Chancy Hansen
Journal article reflection #2
Professor Rees
2/25/09
In the following journal reflection, I will discuss the main topics from the article “Using Software to Enhance the Writing Skills of Students with Special Needs.”, show the impact of the given strategies, and then conclude with my own thoughts.
This article talks about using software to help students with their writing skills. It is estimated that, “(65%) of students referred for learning disabilities have a writing disability”. This is twice the percentage of students who had a disability in reading, math, or spelling.” (Cullen, Richards, Lawless, 2008) Most students with learning disabilities usually struggle with areas such as using words properly, spelling, knowing when to capitalize and knowing how or when to use periods and other forms of punctuation. A lot of these students also struggle with either using their verbal intelligence or writing what they are thinking.
The journal article talks about two software programs designed to help students with writing skills. The first was Write:Outloud and was a software program that was essentially a talking word processor. The second software was Co:Writer and was a word prediction software. The article related how a study was set up to test how the use of these two software programs could help students improve their writing skills.
Students were first assessed based on hand written writing assignments and these papers were graded to provide a baseline for comparison. The teachers then had the students use Write:Outloud while they were doing their journal writing assignment for a specified number of writing assignments. Finally they had their students use Write:OutLoud and Co:Writer together during their journal writing time for a specific number of writing assignments..
The results of these test comparisons were dramatic, with all students showing improvements if writing skills based on their districts writing rubric. Also Average spelling accuracy improved as well as the average number of words used in their papers. Students using the software program, Write:OutLoud, had gains in the areas of writing, spelling accuracy and the number of words written. The greatest gains in all of these areas were attained when using both Write:OutLoud and Co:Writer together. Refer to the graphs on the second and third page of the article for these results and comparisons.
These two pieces of software, as you can see in the graphs, helped the class as a whole score better on writing assignments. Individually, the results of using the two pieces of software varied by student. For some students using Write:OutLoud alone allowed them to make significant improvements in their writing skills. All students showed some improvement when additionally using Co:Writter, but others showed significant improvement beyond these results by also using Co:Writer. The Co:Writter program seemed to help the students who struggled the most with writing more so than the Write:OutLoud program did.
I personally feel that this article was very useful. To me any piece of information that gives any future educator, myself in this case, a few more tools to put into the teaching tool box is a good article. I liked this article because it didn’t just talk about the two types of software it also provided graphs which are visual proof that Write:OutLoud and Co:Writter worked.
As a future special education teacher I know that I am going to have a lot of students who struggle with writing. Some of them may struggle with spelling, knowing how to use punctuations and writing their thoughts out on paper. I only feel that the information from this article will help me to be more prepared to help make these particular students more successful writers. It will additionally help them with their other classes and in life as well.
I like the fact that I now know two types of software I can use to help my students. I would most definitely be highly interested in purchasing these two pieces of software. If am able to get them, I will plan on using the Write:OutLoud and Co:Writter programs both separately and together. I am really looking forward to using these two valuable aids in my future classroom. The only problem I envision is getting a school system to purchase them if they don’t already have them.
Citation Page
Cullen, R, Richards, S. B., Lawless, F. (October 2008). Using software to enhance the writing skills of students with special needs.. Journal of Special Education Technology, 23(2), Retrieved February 22, 2009, from http://www.donjohnston.com/pdf/cowriter/cow_wol_research_study.pdf