Teaching writing to exceptional children

¶ … Expression is one of the three academic areas under which a student can be classified as learning disabled under our special education laws. While reading, and to a lesser extent math, generally get more attention, the development of written expression skills is crucial to all students' eventual success. Students will have to write essays and research papers in high school, write essays on applications to college, and be able to write more advanced papers in college. If they do not go on to college, they will still have a distinct advantage if they can communicate well using writing as many businesses are making more and more use of e-mail for communication among employees (Hansen, 1998). In addition, writing can be a tool to access one's emotions and explore one's feelings and attitudes by such activities as keeping a personal journal (Karge, 1988). In spite of the importance of acquiring writing skills, difficulties with writing continue into adulthood in persons with learning disabilities (Karge, 1988).

Karge (1988) recommends the use of student portfolios to establish a baseline of abilities to which later progress can be compared. She suggests that the portfolio include not only the students' work, but teacher comments about the instructional techniques used by the teacher. The portfolio should include the kinds of prompts used by the student, whether it is a picture or illustration, an idea map or a web made from brainstorming. In this way the student portfolios can guide both student and teacher: the student will see his or her progress, and the teacher can compare that to the instructional strategies used to see what worked most effectively for that student. Thus, the process of choosing instructional approaches can be systematically analyzed.

Another pattern the teacher should look for is patterns of avoidance by the student. If the student consistently avoids certain kinds of writing tasks, this information would have instructional implications (Karge, 1988).

However, Karge (1988) recognizes that finding ways to streamline the portfolio process can be helpful. Her article includes a simple chart for noting the types of writing errors a student makes. This seems like a far preferable way to record student errors than taking their hard work, and marking it up with a red pencil. In addition, this chart could be used to track progress over time, along with rubrics that can evaluate language complexity, sentence structure, organization of ideas, and other important elements of writIng.

Newcomer, et. al. (1988) point out one of the pitfalls to choosing instructional methods for students with learning disabilities. Often curriculum or teaching ideas are presented to teachers quite persuasively but without any accompanying research to demonstrate that the approach results in student learning. This is of serious concern today as education looks more and more to "best practices" being reflected in what and how they teach. These authors also make the important point that looking at how highly skilled writers write may not translate into a sound approach for those just learning to write, and that what constitutes best practices for a typical learner may not be successful when the student has a learning disability affecting progress in written expression.

Newcomer, et. al. (1988) look at the teaching of writing from the standpoint of two roles: teacher and learner. They suggest that the teacher's role is to instruction in planning and revising and the development of self-monitoring skills. They report that an interactive relationship between student and teacher will be more effective than the older method of marking the errors on a student's work with the hope that the student will learn from having those errors pointed out.

They also specify some of the special needs of students with learning disabilities in written expression. They will need extra opportunities to practice new skills, and may need more specific instruction. The older approach of focusing on the final product rather than the process of writing, had the student writing on his or her own with little feedback during the writing process. The process approach by comparison provides structured guidance as the student writes so that the final product reflects achievement rather than a paper with mistakes spotted and marked up by the teacher. Newcomer, et. al. (1988) look at specific issues related to teaching written expression: mechanics, such as spelling and punctuation; fluency, or the free and easy flow of ideas; peer conferencing, where students help each other evaluate their work; the use of free writing, where students can write on topics of their choosing for themselves instead of some other audience or the teacher; and how the teacher will evaluate student progress.

Newcomer, et. al., also note some of the more insidious writing problems faced when teaching students with learning disabilities. All too often the assumption is made that the students can't write well, and expectations are lowered. In addition, all too often the students view the teacher as an adversary, looking to point out their many errors to them, rather than someone interested in reading what they have to say. In addition, while writing is sometimes used in regular classrooms to increase understanding of social studies, science or even math, often this is not asked of students with learning disabilities. They simply have fewer opportunities to write, and more fear of making errors (Newcomer et. al., 1988).

Several approaches can be used to improve written expression skills in students with learning disabilities. One approach for evaluating written expression, the reflective portfolio is described by Hansen (1998). By portfolio, Hansen means "a multidimensional collection of a student's work assembled in an organized fashion and [that] represents the cognitive, affective, or psychomotor dimensions of learning." He recommends that the student and teacher decide together what will be included in the student's portfolio of work. The approach emphasizes "writing to learn" and not "learning to write," and emphasizes individual progress rather than group standards as might be established via a standardized achievement test. Portfolios may be a more accurate way of evaluating progress for learning disabled students than non-authentic approaches such as group tests, as students with learning disabilities do not always perform well on traditional tests (Hansen, 1998).

The writing in portfolios can be evaluated through use of a rubric, which if applied consistently, will clearly demonstrate the progress the student has made during the year (Hansen, 1998).

Alber (1999) reports on the use of a classroom newspaper to encourage students to write, edit and revise. Alber's approach provides a specific structure to use for peer editing and instructional suggestions. Students need to be taught how to function as reporters, asking the basic journalism questions "who, what, when, where, and why" (Alber, 1999). However, newspapers also carry opinion pieces on the editorial page, and report on such activities as movies and popular music. Albers also recommends including items such as riddles, puzzles, and "fun facts" about people in the school. This approach also lends itself to capitalizing on other student abilities. Illustrations and digital pictures can be included, which can lead to another short writing skill: the caption.