From Reading and Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan & Dr. Howard Margolis
Parents of struggling writers worry about their children’s struggle. They want to know, “How can I help my child?”
If your child struggles with writing, this post might help you and your child’s school identify the type of writing instruction your child needs. It will do this by first discussing critical but often ignored areas of diagnosis, then discussing a typical but inadequate diagnostic process that can do more harm than good, and finally suggesting actions you can take. A follow-up post will outline one effective, well-researched method for helping struggling writers improve their writing: Self-Regulated Strategy Development.
Important Areas of Diagnosis
Before designing a program to improve the writing of a struggling writer, parents, teachers, and, if the child is eligible for special education, his IEP or Section 504 team, must know what the child won’t or can’t do that’s critical to becoming a successful writer. They need to ask and answer many questions, including these:
- Knowledge of Writing. Does the struggling writer understand what makes readers think one piece of writing is terrible and another excellent? For example, does he understand why essay “A” is persuasive, essay “B” is not, why persuasive writing requires more than starting sentences with capitals, and what he must do to write a persuasive essay?
- Approach to Writing. Does the struggling writer just write down as much as he knows and then stop, or does he sculpt and continually refine and edit his writing so his audience finds it logical, coherent, relevant, interesting, informative, and easily understood?
- Advanced Planning. Does the struggling writer learn a great deal about his subject before writing about it, and does he then jot down and order the ideas he wants to discuss? Does he eliminate unnecessary ideas and provide support for the more important ones?
- Revision. Does the struggling writer do the three things that good writers do: revise, revise, and revise. As James Michener quipped, “I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.” Good writers cut excess, pick stronger verbs and nouns, provide more specific information. At best, without lots of revising, students can produce a draft that demands revision.
- Transcription. Can the struggling writer easily put his thoughts on paper or on a computer screen? If not, what’s blocking him? Is it difficulty with handwriting, word processing, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, sentence structure, memory, attention, organization, monitoring of progress? Do psychological factors, such as fear of errors and memories of failure and ridicule, block efforts at transcription?
- Self-efficacy and Persistence. Does the struggling writer have enough confidence or self-efficacy in his ability to write? Self-efficacy is related to confidence. It refers to the struggling writer’s belief that he can succeed on a specific task, like writing a letter to President Obama. To this, I typically add the phrase, with moderate effort. If a struggling writer believes he can’t succeed, or that success will require him to continually make extraordinary, herculean efforts, he’s likely to resist writing or quit at the first sign of difficulty. Writing often requires persistence, and he may not have the self-efficacy to persist.
- Motivation. Does the struggling writer have enough motivation to stick with writing, a task that is often hard, complex, and lonely? Does he have the motivation to stick with a writing task that can take lots of time, focus, preparation, juggling, and a willingness to continually criticize his work and try to improve it. Unless the outcome is important, unless the struggling writer expects writing to get him what he wants—praise from his teacher, smiles from his parents, admiration from classmates and other readers, an opportunity to paint with words, the satisfaction of creativity, a sense of mastery, an opportunity to share his thoughts—he may put little, if any effort into it. After all, if something is difficult for us and the reward unlikely or worthless to us, how many of us would work hard at it?
- Interest. Topics that interest children hold their attention and engage them far more than topics in which they’re uninterested. Although this stands to reason, it’s often ignored. So, part of diagnosis must reasonably ask, What interests this child? What does he want to write about? To whom does he want to write? When writing about a topic of personal interest, does his writing improve? When writing about a topic of personal interest, do his writing problems evaporate or lessen?
A Typical But Inadequate Diagnostic Process
To diagnose writing difficulties, many schools limit diagnosis to the administration of one or two standardized tests and report their test scores in long, impressive-looking columns of statistics. Typically, this tells us that the struggling writer has a writing problem, and not much else. But we knew this before testing. And often, the statistics must be viewed with skepticism as the tests themselves are often very limited, and thus their statistics can easily mislead. They can lead to programs that ignore his major problems.
Diagnosis of writing problems by the quick administration of limited tests also ignores the need for a writing expert to observe the struggling writer in a variety of writing situations. Otherwise, neither the school nor you will know what your child did, did not do, or struggled with to produce his writing samples. Alone, the samples will not tell anyone if your child rushed carelessly through the tasks or struggled mightily to succeed until his eyes filled with tears. As Marjorie Lipson and Karen Wixson assert:
It is extremely difficult (perhaps impossible) to evaluate students’ control of the writing process by considering only final products. Evaluation of student control … requires that students be observed, over time, in a classroom that values process writing and encourages author development. (p. 358)
Actions
If your child struggles with writing, meet with school personnel to discuss his writing problems. Ask for specifics, including samples of his writing, with written explanations detailing the strengths and weaknesses of the samples. Then, ask for a comprehensive evaluation that addresses each area we listed as an “important area of diagnosis” and that observes your child writing in a variety of situations, for a variety of purposes, such as writing to a friend or requesting information from his Congressional Representative. (Follow your oral requests with written ones.)
Once the evaluations have been completed and you’ve met with your child’s teachers and other school personnel to discuss the results and to design a program of interventions—in all areas of need—request a written plan for monitoring his progress. As part of the plan, ask for weekly samples of his work. Ask school personnel to annotate the samples so you can understand the degree to which they show progress or difficulty. Rubrics, which are lists of standards that teachers use to evaluate writing, can make this more precise and easier for your child’s teachers and you. Typically, they identify what the teacher and school consider the characteristics of quality writing. You can find sample rubrics on our website, under resources (www.reading2008.com).
If you find yourself disagreeing with school personnel, read chapters 8 and 9 of Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds. Chapter 8 gives you strategies for Solving Conflicts; chapter 9 takes the mystery out of Special Education Evaluations and offers ideas for using them to help your child.
Resources
Santangelo, T., Harris, K. R., & Graham, S. (2007). Self-Regulated Strategy Development: A validated model to support students who struggle with writing. Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal 5(1), 1-20. [Available from Learning Disabilities Worldwide, www.ldworldwide.org; the Important Areas of Diagnosis section is based on this article.]
Lipson, M. Y., & Wixson, K. K. (2009). Assessment and Instruction of Reading and Writing Difficulties: An Interactive Approach (4th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Howard Margolis, Ed.D. © Reading2008 & Beyond www.reading2008.com
Parents also should try to find out whether anyone has actually tried to teach the child to write. Most of what I see teachers do is assign writing. Many of the students I get in college have never had any actual instruction in writing.
The conventional wisdom about what writers do is based on experience of mature and professional writers. We don’t require kids in drivers ed to use the techniques of Indy 500 drivers, yet we expect a 7th grader who hates writing to use the same techniques as a bestselling novelist.
Many aspects of nonfiction writing can be taught in almost fill-in-the-blanks fashion, but teachers don’t like doing that. One told me it was boring. Tough beans. Why should kids be the only people in the classroom who are bored?
I agree with paragraphs 1 and 2, but not 3. I believe that writing should excite kids, not bore them. If we want kids to become engaged in writing and to frequently write on their own, they need to view it as satisfying and important, and, in many cases, fun, not boring. Few people pursue activities they find boring, especially activities like writing which are often hard. –HM
I did not mean to suggest students need to be bored. My point is that teachers don’t want to engage in the kinds of activities reluctant and struggling writers need, such as help to master writing strategies, because teachers find those activities boring.
I have very little sympathy for teachers who tell me that writing assignments that are within students’ capabilities are boring to read. I suspect that the music teacher does not find listening to clarinet squeeks is fun, but putting up with off-key playing is part of the job. In the same way, putting up with writing tasks that the teacher doesn’t find interesting is part of the teacher’s job.