Improving the writing skills of students in the upper elementary grades: an intervention study

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Abstract

It has been established that, in the Netherlands, a majority of students does not attain the desired level of writing skills at the end of elementary school, and that the way writing is taught must be improved. This study tested the effectiveness of a comprehensive teaching program for the improvement of writing performance of students grade 4 to 6. This program, Tekster, combines several evidence-based practices, such as strategy instruction, goal setting, text structure instruction and observational learning into one general approach to writing tasks. Tekster was tested in a large-scale experiment, with 1420 students from 60 classes in a regular educational setting, using a switching replication design with two waves and three measurement occasions. Students and teachers in the first wave received the intervention in the first period of eight weeks, between the first and second measurement occasion, and those in the second wave received the intervention in the second period of eight weeks, between the second and third measurement occasion. Results show that students’ writing performance improved significantly across all grades in both waves. Further, an exploratory analysis demonstrated that this improvement was maintained two months after the intervention. Because writing proficiency was measured with nine writing tasks in three different genres, findings are generalizable not only over students and classes, but also over tasks. Moreover, the intervention was tested in a naturalistic setting, as the writing program was delivered by regular teachers in their own classrooms. Hence, the present study demonstrates that a comprehensive writing program, such as Tekster, can be implemented in daily classroom practice.
Keywords: writing, writing instruction, observational learning, strategy instruction, elementary grades
Original languageEnglish
Pages160
Number of pages1
Publication statusPublished - 25 Aug 2015
EventJURE conference 2015 - Cyprus Umiversity of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus
Duration: 23 Aug 201524 Aug 2015

Conference

ConferenceJURE conference 2015
Country/TerritoryCyprus
CityLimassol
Period23/08/1524/08/15

Keywords

  • writing
  • writing education
  • observational learning
  • strategy instruction
  • elementary grades

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