1. Writing Disabilities/Intro to Behavior
SPED 780
Class 7
Writing Disabilities/Intro to Behavior
Judith Mack, MSEd, MSW
Adjunct Professor
Department of Special Education

2. Agenda Group presentation 20min Debrief online class 5
Writing disabilities lecture 20
Writing activity 10
Vocabulary Centers 40
Debrief-Discuss 15
Synthesizing what we have learned about Reading and Writing (small groups) 20

3. Writing
Handwriting
Spelling/Vocabulary
Composition

4. What Handwriting Problems Do Students Experience?
Dysgraphia is a written language disorder involving the mechanical writing skill.
Problems with letter formation
Include malformation of letters, poor spacing, and extremely slow writing
Problems with fluency
Slow, labored handwriting may have negative effects on performance in other areas of written expression.
Handwriting problems are often associated with other problems, especially in spelling and composition.

5. How Is Handwriting Performance Assessed?
Experienced teachers can readily recognize poor handwriting, so formal tests are not essential.
Planning handwriting instruction
It is important that students with handwriting problems keep writing.
Monitoring handwriting progress
Teachers can use curriculum-based assessment to evaluate both the legibility and the speed of handwriting.
Freewriting, dictation, near point copying, far point copying

6. What Interventions Can Help with Handwriting Difficulties?
The fundamental question of whether to teach manuscript or cursive has yet to be resolved.
Effective teaching practices in handwriting emphasize teacher modeling and student practice.
Reinforcement and self-instruction training are other effective practices.
Tracing
Assistive Technology
You are unlikely to be doing handwriting instruction.
Handwriting without Tears, PAF
Keyboarding skills are going to be more important for your students. Unfortunately, there are still school situations which require them to hand write.

7. What Spelling Problems Do Students Experience?
Because the English language appears irregular in its spellings, it is difficult to learn to spell.
There are 251 different spellings for the 44 sounds of English.

8. Spelling Errors and Effects of Spelling Problems
Most misspellings are phonetically acceptable, made in the middle of words, and involve alterations of a single phoneme.
Difficulty with consonant clusters.
Difficulty segmenting words into consonant clusters.
Students who have substantial spelling problems can be expected to have difficulties in reading, in part, because of difficulties with phonemic awareness.

9. How Is Spelling Performance Assessed?
The three basic methods used to determine the status of a student’s spelling skills are:
Dictation
Connected writing
Recognition
Most standardized achievement batteries include measures of spelling skills.
Teachers sometimes analyze spelling errors for consistent patterns in student’s mistakes.
Informal spelling inventories and monitoring spelling progress (curriculum-based assessment) are two instructional methods.

10. What Interventions Help Students’ Spelling Difficulties?
LESS EFFECTIVE
MORE EFFECTIVE
Memorization
Presenting words in sentences or paragraphs
Using the study-test method
Ignoring errors
Presenting extensive lists of words to be learned each week
Having students devise their own methods of studying
Treating spelling as uninteresting and unimportant
Learning phoneme/grapheme correspondence
Presenting words in lists
Using the test-study-test method
Requiring students to practice mistaken words, pointing out mistakes
Using brief lists of only 3 words per day
Providing specific strategies for studying, including peer tutoring
Rewarding achievement, using spelling games

11. Developmental Interventions and Remedial Interventions
For best results, teachers should:
Teach spelling skills directly
Include only a few spelling words a day
Provide distributed practices
Teach for generalization
Promote self-correction
Words their Way

12. Types of Spelling Words
Regular words: cat
High-frequency less regular words: said
Homophonous words: they’re, there, their
Demon words: misspell

13. What about Vocabulary? Stages of Word Learning: I never saw it before.
I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know what it means.
I recognize it in context – it has something to do with…
I know it.
Practice
A lot of content related vocab in high school…
Teaching morphology can be very useful0

14. Writing Activity

15. Words Their Way Core Principles
Use assessments to guide “just right” instruction
Follow a continuum of support
Actively involve students with high-level thinking
Provide multiple opportunities across contexts
Engage your students

16. 3 Level Framework for Choosing Words to Teach
Words Not to Teach
Words your students already know
Words that do not serve your lesson objectives
When in doubt, stick with no more than 8-10 words per week
Foot-in-the-Door Words
May be either content-specific or core academic words
Do not require deep knowledge, rather basic understanding
Deep knowledge words:
Essential for understanding text or overall lesson or unit
Or they are high-utility words that students will see in newspapers or magazines
A word you want your students to use 5 years from now
Important enough to spend a chunk of classroom time teaching
Less is more with struggling readers

17. Words Their Way Developmental stages Instruction linked to assessment
Word sorts, group activities, games
Some teacher-led, some independent

18. Effective Teaching Procedures
In addition to those practices listed in Table 13.2, teachers can use these five techniques:
Test-study-test
Practice procedures
Time delay
Morphographic spelling
Add-a-word
Test study test-includes a pre-test and post-test
Daily practice, repitition
Morphographic-intense highly structured program
Flow lists, substitute in words that are known

19. What Composition Problems Do Students Experience?
Research results indicate that students with learning disabilities are more likely to have difficulty with:
Basic writing skills
Planning, organizing paragraphs, and revising
Thematic maturity and sentence complexity
Word usage, style, and vocabulary
Incorporation of important elements
Problems with reading, spelling, and handwriting are related to difficulties with composition.
Huge-lots of essays in HS—regents, structure

20. How Is Composition Performance Assessed?
Screening
Screening for writing disabilities is difficult because many students other than those with learning disabilities write poorly
Planning composition instruction
Requires detailed information about students’ writing skills
The PSLT and TOWL are two norm-referenced instruments that require students to compose writing samples
Monitoring progress in composition
Can be easily done by regularly sampling students’ writing and comparing samples taken at different times

21. What Interventions Help Students with Composition Difficulties?
Teachers should encourage expression, but the fundamental aspects of writing must not be disregarded.
Many authorities recommend students learn to write simply by extensive practice in writing.
Students should plan, write, edit, and revise.
One remedial intervention developed for students with writing problems or learning disabilities is called Expressive Writing.
Writing Workshop

22. Effective Teaching Procedures
Self-regulated strategy development
Learning strategy interventions
Explicit teaching of the steps in the writing process
Explicit teaching of the conventions of a writing genre
Guided feedback
Reinforcement
Story grammar
Cognitive-behavioral techniques
SRSD-COPS POWER some meta cognitive strategies
Sentence structure, paragraph, error monitoring, theme writing
Cog-beh. Self regulation, check assignments according to specific guidelines

23. Text Structure Narrative vs. Expository Types of expository
Description
Sequence
Compare/Contrast
Problem/Solution
Cause/Effect
Useful to understand for reading and writing--

24. Planning Sheet for Compare-and-Contrast Essays
Graphic organizers are very helpful!
As are frames and prompts
Think sheets, plan sheets
Rehearsing verbally

25. Vocabulary Centers
Groups of 5 4 Centers Complete the activity at your station-about 15 minutes Change centers Debrief
4 groups 15 minutes at each station

26. Reading and Writing
Small groups

27. For Tomorrow Bring Hallahan book to class Reading: Required:
Hallahan, Chapter 7
Swanson
Recommended:
Huntington