Price, 1

Sarah Price

Professor Malcolm Campbell

WRDS 1004

11 March 2023

Annotated Bibliography

How is writing used in special education classes?

Gersten, Russel, Scott Baker and Lana Edwards et al. “Teaching Writing to Students with

LD.” Reading Rockets, Dec. 1999,

https://www.readingrockets.org/article/teaching-writing-students-ld. Accessed 13

Mar. 2023.

In this article from Reading Rockets website, Russel Gersten, Scott Baker, and

Lana Edwards explain what the most effective writing instruction for students with

learning disabilities is. To start off the article, they first talk about what three

components of writing instruction they believe LD (learning disabilities) should

receive. The first component is adhering to a basic framework of planning,

writing, and revision. The authors found that teaching students to write requires

showing them how to develop and organize what they want to say and guiding

them in the process of getting it down on paper. When it comes to planning, they

include different types of plan of action that helps the students plan. These plans of

action are called “Planning Think Sheets” as well as semantic mapping techniques.
 Price, 2

For writing, the planning serves as a concept map for engaging in the writing

process and provides students with suggestions for what to do. This tool helps

students and teachers have a common language to use in discussing the writing.

The last part of the first component is revising and editing. The authors discovered

that revising and editing skills are critical to the writing process. Researchers have

found that even though developing methods to help students is difficult, these

strategies appear promising. The second component is Explicitly teaching critical

steps in the writing process. For this component, teachers should explicitly teach

text structures that provide a guide for the writing task, whether it is a persuasive

essay, narrative, or any other type of writing. The third and final component is

providing feedback guided by the information explicitly taught. If students receive

feedback, it helps students to develop “reader sensitivity” and their own writing

style. This article also touches briefly on two specific methods of teaching. These

methods are Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) and cognitive Strategy

Instruction. SRSD techniques involve self-directed prompts that require students

to consider their audience and reasons for writing and many more things. The

Cognitive Strategy includes brainstorming strategies for preparing to write,

organizing strategies, and categorizing the ideas. The purpose of this source is to

inform special needs teachers that there is effective writing instruction for students

with disabilities. It also gives ideas to teachers on how they can improve or try

new specific instructive methods. The first writer, Russell Gersten has a Ph.D., is

the executive director at the Instructional research group, and is professor emeritus
 Price, 3

in the College of Education at the University of Oregon. The second writer, Scott

Baker, is an Associate Professor of Education at Wake Forest University where he

teaches courses on education policy and social justice. The third writer Lana

Edwards is a professor in the Special Education program at BU Wheelock. She has

presented extensively on how to apply evidence-based instructional strategies in

the classroom. This source appears to be a reliable source due to the organization

that published it, Reading Rockets, being reliable because it is a national

multimedia reading initiative that examines how young kids learn to read, why so

many struggles, and how caring adults can help. The audience for this source is

parents, teachers, principals, librarians, literacy volunteers, preschool teachers,

school counselors, school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, and PBS

stations. This source was published in December 1999, so not very recent and

could also be not as accurate. From all the author's credentials, it can be inferred

that they are biased as to what teaching methods they think will work the best. It

affects my evaluation by just knowing that the authors include two methods makes

me think that they believe that only two specific methods are the right word for

teaching writing to LD students. In my opinion, I believe that this source is a good

source of information by including what components would be the best for

improving a special needs student's ability to write. The role this source played in

my inquiry process was finding information on what process or steps teachers

need to take in order to fulfill the writing needs of students with learning

disabilities. From this article, I learned that students with learning disabilities need
 Price, 4

to be taught in detail basic framework, explicit critical steps in writing, and

feedback to become the best writers they can be. This source will most likely

appear in my composition due to the information provided on how to teach

students with learning disabilities to write.

Gillespie, Amy, and Steve Graham. “A Meta-Analysis of Writing Interventions for

Students with Learning Disabilities.” Gale Health and Wellness, Sage

Publications, Inc., 6 June 2014,

https://go.gale.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=T002&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&

searchResultsType=SingleTab&hitCount=1&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&

currentPosition=1&docId=GALE%7CA395165287&docType=Article&sort=Rele

vance&contentSegment=ZGPP-MOD1&prodId=ITOF&pageNum=1&contentSet=

GALE%7CA395165287&searchId=R1&userGroupName=char69915&inPS=true.

Accessed 14 Mar. 2023

In this peer-reviewed journal article, Amy Gillespie and Steve Graham conduct

research to see if writing interventions were effective for students with learning

disabilities and which specific writing interventions are effective for improving the

writing quality of the student. In this paper, the authors start off by addressing that

treatments designed specifically to enhance writing processes were only effective

when instruction was provided. To address the writing difficulties experienced by

students with LD, it is important to identify instructional practice that enhances the

quality of their writing. Students with LD spend less time planning, less time
 Price, 5

generating coherent ideas, and less time revising the content. The approach for

identifying effective writing practice is to conduct a systematic review of

intervention. To do this, you chose a meta-analytic, which permits analysis of the

magnitude, direction, and consistency of writing intervention effects obtained. The

first question the authors proposed was “Are writing interventions, in general,

effective for students with LD?.” From their research, they were able to identify

that the writing quality of students with LD was improved through intervention.

Writing interventions had a positive impact on the writing quality of students with

LD. The second question proposed was “Which specific writing interventions are

effective with students with LD?.” From their research, they concluded that

strategy instruction, dictation, goal setting, and process writing had positive and

statistically significant effects on the writing of students with LD. The primary

purpose of this source was to figure out if writing interventions were effective and

impacting students with learning disabilities, and they were. The first writer, Amy

Gillespie, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the department of teaching and

learning at Southern Methodist university. Before she taught the Bachelor of Arts

in sociology and had a Master of teaching from the University of Virginia. The

second author, Steve Graham, is the Warner Professor in the Division of

Leadership and Innovation in Teachers College at Arizona State University. For

over 30 years he has studied how writing develops, how to teach it effectively, and

how writing can be used to support reading and learning. The company that

published this article is Sage Publications. This source is reliable due to the fact
 Price, 6

that Gale Health and Wellness offers access to thousands of full-text medical

journals, periodicals, reference works, and multimedia. The audience for this

source would be anyone interested in learning about writing for students with

learning disabilities. This could include teachers, principals, research studies on

literacy, parents, professors, and many more people in the education field. I would

say this source is current on the topic of effective writing interventions even

though this article was published in June 2014. The facts I can check to ensure the

information is correct were given to me in the article. Since they did their own

research, they provided the data charts with all the information for the audience to

know that their research was correct. This information could be biased by the way

they simply only work and do research in this field. Since they both work in the

education field, they are more biased toward finding out the answers more quickly.

In my opinion, this source is good information and appropriate to my topic

because they talk about the effective interventions for writing for students with

learning disabilities and that is exactly what I want to learn about. The role that

this article played in my inquiry process is the research part. I was able to find

solid, true, and outstanding research for my topic all in one source. What I learned

from this topic is that it is important for students to be able to identify effective

writing practices, it is more than just practical information. It provides important

theoretical insights into the writing challenges. This source will be in my

composition because I learned great information from this source and the specific
 Price, 7

writing interventions that are effective for improving the writing quality of

students with learning disabilities.

Kochis, Ginny. “Tuesday Tip - Encouraging Reading, Writing in Students with Special

Needs.” NewsBankinc, 29 Sept. 2009,

https://infoweb-newsbank-com.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/apps/news/document-vie

w?p=AWNB&t=&sort=_rank_%3AD&fld-base-0=alltext&maxresults=20&val-ba

se-0=writing%20and%20special%20education&docref=news/1342341510DC77A

0. Accessed 15 Mar. 2023

In this news story from NewsBank, Ginny Kochis starts off the article by stating

that she realizes the appreciation for literacy in students with special needs can be

extremely challenging. Kochis explains throughout this news post that students

who grapple with such learning disabilities need support from a combination of

unconditional love and educational strategies designed to propel them into literary

and academic success. Students with learning disabilities need to be given reading

and writing a purpose beyond the classroom. To do this, help your students find an

audience for the student to work with and help them submit it for publication, this

will help spark the light in writing or reading. Kochi suggested that teachers

should use unusual writing implements and creative approaches to reading, and

doing this is interesting and removes frustration from the student’s experiences.

Unusual writing techniques include writing with shaving cream, and sand, or using
 Price, 8

a favorite subject to inspire a student to write. Adaptive approaches to reading

include adding your own twist to a picture book. Kochi ends the article with ways

you can boost students' love of literacy. This included; donating time or books to

literacy organizations, and visiting libraries and theaters. The primary purpose of

the source is to remove literacy roadblocks and show your students other ways to

succeed. I believe Kochis does achieve the source’s primary purpose; she gives

many examples of how teachers can help special needs students overcome their

writing roadblocks. Ginny Kochis, a former high school English teacher and

adjunct professor of English turned homeschooling mom and business owner.

Kochis wrote about faith, motherhood, homeschooling and family literacy. I found

this source on NewsBank, which I found through the University of North Carolina

at Charlotte library homepage. This source appears reliable because her

information connects to other articles I have read and Kochis includes many

examples and strategies that most likely would help a student grow in writing and

reading. The audience for this source could be anyone in the education field that

attends UNCC that has access to this source through the library, mothers, teachers,

literacy researchers, and as well speech/language pathologists. This source was

published in 2009, so not current, but I believe that the information provided in

this source could still be used in today’s society. I do believe this source could be

somewhat biased. This is because the author loves to write about literacy and she

was an English teacher, so that could make some of her suggestions for instruction

be biased. In my opinion, this source is good information and appropriate for my

 Price, 9

topic because I learned new strategies that will help a student with learning

disabilities remove their roadblocks and give them support with different adaptive

techniques for writing and reading. The role this source played in my inquiry was

questioning and wondering. After reading the article, it made me think about if

every teacher with students with learning disabilities did these techniques, would

the students be able to do writing and reading with fewer difficulties? This source

will appear in my composition due to the fact that it has great information and

overall just helped me expand my knowledge and strategies on writing used in

special education.