Differentiated Writing Interventions for High-Achieving Urban African American Elementary Students

Abstract

African American students are overrepresented in special education and underrepresented in gifted education. This is in large part due to students’ poor performance in core academic areas such as reading, math, and writing. Differentiating instruction in early grades could assist in closing the writing performance gap between African American and majority students, with the intended outcome of increasing the likelihood of students achieving their academic potential. Research-based strategies that improve fluency and vocabulary—potentially improving writing quality—include students counting the total number of words they have written and self-monitoring their progress. We examined the effects of self-counting (which included viewing graphs of the word counts students had written) and student use of synonym lists (which provided alternative words for students to use in their writing) on the length and quality of writing of 5 high-achieving urban African American first graders whose instruction took place in a first/second-grade split classroom. All 5 students demonstrated improved writing outcomes. The results of this study support the use of differentiated interventions for high-achieving students in order to better increase the likelihood that they will achieve in written expression at a level commensurate with their abilities.

The effect of differentiated learning on the retainment scores of deep and surface learners

“…In this sense, as pointed out in the literature, the result of this study can be evaluated as a finding which supports the idea that learner-centered models steer students towards using deeplearning approach. This idea is parallel with the findings of Geisler (2009), Gregory (2002, Nunley (2004), Theisen (2002), Tomlinson (1999).…”

The Effects of Writing‐to‐Learn Activities on Elementary Students’ Conceptual Understanding: Learning About Force and Motion Through Writing to Older Peers

“…The surprising result is that, among the subgroups, gifted students gained most from the writing‐to‐learn activity in this study. It is speculated that “writing is a combination of many skills” (Geisler, Hessler, Gardner, & Lovelace, , p. 220), especially involving metacognition, self‐monitoring, and critical thinking. Gifted students in particular are strategic and more likely to understand and generalize a strategy for developing those skills in a relatively short period of time.…”

Evaluating the impact of differentiated instruction on literacy and reading in mixed ability classrooms: Quality and equity dimensions of education effectiveness

“…Blozowich, 2001;Brimijoin, 2002;Johnsen, 2003;Smit & Humpert, 2012;Tomlinson, 2001), or on specific groups of learners, gifted students and students with disabilities (Baumgartner, Lipowski, & Rush, 2003;Geisler, Hessler, Gardner, & Lovelace, 2009;Jones, Yssel, & Grant, 2012;McQuarrie, McRae, & Stack-Cutler, 2008;Rock, Gregg, Ellis, & Gable, 2008;Tieso, 2005). Despite the fact that there are studies documenting the positive effect that differentiation has on student learning in mixed ability classrooms (i.e.…”

“…Notably, most of the documented research on differentiation consists of small scale research projects, based on a very specific learning focus i.e. reading ability (Jones et al, 2012), learning styles, multiple intelligences (Gangi, 2011) and on certain subject areas, including only small numbers of students for very limited time periods (Baumgartner et al, 2003;Geisler et al, 2009;Tieso, 2005).…”