Project SOLO™

An NCTI Technology In The Works project

Center for Literacy & Disability Studies

Project SOLO™ is designed to investigate the additive benefits of SOLO™ software and ready-made

assignments for SOLO™ software to self-regulated strategy instruction

(SRSI) for middle-grades students with and without identified disabilities who

struggle with writing.

Overview

Design

• Quasi-experimental, pretest/posttest • Random assignment of 9 teachers to one of three

treatment conditions:– Self-Regulated Strategy Instruction Only– Self-Regulated Strategy Instruction plus SOLO™– Self-Regulated Strategy Instruction plus SOLO™ with

Ready-Made assignments produced by the research team to the teacher’s specifications.

• Six weeks of intervention (18 lessons)• Ongoing classroom observations and collection of

observational data including fidelity checklists.

Research Measures

• Pretest/Posttest Measures:– Test of Written Language – 3 (TOWL-3, Hammill &

Larsen, 1996)– Writing Attitudes Survey (Kear, Coffman, McKenna, &

Ambrosio, 2000)– Focus Group Interviews

• Ongoing Collection of writing samples for a variety of dependent writing variables identified (De La Paz and Graham, 1997).

• Participant Observation of instruction • Fidelity Checklist

Research Hypotheses1. All subjects, independent of group membership

will show a significant increase in their written language abilities as a result of self-regulated strategy instruction with and without SOLO™;

2. There will be a significant difference between groups for all written language abilities as a result of self-regulated strategy instruction with and without SOLO™; and

3. There will be a significant difference between groups for writing attitudes as a result of self-regulated strategy instruction with and without SOLO™.

Participants

• Nine teachers, 3 each in grades 3, 4, and 5.– Seven of the teachers hold a masters degree and 4

have National Board Certification. – They have been teaching for an average of 12 years

(range 3-30 years).

• 111 students from 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade general education settings. – Include all children on the classroom roster including

those with identified disabilities, those without disabilities who struggle to write, and all other children.

The School

A North Carolina School Honor of Excellence

Total Student Enrollment: 395Average Class Size: 14-21Students Qualifying for Free or Reduced Lunch: 49%Nonwhite Students: 32% (27% African American)Students with Disabilities Passing End of Grade Tests: 64%Number of Students per Computer: 3.24Achieved Adequate Yearly Progress on All Measures

According to NCLB

The Intervention

• The self-regulated strategy instruction to be used as the intervention is a framework for teaching students to be fluent and automatic in the application of strategies while writing (Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2003).

• All teachers were provided with an example of the 18 lessons for the writing strategy they were implementing at their grade level.

Self-Regulated Strategy Development Instruction

The six stages of the writing strategy instruction are:

• Build Background• Discuss It• Model It• Memorize It• Support It• Independent Performance

Strategy Selection

• 3rd grade:– summary writing strategy

• 4th grade:– narrative writing strategy– SSCARE (Narrative strategy developed by

teachers for project): Situation, Setting, Characters, Action, Reaction, Ending

• 5th grade:– expository writing strategy– TH3 TNT (Expository strategy developed by

teachers for project): Topic, Hook, 3 Details + Topic, NEED to enumerate, Topic

Current Activities

• Complete scoring and analysis of data.• Following teachers, particularly those in

the no-SOLO™ group, as they implement SOLO™ this spring.

• Work with individual students with the most significant learning disabilities providing individual self-regulated strategy instruction using SOLO™.