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This scoping review provides a comprehensive overview of available experimental research on writing interventions for K-12 students with learning disabilities (LD). After conducting a systematic search across multiple databases, journals, and previous meta-analyses, we located a total of 194 studies. Each study included in this review met the following criteria: (1) used an experimental, quasi-experimental, or single-subject design; (2) involved a writing intervention; (3) focused on participants who were K-12 students with LD; (4) reported at least one assessment of student writing outcomes at posttest; and (5) was published in English. We coded each study for study-level, participant, intervention, and outcome characteristics. We found a declining rate of publication in the studies we reviewed. A majority of studies (58%) involved group designs, and, on average, study participants were in the middle grades (M = 6.48, SD = 2.36). Half of all studies were conducted in special education settings and most (76%) focused on discourse-level (i.e., extended composition) writing interventions. However, many of the included studies did not report important demographic, setting, and interventionist characteristics. Results from this scoping review provide a wide-angle view of the current field of writing interventions for students with LD and highlight areas where additional research may be necessary.

Purpose: The purpose of this narrative review of the literature is to provide a description of intensive interventions for elementary grade students with dyslexia, students with learning disabilities, and students with intensive reading and writing needs. Method: First, we provide a brief overview of response to intervention. Second, we explain our theoretical framework for the review. Third, we describe evidence-based interventions, which are divided into predominantly reading or writing interventions. Fourth, we explain data-based individualization for these programs based on a taxonomy of intensity, and we provide an illustrative case study. Conclusion: We conclude by describing a set of links to websites and technical assistance resources that may be helpful for speech-language pathologists, teachers, and other interventionists to stay current with this research base and to lead professional learning communities.

In this meta-analysis, we examined whether children classified with specific language impairment (SLI) experience difficulties with writing. We included studies comparing children with SLI to (a) typically developing peers matched on age (k = 39 studies) and (b) typically developing younger peers with similar language capabilities (k = six studies). Children classified with SLI scored lower on writing measures than their typically developing peers matched on age (g = -0.97) when all writing scores in a study were included in the analysis. This same pattern occurred for specific measures of writing: quality (g = -0.92), output (g = -1.00), grammar (g = -0.68), vocabulary (g = -0.68), and spelling (g = -1.17). A moderator analysis revealed that differences in the writing scores of children classified with SLI and typically developing peers matched on age were not as large, but were still statistically significant, when assessment involved a contrived response format (vs. measured based on students' writing), researcher-created measures (vs. norm-referenced tests), or SLI included just children with a speech disorder (vs. children with a language disorder). Children classified with SLI further scored lower on writing than typically developing peers with similar language capabilities (g = -0.47). We concluded that children with SLI experience difficulties with writing.

Although incorporating engineering into science instruction seems straightforward, adding more content into an already busy school day may be overwhelming for some teachers. To address this challenge, the authors created a unit that integrates engineering and literacy instruction. This article demonstrates how young students can learn sophisticated engineering principles within the context of fun and engaging lessons. During the combined engineering and literacy unit (modified from Benenson 2014), third graders created pop-up books over the course of 10 days (see NSTA Connection for unit overview and materials). To maintain a focus on engineering principles, the authors chose to focus on two simple pop-up folds: parallel and angle folds. Students wrote their pop-up books on figures of speech, a focus of their literacy class at the time. Students used a graphic organizer (see NSTA Connection) to plan their writing before transferring it into their pop-up books. Students also used writing throughout the unit to support their learning of engineering principles. After participating in the unit, the students were able to express their new knowledge of engineering principles both verbally and in writing. Students demonstrated significant growth on all assessments from pre- to posttest. Thus, after participating in the unit, students were able to demonstrate their new knowledge of grade-level engineering design standards in multiple ways: (a) recall on vocabulary assessments, (b) written language representation on essay responses, and (c) oral language representation in interviews. From this, the authors believe that by engaging in engineering practices (e.g., reverse engineering, troubleshooting, prototyping, and optimizing) related to grade-level standards, students developed a deep understanding of how to apply engineering principles to solve real-world problems.

In this review, we synthesized the most recent decade of published research examining writing interventions for students with learning disabilities. Using electronic searches, we identified experimental, quasi-experimental, and single-subject design studies published in peer-reviewed journals from 2008-2017 that included K-12 students with documented learning disabilities. Eligible studies included at least one writing intervention and researchers assessed that intervention's impact using at least one writing quality measure. Across the 25 studies that met our review criteria, we summarized general study characteristics as well as information regarding study participants, research designs, writing interventions, and dependent measures of writing quality. We found a majority of studies were published in the first five years of the review span (2008-2012) across 12 different peer-reviewed journals. Study participants were primarily (n = 16 studies) in the secondary grades (i.e., 6 to 12). Most research designs (n = 19) were single-subject and nearly half of all studies (n = 12) involved writing strategy interventions. In most of the studies reviewed (n = 17), researchers created measures to assess writing quality outcomes. Implications for teaching writing to K-12 students with learning disabilities as well as directions for future research in this area are discussed.

The article offers ideas on how to teach students about sophisticated engineering principles within the context of fun and engaging lessons. It offers details of the experiment in which students were asked to create pop-up books over the course of 10 days and to write toupport their learning of engineering principles. It outlines the advantage of the experiment since it helps students to develop deep understanding of how to apply engineering principles to solve real-world problems.

Although inter-rater reliability is an important aspect of using observational instruments, it has received little theoretical attention. In this article, we offer some guidance for practitioners and consumers of classroom observations so that they can make decisions about inter-rater reliability, both for study design and in the reporting of data and results. We reviewed articles in two major journals in the fields of reading and mathematics to understand how researchers have measured and reported inter-rater reliability in a recent decade. We found that researchers have tended to report measures of inter-rater agreement above the .80 threshold with little attention to the magnitude of score differences between raters. Then, we conducted simulations to understand both how different indices for classroom observation reliability are related to each other and the impact of reliability decisions on study results. Results from the simulation studies suggest that mean correlations with an outcome are slightly lower at lower levels of percentage of exact agreement but that the magnitude of score differences has a more dramatic effect on correlations. Therefore, adhering to strict thresholds for inter-rater agreement is less helpful than reporting exact point estimates and also examining measures of rater consistency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]