing goals, revise content and organization, and address any mechanical errors. 2. Describing the SEARCH strategy ____ÒToday, we are going to learn a strategy, or a chec klist that will help you make better revising decisions. The strategy is called SEARCH.Ó ____The teacher gives the student a SEARCH checklist. ____ÒSEARCH stands for Set goals, Examine paper to see if it makes sense, Ask if you said what you meant, Reveal picky errors, Copy over neatly, and Have a last look for errors Ó. ____The teacher explains each step of SEARCH to the student. 114 3. Reviewing self -statement ____ÒDo you remember we developed and used self -talk to help us work through the writing? It worked pretty well, right? LetÕs review it now. What is self -talk and why do we need self -talk when writing?Ó [The teacher waits for student response and discuss the answers.] ____ÒWe will come up with self -talks that help with our revising, too.Ó ____ÒF or example, when I find some parts of revising really difficult and I do not feel like I can do this, I can ask myself: Am I trying best to keep working hard? By talking to ourselves, we are encouraging ourselves to keep working hard and getting through th e difficult parts of the revising.Ó ____ ÒFor example, I am checking and revising my essay and I can ask myself: OK. Did I follow all the strategy steps to check errors and revise accordingly? I will make sure I apply the strategy completely to help me re vise my essay.Ó ____ÒI can also complement myself by saying ÒGreat job!!Ó when I have finished revising and I am happy with my work. These are self -talks that I used to encourage myself.Ó ____ÒWhat self -talks you can think of that you will use while revi sing?Ó The teacher writes down self -talks on a black sheet of paper. ÒRemember you will want to use them while revising, because this will help you be focused and revise better.Ó ____ÒAlso, you will practice saying your self -talk aloud when revising and I will be listening for you. I will show you how to do this in a minute, so make sure you pay attention to how I talk to myself during revising.Ó 3. Evaluating sample compare -contrast essays (good & bad examples) ____ÒWe are going to learn how to evaluat e the quality of our compare -contrast paper with a rating scale.Ó ____The teacher gives the student a quality rating scale. ____The teacher explains each item of the rating scale and asks the student to read through each. ____The teacher models evaluat ing the quality of the good compare -contrast essay example using the rating scale. ____The teacher models evaluating the quality of the bad compare -contrast essay example using the rating scale. ____The teacher compares the quality of the above two compa re-contrast essay examples and tells the student that he or she will use the same quality rating scale on the papers prior to as well 115 as after revising so as to see to what extent the revising checklist can help improve the quality of the compare -contrast essays. 116 Revising Strategy Instruction Lesson Plan # 2 Objectives: 1. Rehearse the SEARCH checklist 2. Model using the strategy Materials: 1. SEARCH Checklist 2. Sample compare -contrast essay 3. Compare -contrast essay evaluation scale 4. Papers and pencils 5. Audio -recorder 1. Rehearsing SEARCH Checklist ____ÒDo you remember last time I showed you the words representing the steps to revise our papers effectively ?Ó ____ÒIf you think of these words and what each letter represents, you will be able to remember all the key steps of revising an essay.Ó ____ÒNow tell me the words and what each letter represents.Ó [Student needs to correctly articulate SEARCH and exp lain what each letter represents.] ____ÒAt this point, you are not required to memorize all the detailed steps under each major part. However, in the following lessons, IÕll help you to memorize these detailed steps and youÕll need to memorize 100% correc t eventually.Ó ____After the student responds, the teacher shows the SEARCH checklist and reviews them with the student. 2. Introducing the lesson & Discussing purpose of learning the strategy ____ÒLast time we talked briefly about the SEARCH strategy that can help revise our essays. Today I am going to show you how to use the strategy to revise a compare -contrast essay to make it look better.Ó ____The teacher shows the student one of his or her posttest compare -contrast papers and models rating the qu ality of the paper using the evaluation scale before revising. ____The teacher models using SEARCH checklist to evaluate this essay and applies revisions accordingly. ____ÒThe first step of the strategy is to Set goals . I have thought about who is the a udience and the impression I want to give them. I want them to think that my compare -contrast essay is good and informative. They can learn about the two things that compare and contrast in my paper.Ó 117 ÒWhat is my quality goal for this essay? We ta lked about this in previous weeks, right? My quality goal is to include all the parts of TREE to write a good compare -contrast essay. OK. Then what is my quantity goal for this essay? My quantity goal is to include at least three important traits around wh ich I do the comparisons.Ó ____ÒThe next step is to Examine paper to see if it makes sense . For this step, I will make sure I have done the following: IÕve read my paper out loud; I think each sentence and the whole paper make sense; No words have been o mitted; IÕve combined sentences that are too short and broken up ones that are too long. OK, letÕs see. Let me read my paper out loud.Ó [Teacher models reading aloud the whole essay.] ÒI think each sentence and the whole paper does make sense here. Oh, I m issed a word in the second paragraph. ItÕs great that I caught this error! Now I need to add this word to the line. Then do I have sentences that are too long or too short? Yes, there are a few sentences I need to combine to make it longer.Ó The teacher mo dels applying this step to the paper and revises accordingly. ____ÒThe third letter in SEARCH is A, meaning Ask if you said what you meant : did I say what I meant? Did I express my ideas in a clear way? Are my ideas all related to the topic? Is the order of my ideas logical? Well, this is difficult. I am not sure I can do this. So I can use the self -talk I wrote on the paper and ask myself: Am I trying best to keep working hard? Well, I think I will try harder to figure out this step. OK, I can do this. Af ter reading through my essay, I think my ideas are clear. Good! It seems that there is one idea in the third paragraph that is not directly related to the topic. I should replace that with some relevant idea. Are my ideas logically presented? Yes, I have t old my readers what I am comparing and contrasting and why, then I reported three traits with enough details for each trait. I think I am all good for this step.Ó ____ÒThe fourth step is to Reveal picky errors . During this step, I will read through my ess ay carefully and see whether I have any spelling, capitalization, and punctuation errors. I will make sure to correct all these errors in my paper. Then, I will need someone else to help double -check my work. Now I will need you to help me with this part. Do you find any errors that I have in this essay?Ó [Wait for student response and discuss the errors that student has located] ÒThank you for your help! I have you double -checked my work and I donÕt have errors in my essay now. I can move to the next step! Ó ____ÒThe fifth step is to Copy over neatly . We have done a good job revising our essay so far. We have made our ideas and organization of the essay much better. And I donÕt have any spelling, punctuation, and capitalization errors. I can now copy over t his essay neatlyÓ. The teacher models copying over the essay. ____ÒThe last letter in SEARCH is H, meaning Have a last look for errors . At this point, we havenÕt done with the revising yet. Does my final copy have any new or remaining errors in it? Let me examine it carefully!Ó ÒOops! I misspelled a word in the last paragraph! I need to correct it. Oh, I am glad that I look at my essay again and catch this error. Good job! Then I need to have someone else to check my work one last time. I will need your he lp again to help look for any errors in the essay.Ó [Wait for student response and discuss the errors that student has located.] ÒGreat! I have you check my work again and I donÕt have any errors. The last thing I need to 118 check is, did I meet my goals? Let me see. Did I meet my quality goal? No. I didnÕt include an ending. I need to add an interesting ending and tell readers what they should know from my essay. Then I will include all the four key parts of a good compare -contrast essay. Next, did I meet my quantity goal? Oops, I only reported two traits! I will try best to come up with one more trait and elaborate with more information for this trait.Ó ____The teacher reminds the use of self -talks during applying the SEARCH checklist to the paper. 3. Eval uating the current compare -contrast essay ____The teacher gives the student the quality rating scale. ____The teacher asks the student to read the current essay aloud and models using the evaluation scale to rate the essay quality. 4. Discussing improv ement & Generalizing ____The teacher compares the quality scores of the studentÕs essay prior to and after revising and prompts the student to think about to what extent the SEARCH checklist helps improve the quality of the compare -contrast essay. ____ÒN ow looking at the essay you wrote earlier and the same essay I revised using the SEARCH strategy, do you think the strategy can help us write a better essay? Why?Ó ____ÒDo you think SEARCH strategy help meeting your quality goal and quantity goal?Ó ____ÒIf you hadnÕt used the SEARCH strategy, would you have written as good an essay as you did? Why or why not?Ó ____ÒTell me some other tasks for which you could use this strategy?Ó 119 Revising Strategy Instruction Lesson Plan # 3 Objectives: 1. Rehear se the mnemonic aid for the strategy 2. Provide guided practice of the strategy with the student Materials: 1. SEARCH Checklist 2. Sample compare -contrast essay 3. Compare -contrast essay evaluation scale 4. Papers and pencils 5. Audio -recorder 1. Rehearsing SEARCH Checklist ____ÒDo you remember last time I showed you the words representing the steps to revise our papers effectively?Ó ____ÒIf you think of these words and what e ach letter represents, you will be able to remember all the key steps of revising an essay.Ó ____ÒNow tell me the words and what each letter represents.Ó [Student needs to correctly articulate SEARCH and explain what each letter represents. ____After the student responds, the teacher shows the SEARCH checklist and reviews them with the student. 2. Guided practice: Student and teacher revising a paper together ____ÒLast time youÕve seen how I used the strategy to revise an essay, letÕs practice using the strategy together today on another essay.Ó ____The teacher shows the student one of the his or her posttest compare -contrast papers and rates the quality of the paper using the evaluation scale together with the student. ____ The teacher leads the studen t through the strategy, asking the student what the next step is and how to do each step. ____ÒSo, letÕs remember, which are the steps of our strategy? What do we do first? Excellent! We set goals . Have I thought about who is the audience and the impress ion I want to give them? What is my quality goal? What is my quantity goal? OK, does my essay meet my goals?Ó ____Student comes up with answers to each of the questions. The teacher guides the student to revise the essay accordingly based on the answers t o the questions. ____ÒWhat is the next? We examine paper to see if it makes sense . Have I read my paper out loud? Do each sentence and the whole paper make sense? Any words have been omitted? Have I combined sentences that are too short and broken up ones that are too long?Ó The teacher guides the student to answer each of the questions and carry out revisions accordingly. 120 ____ÒWhat will we do next? We need to ask ask if you said what you meant : did I say what I meant? Do I express my ideas in a clear way ? Are my ideas all related to the topic? Is the order of my ideas logical?Ó The teacher guides the student to revise the essay accordingly based on the answers to the questions. ____ÒThen we need to reveal picky errors . LetÕs read the essay carefully. Do I have any spelling, capitalization, and punctuation errors?Ó The teacher guides the student to answer each of the questions and make revisions accordingly. ____ÒWhat do we do next? Now we copy over neatly .Ó The teacher guides the students copy the essay. ÒExcellent!Ó ____ÒWhat is very last step? I need to have a last look for errors . Does my final copy have any new or remaining errors in it? Did I have someone else to check my work one last time? Did I meet my goals?Ó The teacher guides the student to a nswer each of the questions and make revisions accordingly. ____The teacher reminds the use of self -talks during revising. 3. Evaluating the current compare -contrast essay ____The teacher gives the student the quality rating scale. ____The teacher ask s the student to read the current essay aloud and rates the quality of the essay using the evaluation scale together with the student. 4. Discussing improvement & Generalizing ____The teacher compares the quality scores of the studentÕs essay prior to an d after revising and prompts the student to think about to what extent the SEARCH checklist helps improve the quality of the compare -contrast essay. ____ÒNow looking at the essay you wrote earlier and the same essay we revised together using the SEARCH st rategy, do you think the strategy can help us write a better essay? Why?Ó ____ÒDo you think SEARCH strategy help meeting your quality goal and quantity goal?Ó ____ÒIf you hadnÕt used the SEARCH strategy, would you have written as good an essay as you did ? Why or why not?Ó ____ÒTell me some other tasks for which you could use this strategy?Ó 121 Revising Strategy Instruction Lesson Plan # 4 Objectives: 1. Memorize the mnemonic aid for the strategy Materials: 1. SEARCH Checklist 2. Student Õs compare -contrast essay 3. Compare -contrast essay evaluation scale 4. Papers and pencils 5. Audio -recorder 1. Rehearsing SEARCH Checklist ____ÒDo you remember last time I showed you the words representing the st eps to revise our papers effectively?Ó ____ÒIf you think of these words and what each letter represents, you will be able to remember all the key steps of revising an essay.Ó ____ÒNow tell me the words and what each letter represents.Ó [Student needs to correctly articulate SEARCH and explain what each letter represents. ____After the student responds, the teacher shows the SEARCH checklist and reviews them with the student. 2. Providing Memorization Practice ____ÒAt this point, you will need to memor ize the SEARCH checklist, including all the detailed steps under each major part 100% correct.Ó ____Student practices memorizing the SEARCH checklist. ____The teacher examines the student to make sure he or she memorizes the SEARCH checklist to the crite ria. 122 Revising Strategy Instruction Lesson Plan # 5 Objectives: 1. Rehearse the mnemonic aid for the strategy 2. Independent practice of the strategy Materials: 1. SEARCH Checklist 2. StudentÕs compare -contrast essay 3. Compare -contrast essay evaluation scale 4. Papers and pencils 5. Audio -recorder 1. Rehearsing SEARCH Checklist ____ÒDo you remember last time I showed you the words representing the steps to revise our papers effectively?Ó ____ÒIf you think of these words and what each letter represents, you will be able to remember all the key steps of revising an essay.Ó ____ÒNow tell me the words and what each letter represents.Ó [Student needs to correc tly articulate SEARCH and explain what each letter represents.] ÒYou need to also tell me each step within each of the major parts for the revising.Ó ____After the student responds, the teacher shows the SEARCH checklist and reviews them with the student. ____ÒThis time, letÕs use this strategy to revise an essay you wrote earlier on your own.Ó 2. Student practicing using the strategy independently ____The teacher shows the student one of the his or her posttest compare -contrast papers and asks the stud ent to rate the quality of the paper using the evaluation scale. ____The student uses SEARCH checklist to revise his or her essay. 3. Evaluating the current compare -contrast essay ____The teacher gives the student the quality rating scale. ____The tea cher asks the student to read the current essay aloud and asks the student to rate the quality of the essay using the evaluation scale. 4. Discussing improvement & Generalizing 123 ____The teacher compares the quality scores of the studentÕs essay prior to a nd after revising and prompts the student to think about to what extent the SEARCH checklist helps improve the quality of the compare -contrast essay. ____ÒNow looking at the essay you wrote earlier and the same essay you just revised all by yourself using the SEARCH strategy, do you think the strategy can help us write a better essay? Why?Ó ____ÒDo you think SEARCH strategy help meeting your quality goal and quantity goal?Ó ____ÒIf you hadnÕt used the SEARCH strategy, would you have written as good an es say as you did? Why or why not?Ó ____ÒTell me some other tasks for which you could use this strategy?Ó 124 Revising Strategy Instruction Lesson Plan # 6 Objectives: 1. Independent practice of the strategy 2. Wean the student off th e mnemonic aid and the planning sheet Materials: 1. StudentÕs compare -contrast essay 2. Compare -contrast essay evaluation scale 3. Papers and pencils 4. Audio -recorder 1. Rehearsing SEARCH Checklist ____ÒDo you r emember last time I showed you the words representing the steps to revise our papers effectively?Ó ____ÒIf you think of these words and what each letter represents, you will be able to remember all the key steps of revising an essay.Ó ____ÒNow tell me t he words and what each letter represents.Ó [Student needs to correctly articulate SEARCH and explain what each letter represents.] ÒYou need to also tell me each step within each of the major parts for the revising.Ó ____After the student responds, the te acher shows the SEARCH checklist and reviews them with the student. ____ÒThis time, you will use this strategy to revise an essay you wrote earlier on your own. But you wonÕt have the SEARCH checklist with you. So you will use the strategy out of your min d.Ó 2. Weaning off the strategy chart and planning sheet ____The teacher explains to the student that they wonÕt usually have a SEARCH checklist with them when they need to revise essays. So they can write down the mnemonic and self -talks at the top of a blank sheet. Remind the students to make a space on the paper for notes for each step of SEARCH. ____The teacher reminds the student to check off each step of SEARCH on the sheet when he or she has completed that step. The teacher reminds the st udent to write down his or her self -talks on the blank sheet of paper and make sure to use them during revising. ____The teacher shows the student one of the his or her posttest compare -contrast papers and asks the student to rate the quality of the paper using the evaluation scale. ____The student revises his or her essay following the SEARCH steps (but without the mnemonic aid). 125 3. Evaluating the current compare -contrast essay ____The teacher gives the student the quality rating scale. ____The teach er asks the student to read the current essay aloud and rates the quality of the essay using the evaluation scale. 4. Discussing improvement & Generalizing & Wrap -up ____The teacher compares the quality scores of the two essays prior to and after revisi ng and prompts the student to think about to what extent the SEARCH checklist helps improve the quality of the compare -contrast essay. ____ÒNow looking at the essay you wrote earlier and the same essay you just revised all by yourself using the SEARCH str ategy, do you think the strategy can help us write a better essay? Why?Ó ÒDo you think SEARCH strategy help meeting your quality goal and quantity goal?Ó ____ÒIf you hadnÕt used the SEARCH strategy, would you have written as good an essay as you did? Why or why not?Ó ____ÒTell me some other tasks for which you could use this strategy?Ó ____ÒI really have enjoyed working with you these past few weeks. Your goal now is to keep using the SEARCH strategy whenever it can help you revise your essay.Ó 126 Appendix D. Planning Sheet (Reflecting Two Ways to Organize I deas) TREE BRANCH Compare -Contrast Essay Planning Sheet (1) Author: ____________________________________ Date: _________________________ My quality goal for this essay is: _____________________ _____________________________ My quantity goal for this essay is: _________________________________________________ Generate idea words for: ________________________ to _____________________________ On What? ______________ ______________ ______________ On What? _____________ _____________ _____________ Self-talk statements: _____________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Same Different 127 TREE BRANCH Compare -Contrast Essay Planning Sheet (2) Author: ____________________________________ Date: _________________________ My qua lity goal for this essay is: __________________________________________________ My quantity goal for this essay is: _________________________________________________ Generate idea words for: ________________________ to _____________________________ On What? _____________ _____________ _____________ Self-talk statements: _____________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ Same Different 128 Appendix E. Evaluation for Compare -Contrast Essay Quality TREE BRANCH Evaluation for Compare -Contrast Essay Quality Author: __________________________ _____ Partner: _____________________________ Points 1 = Needs a lot more work 2 = Could be a little better 3 = Pretty good the way it is 4 = Terrific, other kids should see this Questions for Your Partner After reading and marking the authorÕs essay, a nswer the following: 1. Does the writer include all four parts of th e TREE? 1 2 3 4 2. Does the writer include three important traits that are related to the topic? 1 2 3 4 3. Does the paper include accu rate supporting details for each trait? 1 2 3 4 4. Does the paper make sense? 1 2 3 4 5. Does the paper use sentences that are neither too long nor too short? 1 2 3 4 6. Is the paper free of errors (such as in spelling, punctuation, and capitalization)? 1 2 3 4 Author Goals My total points this time was __________ My score ! did ! did not go up from last time The scoring goal for my next essay is __________ p oints Next time I will try to improve my score most for question number 1 2 3 4 5 6 If I didnÕt meet my quality goal, I also set a quality goal for my next essay _____________________________________ If I didnÕt meet my qua lity goal, I also set a quality goal for my next essay _____________________________________ (Adapted from Troia et al., unpublished data) 129 Appendix F. Student Satisfaction Survey Student Satisfaction Survey Please read each of the following statement below and ch eck the box to show how well you agree or disagree with the statement. 1. I like this writing instruction. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Totally Mostly Disagree DonÕt Agree Agree Mostly Totally Disagree Disagree A Little or Disagree A Little Agree Agree 2. 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