Instruction And Assessment For Struggling Writers

This unique book focuses on how to provide effective instruction to K-12 students who find writing challenging, including English language learners and those with learning disabilities or language impairments. Prominent experts illuminate the nature of writing difficulties and offer practical suggestions for building students' skills at the word, sentence, and text levels. Topics include writing workshop instruction; strategies to support the writing process, motivation, and self-regulation; composing in the content areas; classroom technologies; spelling instruction for diverse learners; and assessment approaches. Every chapter is grounded in research and geared to the real-world needs of inservice and preservice teachers in general and special education settings.

A hands-on guide for anyone who teaches writing to students with learning disabilities This valuable resource helps teachers who want to sharpen their skills in analyzing and teaching writing to students with learning disabilities. The classroom-tested, research-proven strategies offered in this book work with all struggling students who have difficulties with writing-even those who have not been classified as learning disabled. The book offers a review of basic skills-spelling, punctuation, and capitalization-and includes instructional strategies to help children who struggle with these basics. The authors provide numerous approaches for enhancing student performance in written expression. They explore the most common reasons students are reluctant to write and offer helpful suggestions for motivating them. Includes a much-needed guide for teaching and assessing writing skills with children with learning disabilities Contains strategies for working with all students that struggle with writing Offers classroom-tested strategies, helpful information, 100+ writing samples with guidelines for analysis, and handy progress-monitoring charts Includes ideas for motivating reluctant writers Mather is an expert in the field of learning disabilities and is the best-selling author of Essentials of Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement Assessment

Many English language learners (ELLs) require extra support to become successful writers. This book helps teachers understand the unique needs of ELLs and promote their achievement by adapting the effective instructional methods they already know. Engaging and accessible, the book features standards-based lesson planning ideas, examples of student work, and 15 reproducible worksheets, rubrics, and other useful materials. It describes ways to combine instruction in core skills with ample opportunities to write and revise in different genres. Invaluable guidance is provided for assessing ELLs' writing development at different grade levels and language proficiency levels. This book will be valuable for teachers in general education and ESL classrooms; literacy specialists and coaches; graduate students in literacy and ESL programs. It will also serve as a text in graduate-level courses such as Writing Instruction, Teaching English Language Learners, and Teaching English as a Second Language.

Featuring a wealth of real-life examples, the book helps readers to understand the default strategies students bring to the classroom, and to work collaboratively on developing these into strategies for successful writing.

Writing is a challenging task for many children. To address this issue, many educational researchers advocate for schools to implement a multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) model where struggling writers can be detected as early as kindergarten and provided with intervention programming to improve their skills and hopefully not need long-term placement in special education. Traditionally, schools have employed the wait-to-fail model where children were offered the opportunity to learn to read, write, and do math in the first few years of elementary school; if they still struggled at the end of third grade (age eight), then they would be assessed for special education. The problem with this was not only a delayed assessment timeline, but also the standardized tests not having an adequate set of questions to assess early-elementary grade skills, as well as the ethical problems and racial/ethnic biases of test questions. MTSS provides educators with a renewed emphasis on early intervention and progress-monitoring assessment once or twice a week to monitor each student’s skills and make instructional changes to promote success. This book offers a description and case examples of how schools and teachers can apply MTSS concepts for writing.

Highly practical and accessible, this indispensable book provides clear-cut strategies for improving K-12 writing instruction. The contributors are leading authorities who demonstrate proven ways to teach different aspects of writing, with chapters on planning, revision, sentence construction, handwriting, spelling, and motivation. The use of the Internet in instruction is addressed, and exemplary approaches to teaching English-language learners and students with special needs are discussed. The book also offers best-practice guidelines for designing an effective writing program. Focusing on everyday applications of current scientific research, the book features many illustrative case examples and vignettes.

If you are an elementary teacher who struggles with struggling readers, Curt Dudley-Marling and Patricia Paugh provide you with quick, effective answers to your toughest questions.