Mapping and Writing Skills Remedial

¶ … Mapping and Writing Skills

Remedial Technique

Students who receive special education services often find themselves struggling with traditional classroom curricular for subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics. An educator's ability to provide assistance through the use of remedial techniques is a tremendous resource and can contribute to the success of a student. For each student learning occurs when they can organize information into a recognizable structure. This is particularly evident in the task of writing. Writing in particular can be daunting as it requires a wide range of cognitive skills.

The educational institution teaches students to produce independent fluent written text, which can be particularly difficult for students who have a learning disability (LD) (Sturm, 2002). Yet being capable of producing expository writing is increasingly important as students' transition from elementary into secondary grades, where the emphasis is on composing documents with appropriate text and sentence structure and drawing from multiple sources (Zipprich, 1995). Research has shown that students with LDs have a difficult time implementing writing strategies that can be useful at the various phases of writing.

One such technique is the use of concept mapping. Concept mapping provides a graphic representation of a student's conceptual understanding of a particular topic (Miller et al., 2009). This strategy is utilized to organize information into a graphic form, therefore creating a visual demonstration of text structure and related personal knowledge (Zipprich, 1995). This strategy can be used to stimulate prior knowledge for its utilization in the various stages of the writing process (Sturm, 2002). The stimulated memories can then assist students to conceptualize information and identify relationships in the information.

Concept maps often look like spider webs that consist of shapes that interlinked to create a diagram that displays conceptualizations of relationships among key ideas in a specific topic area (Miller et al. 2009). The links between the various shapes show how the concepts are abstractly and logically related within the map. These maps can be created through the use of a constrained or open-ended procedure (Miller et al., 2009). The constrained process is one in which the writer must utilize a provided list of terms in order to create the map. There may also be expectations as to how the map is drawn such as a fill in the black approach (Miller et al., 2009). Whereas the open ended process does not place any limitations on the shape of the map or the terms that may be used, however, a small selection of trigger terms may be provided to assist the student (Miller et al., 2009). This approach allows the student to create the map in a manner that is conducive to their understanding of the knowledge of a concept (Miller et al., 2009).

Traditionally, concept maps have been paper and pencil tools, however, increasingly computer software has become available as an alternative to concept mapping. This approach allows for more creativity on the part of the student to design their map in a manner that is conducive to their learning style and compartmentalization of information (Miller et al., 2009).