Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT: The progress of a 12-year-old boy with learning disabilities and severe writing difficulties is followed from initial assessment through instruction in strategies for planning, revising, and managing the composing process.0A validated instructional model, Self Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD), was used to teach these processes. With SRSD, writing strategies are explicitly taught in combination with procedures for regulating the use of these strategies, the writing process, and any undesirable behaviors that may impede performance. Recommendations are offered to speech-language pathologists for applying the SRSD model to :fa children experiencing writing difficulties.
KEY WORDS: writing, strategy instruction, learning disabilities
Childrn should be reqired to cleen their room because they might think its ok to make messes at school. They may not find school work to turn in they might lose importent books. They might break importent stuff like school books projekts, librery books and toys. In concision it's just better to have a cleen room. (written by Alvin Maker in response to the writing prompt: Should children be required to clean their rooms?)
Alvin Maker, the author of the above essay, is a bright 12-year-old boy who would agree with the observation made by the novelist, Gustave Flaubert, that "writing is a dog's life," but would disagree with the rest of Flaubert's commentary that it is "the only life worth living" (Burnham, 1994). Alvin avoids writing whenever possible, devotes little effort to composing when he has to write, and makes disparaging comments about his writing and his capabilities as a writer.
When composing the above essay, Alvin started with a complaint, proclaiming "that writing is stupid." Even though he was encouraged to do his best writing and to take his time to plan in advance what to say, because he would later be asked to share his paper with the other students in his writing group, he immediately started to write once the teacher finished her directions. He wrote quickly, taking short pauses to think about the spelling of a word or to consider what to write next. It further appeared that he gave little thought to the reasons used to support his premise, that children should be required to clean their room. The first reason put forward-"they might think its ok to make messes...