Tourette Syndrome Plus - Education - Helping Students with Disabilities Succeed in State and District Writing Assessments P.2

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Article: Helping Students with Disabilities Succeed in State and District Writing Assessments
Source: Cynthia Warger (2002), ERIC/OSEP Digest #E625
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PREPARE STUDENTS FOR ASSESSMENTS

All students, but particularly those with disabilities, need to have teachers explain the writing task clearly and fully. A rating scale and example essays are not sufficient. Having a strategy to use when prompted to write an essay helps students feel comfortable and enables them to do their best.

In one study (De La Paz et al., 2000), the writing strategy PLAN and WRITE was used to prepare students for a state assessment. This expository writing strategy is as follows:

Plan-Pay attention to the prompt; List main ideas; Add supporting ideas; Number your ideas.
Write-Work from your plan to develop your thesis statement; Remember your goals; Include transition words; Try to use different kinds of sentences; use Exciting, interesting, $100,000 words.

The mnemonics of PLAN and WRITE remind students of the strategy steps, to plan before starting to write, and to reflect on the qualities of good writing while composing. Positive results were found for students with learning disabilities as well as low-, average-, and high-achieving writers.

USE ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY IN INSTRUCTION AND TESTING

Within a strong writing program, technology can provide many different types of accommodation to help students overcome challenges related to their disabilities. Research is identifying potential roles for these new technologies, such as easing the physical processes involved in writing, helping to manage planning and revising processes, and supporting social interaction and communication. Promising technologies are:

Software for transcription and sentence generation (e.g., spelling checker, speech synthesis, word prediction, and grammar and style checkers).
Applications for cognitive and planning processes (e.g., prompting programs, outlining and semantic mapping software).
Computer networks for collaboration and communication.

For example, students with writing disabilities might use speech recognition technology for dictation. For students with learning disabilities in the upper elementary and middle school grades, dictated compositions are substantially longer and qualitatively superior to compositions written by hand or word processor. MacArthur and Cavalier (1996) found that students with learning disabilities produced better essays when dictating to either scribes or speech recognition systems than when they wrote by hand.

Despite the benefits, speech recognition systems place specific demands on students. Users must be trained to speak clearly without extraneous sounds, pronounce punctuation, and correct errors, all of which may interfere with their ability to compose.

Teachers can avoid difficulties by making sure that students:

Understand the limitations of the tool.
Want to use the tool.
Have sufficient training in using the tool.

PROVIDE TEST ACCOMMODATIONS

Assessment accommodations are alterations in the way a test is administered or the way a student provides responses that are designed to redress the student's disability. Appropriate accommodations do not provide an unfair advantage.

Individualized Education Program (IEP) teams make decisions about which accommodations and test modifications are appropriate for a student. Types of accommodation include changes in the time allocated for the test, when or where the test is given, presentation of the test (how the assignments are given), and how the student responds.

Accommodations for writing should address the student's particular need. For example, if a student writes very slowly due to a physical disability, accommodations may entail extended time, dictating to a scribe, or using assistive technology. Pencil grips, taping the test paper onto the desk to prevent it from moving, or replacing the answer booklet with wider-lined paper may be appropriate accommodations for a student who has difficulty with handwriting.

In general, no testing accommodation should be recommended for a student unless that student has had an opportunity to use it during instruction. Ideally, to be fair to the student and to get the best measure of proficiency, instructional accommodations and test-taking accommodations should correspond.

RESOURCES

ASPIIRE and ILIIAD Projects (2000). Making assessment accommodations: A toolkit for educators. Arlington, VA: Council for Exceptional Children.

De La Paz, S., Owen, B., Harris, K., & Graham, S. (2000). Riding Elvis's motorcycle: Using self-regulated strategy development to PLAN and WRITE for a state writing exam. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 15(2), 101-109.

Gersten, R. & Baker, S. (2001). Teaching expressive writing to students with learning disabilities: A meta-analysis. Elementary School Journal, 101(3), 251-72.

Graham, S., Harris, K., & Troia, G. (2000). Self-regulated strategy development revisited: Teaching writing strategies to struggling writers. Topics in Language Disorders, 20(4), 1-14.

MacArthur, C. (1996). Using technology to enhance the writing processes of students with learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 29(4), 344-354.

MacArthur, C. & Cavalier, A. (1999). Dictation and speech recognition technology as accommodations in large-scale assessments for students with learning disabilities. Retrieved from http://www.doe.state.de.us/aab/DSTP_research.html (attachment #11)

For more information, see ERIC EC Digest E590, Teaching Expressive Writing to Students with Learning Disabilities. http://ericec.org/digests/e590.html

National Center on Educational Outcomes, http://www.coled.umn.edu/NCEO (for information on large-scale testing and accommodations)

Center on Accelerating Student Learning, http://www.vanderbilt.edu/CASL

NOTE

ERIC/OSEP Digests are in the public domain and may be freely reproduced and disseminated, but please acknowledge your source. This digest was prepared with funding from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), U.S. Department of Education, under Contract No. ED-99-C0-0026. The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the positions of OSEP or the Department of Education.

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