Project SOLO™ An NCTI Technology In The Works project Center for Literacy & Disability Studies

Project SOLO™ is designed to investigate the additive benefits of SOLO™ software and ready-made assignments for SOLO™ software to self-regulated strategy instruction (SRSI) for middle-grades students with and without identified disabilities who struggle with writing. Overview

Design Quasi-experimental, pretest/posttest Random assignment of 9 teachers to one of three treatment conditions: –Self-Regulated Strategy Instruction Only –Self-Regulated Strategy Instruction plus SOLO™ –Self-Regulated Strategy Instruction plus SOLO™ with Ready-Made assignments produced by the research team to the teacher’s specifications. Six weeks of intervention (18 lessons) Ongoing classroom observations and collection of observational data including fidelity checklists.

Research Measures Pretest/Posttest Measures: –Test of Written Language – 3 (TOWL-3, Hammill & Larsen, 1996) –Writing Attitudes Survey (Kear, Coffman, McKenna, & Ambrosio, 2000 ) –Focus Group Interviews Ongoing Collection of writing samples for a variety of dependent writing variables identified (De La Paz and Graham, 1997). Participant Observation of instruction Fidelity Checklist

Research Hypotheses 1.All subjects, independent of group membership will show a significant increase in their written language abilities as a result of self-regulated strategy instruction with and without SOLO™; 2.There will be a significant difference between groups for all written language abilities as a result of self-regulated strategy instruction with and without SOLO™; and 3.There will be a significant difference between groups for writing attitudes as a result of self- regulated strategy instruction with and without SOLO™.

Participants Nine teachers, 3 each in grades 3, 4, and 5. –Seven of the teachers hold a masters degree and 4 have National Board Certification. –They have been teaching for an average of 12 years (range 3-30 years). 111 students from 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade general education settings. –Include all children on the classroom roster including those with identified disabilities, those without disabilities who struggle to write, and all other children.

The School A North Carolina School Honor of Excellence Total Student Enrollment: 395 Average Class Size: Students Qualifying for Free or Reduced Lunch: 49% Nonwhite Students: 32% (27% African American) Students with Disabilities Passing End of Grade Tests: 64% Number of Students per Computer: 3.24 Achieved Adequate Yearly Progress on All Measures According to NCLB

The Intervention The self-regulated strategy instruction to be used as the intervention is a framework for teaching students to be fluent and automatic in the application of strategies while writing (Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2003). All teachers were provided with an example of the 18 lessons for the writing strategy they were implementing at their grade level.

Self-Regulated Strategy Development Instruction The six stages of the writing strategy instruction are: Build Background Discuss It Model It Memorize It Support It Independent Performance

Strategy Selection 3rd grade: –summary writing strategy 4th grade: – narrative writing strategy – SSCARE (Narrative strategy developed by teachers for project): Situation, Setting, Characters, Action, Reaction, Ending 5th grade: – expository writing strategy – TH3 TNT (Expository strategy developed by teachers for project): Topic, Hook, 3 Details + Topic, NEED to enumerate, Topic

Current Activities Complete scoring and analysis of data. Following teachers, particularly those in the no-SOLO™ group, as they implement SOLO™ this spring. Work with individual students with the most significant learning disabilities providing individual self-regulated strategy instruction using SOLO™.