The Effects of Computerized Sentence and Paragraph Strategy Instruction for Struggling Adolescent Writers

The purpose of this study was to determine whether struggling adolescent writers could learn sentence and paragraph writing skills from a software program. Nine junior-high and nine senior-high struggling writers participated in a multiple-probe across-students design that was replicated six times. Instructional procedures within the software program were based on methods previously found to be successful in teaching learning strategies to adolescents. Measures included scores on practice activities, time spent working through the program, quiz and knowledge test scores, a sentence-construction score, a complete sentences score, a paragraph-organization score, a planning score, satisfaction with the software program, and satisfaction with personal writing skills. All of the students met mastery on all of the activities and quizzes in the program. Significant differences representing large effect sizes (range of Cohen’s d = 1.42 to 2.39) were found between baseline and post-instruction scores in the multiple-probe design on the Complete Sentence and Paragraph-Organization measures. Students indicated that they were satisfied with the software program and their own writing.

Revisiting Interview Data Through a Post I-Poem

A former participant in a research study on adolescent writers was invited to read and respond to a Post-I-Poem (PIP), a poetic transcription constructed from her interview data in what is now a closed study. The purpose of this investigation was to explore what could be learned from doing a PIP in the first place and what lines of inquiry this investigation could raise for why a researcher might revisit old interview data. Analysis of one student’s PIP suggests that using poetic transcription to revisit retired transcriptions offers researchers potentially new directions for further study.

The significance of reflective conversations for adolescent writers

Purpose For writing instruction, reflection has been an essential tool. Typically, educators ask students to reflect in a structured written, individual format. Less explored is the role that small and whole group reflective conversations have in fostering students’ understandings about writing. The purpose of this paper is to explore several conversations from a young writers’ camp to examine how three high school students engaged in four different kinds of reflective talk during the writing process. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws from a larger qualitative study about how campers constructed and enacted their writer identities in a two-week young writers’ camp. Five researchers observed, video/audio recorded, engaged in interviews and collected artifacts with 58 campers for ten consecutive days. Qualitative analysis was used to examine how young writers (Grades 9-12) engaged in reflective talk to develop understandings about writing. Findings Data illustrated that students engaged in four types of reflective talk: prospective, reflective-in-action, introspective and retrospective. The paper provides one example for each kind of reflective conversation and provides analysis related to how those conversations shaped campers’ understandings about writing. Originality/value This paper illustrated how adolescent writers used prospective, reflective-in action, introspective and retrospective talk during conversations to tell their stories of learning about writing, a topic less studied in the field. This work offers insight into teaching students how to have such reflective conversations so that they are productive and supportive during writing practices.