Thomas Bailey

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• Thomas Bailey
• December 9, 2003
• Course EDU 641 Instruction of Students with
  Learning Problems
• Instructor Mary Beth Doyle, Ph.D.
• Assignment Annotated Bibliography
• regarding
• Students with Learning Disabilities
• in the
• Areas of Reading and Writing.

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• Articles
• From
• Scholarly
• Journals

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• Title Taking Charge Adolescents with Learning
  Disabilities Assume Responsibility for their own
  Writing
• Author Mark J. Hallenbeck
• Journal Learning Disability Quarterly, V. 25,
  No. 4 (Fall, 2002), pps 227-246.
• Summary Students with Learning Disabilities
  often find expository writing most daunting and
  overwhelming. As a result they experience
  failure, become dependent on their teacher for
  ideas and quality control and fail to develop
  the higher level cognitive skills associated with
  good writing. The author employs Cognitive
  Strategy Instruction in Writing (CSIW) to help
  7th graders (a) assume responsibility for their
  own learning and (b) improve the quality of their
  thinking and writing. CSIW involves five steps to
  writing Planning, organizing, writing, editing
  and revising. Extensive teacher modeling and
  scaffolding and extensive student-student
  collaboration is time consuming but in the end
  productive. The author uses organizing
  categories, developing categories and scaffolding
  questions extensively. In addition, the author
  recommends think-alouds for immature writers
  and think sheets as organizational tools.
• The authors proposal doesnt appear to be a
  magic bullet for teaching writing. Many of his
  recommendations, such as employing organization
  and structure, are implicit in any teaching of
  students with learning disabilities.
  Student-centered instruction is not new either.
  Perhaps a difference in the authors approach is
  his willingness to take the time necessary for
  the student with learning disabilities to learn.
  Also, student centered learning (teacher as
  coach) may be new ground for students who are
  learning disabled.

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• Title Examining the Reading Difficulty of
  Secondary Students with Learning Disabilities
  Expository v. Narrative Text
• Authors Laura M. Saenz and Lynn S. Fuchs
• Journal Remedial and Special Education, V. 23,
  No. 1, pps. 31-41
• Summary Authors studied 111 high school students
  with learning disabilities in reading performance
  of narrative writing as compared to expository
  writing. The result was that the students read
  narrative writing with better fluency and
  comprehension. However, reading fluency and
  comprehension of expository writing was
  mediated with the type of pre-reading question
  asked. The authors identify reading expository
  writing as a great difficulty for students with
  learning disabilities. Their article suggests a
  few strategies to improve needed inferential
  skills (e.g. using the text structure and
  creating writing summaries), vocabulary
  improvement and reading fluency.
• This article is valuable in identifying a
  problem and making concrete suggestions of
  strategies for improvement in instruction,
  however modest.

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• Title Writing and Reading Connections between
  Language by Hand and Language by Eye
• Authors Virginia Wise Beringer, Robert D. Abbott
  and Sylvia P. Abbott
• Journal Journal of Learning Disabilities, V. 35,
  No. 1 (January/February, 2002), pps. 39-56
• Summary In this highly technical and theory
  driven report the authors detail their decade
  long study of grade school students in an attempt
  to identify the processes in aural, oral and
  reading systems yielding the best predictors of
  the specific components of writing. Their
  investigation of connections between language by
  hand (writing) and language by eye (reading)
  employed oral reading as a variable and showed,
  among other things, that language by hand was
  valuable for reading comprehension. However, most
  of their conclusions were applicable mainly to
  serve as a basis for further studies.
• Though interesting as an exercise in
  understanding the possible trends in educational
  research, there was little in the article that
  would translate into useful pedagogy in the
  classroom.

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• Title For Which Students with Learning
  Disabilities are Self-Concept Interventions
  Effective?
• Authors Batya Elbaum and Sharon Vaughn
• Journal Journal of Learning Disabilities, V. 36,
  No. 2 (March/April, 2003), pps. 101-108
• Summary The authors review numerous studies to
  investigate the appropriateness of intervening
  with students with learning disabilities to
  improve their self-concepts. This was apparently
  based on the assumption that students with
  learning disabilities have low self-concepts. The
  authors concluded that that assumption was
  incorrect and that intervening with all students
  with learning disabilities was counterproductive
  for those who did not have a low self-concept.
  The authors, therefore, recommend that
  self-concept interventions only be made where
  there is a documented student history of low
  self-concept and a referral.
• This article is interesting in the mere fact
  that it had to be written at all to disprove the
  assumption that students with learning
  disabilities all uniformly suffer from low
  self-concept. The lesson Never jump to
  conclusions based on unproven assumptions as
  applied to an individual student.

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• Title Teaching Expressive Writing to Students
  with Learning Disabilities Research-Based
  Applications and Examples
• Authors Dr. Russell Gersten and Dr. Scott Baker
• Journal Journal of Learning Disabilities, V. 36,
  No. 2 (March/April, 2003), pps. 109-123
• Summary The author documents his research on
  writing instruction of students with learning
  disabilities and draws notable (and valuable)
  conclusions
• (a) Self-expression in writing leads to a more
  motivated writer.
• (b) Planning and organizing for writing is
  critical for students with learning disabilities.
  The author suggests think sheets and provides a
  format (Whom am I writing for? Why am I writing?
  What do I know? How can I group my ideas?). He
  also suggests organizational outline forms (What
  is being explained? What are the steps in
  explaining it?).

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• (c) Dialog and feedback are critical as
  well.
• (d) For students with learning disabilities
  explicit teaching of the writing genre
  conventions is important.
• (e) When instructing developing writers the
  normal approach of postponing concern for
  spelling, punctuation and grammar in favor of
  expressive content does not work was well for
  students with learning disabilities. Instead the
  author recommends explicit and systematic
  instruction in spelling, punctuation and grammar.
• (f) The author suggests that schools
  develop programs of integrated and sequential
  writing instruction so that developing writers
  will have a coherent learning path.
• The authors findings and suggestions are
  valuable and could apply well in a differentiated
  classroom.

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• Websites

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• 1. General Information about Learning
  Disabilities, Fact Sheet No. 7. June, 1997.
  National Information Center for Children and
  youth with Disabilities. December 02, 2003.
  ltwww.kidscource.com/NICHCY/learning_disabilities.h
  tmlcontentsgt
• This site has useful general information and a
  number of links to related information. It is not
  as useful as a teaching tool and is now a bit
  dated.
• 2. Richard Wanderman, David Clark and Monika
  Koethnig. LD Resources, Resources for the
  Learning Disabilities Community. December 2,
  2003. ltwww.ldresources.com/gt
• This site has a number of resources and articles
  of interest The site is slanted more toward
  learning to live with a disability and less
  toward teaching. There are links to discussion
  groups that are not necessarily academic. Unlike
  other .com LD sites this site does not appear to
  be selling anything.

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• 3. Teaching LD, Information and Resources for
  Teaching Students with Learning Disabilities.
  December, 2003. Division of Learning Disabilities
  of the Council of Exceptional Children. December
  3, 2003.
• ltwww.dldcec.orggt
• This large and useful site connects to a number
  of resources, especially teaching and research
  articles, and his many useful links. This site is
  perhaps as useful in its way as LDOnline from the
  syllabus.
• 4. National Center for Learning Disabilities
  (website). December, 2003. National Center for
  Learning Disabilities. December 2, 2003.
  www.ncld.org
• This site is large and thorough with particular
  emphasis on working within the framework of the
  No Child Left Behind law (in a non-judgmental
  way). It also references research and has many
  useful mainstream links.

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• Instructional
• Approaches

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• Graphic Organizers as a way to have students
  organize for writing. Although they have multiple
  uses, graphic organizers are a visual means for
  brainstorming and developing writing topics and
  grouping ideas (as in the think sheets referred
  to in the Gersten and Baker article above). They
  are useful not only in paragraph formation but in
  visualizing compare/contrast or other higher
  order thinking in connection with writing.
  (Sources Differentiated Instructional Strategies
  by Gregory Chapman, Corwin Press, 2002, pps
  86-93 Wheels for Writing Independent
  Strategies for Efficient Study by Karen Rooney,
  Educational Enterprises, Inc.
• Cooperative Group Learning Using TASK is a
  strategy involving actually teaching efficient
  group learning. Social skills and roles are
  taught as is accountability and goal achievement
  for both individual and group. Reflection as self
  feedback is a component. Source Gregory
  Chapman, pps 93-103.

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• Role-playing is flexible and can be used to
  provide content instruction embedded with emotion
  for greater long and short term memory. It is
  useful to teach differing perspectives of
  individuals or groups in history or current
  events. Role-playing can be as simple as a
  reading of multiple role text or as complicated
  as a student written and directed play.
  Role-playing also leverages multiple
  intelligences. Source Gregory Chapman, pps
  103-104 Oh! What a Lovely War (film) (1969).
• Carousel is also a flexible way to teach about
  virtually any topic (e.g. to emphasize character
  differences of characters in a novel, or
  contrasting characteristics of differing
  historical periods) and has the advantage of
  combining learning with a group activity and
  movement. It would fit well in a differentiated
  classroom. Source class hand out in Literacy
  with Becky Wigglesworth.

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• the end
• (I hope you enjoyed it.)