Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education Advance Access originally published online on October 26, 2007
The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2008 13(2):257-277; doi:10.1093/deafed/enm052
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Using Balanced and Interactive Writing Instruction to Improve the Higher Order and Lower Order Writing Skills of Deaf Students
University of Tennessee
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Abstract |
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This article reports the findings of balanced and interactive writing instruction used with 16 deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Although the instruction has been used previously, this was the first time it had been modified to suit the specific needs of deaf children and the first time it had been implemented with this subpopulation of students. The intervention took place in two elementary classrooms (N = 8) and one middle school classroom (N = 8) for a total of 21 days. A comparison of pre- and posttest scores on both writing and reading measures evidenced that students made significant gains with use of genre-specific traits, use of contextual language, editing/revising skills, and word identification. Students showed neither gains nor losses with conventions and total word count. In addition, a one-way multiple analysis of variance was used to detect any school-level effects. Elementary students made significantly greater gains with respect to conventions and word identification, and middle school students made significantly greater gains with editing and revising tasks.
Correspondence should be sent to Kimberly A. Wolbers, The University of Tennessee, Department of Theory & Practice in Teacher Education, A214 Bailey Education Complex, 1126 Volunteer Blvd, Knoxville, TN 37996-3442 (e-mail: kwolbers{at}utk.edu).
Received July 10, 2007; revised September 14, 2007; accepted September 20, 2007