Teaching Writing in the Diverse Classroom: An Interview with Barbara Friedlander

Barbara Friedlander is an academic achievement specialist with Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, a district with over 135,000 students. Her master's degree, from the University of Maryland in College Park, is in special education with a learning disability focus. Ms. Friedlander has been involved in extensive research with Vanderbilt University professors Karen Harris and Steve Graham on how best to teach the learning disabled. Together, along with Linda Mason, they wrote the book Powerful Writing Strategies for All Students to provide teachers easier access to their rich language strategies for students with and without learning disabilities. Barbara has received numerous awards for both research and teaching.

We interviewed Barbara to learn from her over 21 years of experience teaching writing in classrooms of diverse learners.

1. With schools mainstreaming more learning disabled students, what specific new challenges do teachers face when teaching writing?

When teaching students with learning disabilities in a mainstream environment, the goal is for all students to complete the same assignments. To reach this goal, the teacher may need to do extensive reteaching and differentiation, which takes more planning and support from the entire team of teachers. While the general education student may take only one day to master a lesson, the special education student may need two to three days. You need to break each lesson into many more small components to allow the students to master one technique before you move on to the next one. It is also helpful to incorporate graphics and to model the final product whenever possible; examples of benchmark work provide an understanding of the goal for each assignment.

2. How is this different from teaching any student who is having trouble with a specific subject?

The truth is, it is not that different, but we have formal assessment information for students with disabilities. These assessments guide teacher planning; for instance, if a student is very visual, you can present the information more visually, while if another is auditory-biased you can adapt to that style. You don't have this information on a struggling learner who is nondisabled.

3. Can you give an overview of a strategy a teacher could use to teach writing that would work in a diverse classroom?

Here is one I often use that is very straightforward. It is called the TREE strategy and is used when expressing an opinion. TREE stands for: T--give a topic; R--give a reason why you believe that topic; E and E--give at least two examples. Many times, we ask students to give more than two examples.

For example, as the topic, a child could say "Recess should be an hour." Then, he or she would give the reason "Kids need a longer break during the day to play," and finally, he or she would provide at least two examples, such as: "Fresh air helps kids to be more alert in the afternoon," and "Kids get too goofy in the classroom if they don't have a longer break."

Students retain this strategy; it is easy to remember the mnemonics. I teach this in the elementary grades, and many middle-school teachers have emailed me and asked, "What is this 'TREE strategy' my student is talking about?" It's very useful; I find myself using TREE in my own writing.

4. Granting that a teacher has limited time, can you provide a few simple techniques teachers can use to help the learning disabled student without disrupting the routine for mainstream students?

Here are five suggestions, and I'll describe them below:

1. Writing buddies

2. More time for guided practice

3. Use of computers for drafting

4. Visual outlines

5. Shorter lesson segments

An easy technique to implement is to pair up a learning disabled student with a writing buddy, someone who is patient and academically proficient. The student with writing disabilities can ask, "Can you read this; did I follow the rubric?" The writing buddy may be a peer editor. It is very empowering for the writing buddy as well.

I would also allow more time for guided practice. Students with learning disabilities need more repetition. During writing instruction, the teacher may need to revise the lesson and reteach in order to ensure that they have mastered a technique before moving on to independent practice.

Having students compose their writing assignments on the computer is helpful for all students, but especially for the student with learning disabilities. The use of computers for drafting shows the student which sentences are fragmented, and where the grammatical and spelling errors are in the document. Even if there were only two computers in the classroom, in my experience, rarely was there a waiting time. Not every student is at the same stage of the writing process; most students who use the computer are at the drafting stage.

For students who are visual, I make a visual outline with boxes for the different parts of the project: "In this box, you're going to put your title sentence; in this box, you're going to put your reason"; and so on. The outline should have a name for each box. By the time they have filled out the boxes, they have a visual outline of the story. For mainstream students, the boxes might be too restrictive, but it helps learning disabled students who are visual learners become more organized.

Another effective technique is to break the project into shorter lesson segments. Sometimes student with learning disabilities are overwhelmed by the whole project. Show them the end result, but say to them, today I want you to just do this part, and then tomorrow I'll give you the next part. Students who are given one part at a time will not feel so overwhelmed, and in the end, they will be able to complete the entire project.

Thus, pairing, extra guided practice, using computers for drafting, visual outlines, and smaller steps are all techniques that can help student with learning disabilities within a mainstream classroom.

5. Can you describe some of successes in classrooms that you have observed?

Strong co-teaching between regular education and special education teachers is very important. They need to work together to plan the lesson and the differentiation needed for different learning styles. Research shows that students with learning disabilities benefit from being educated with same-age peers. The more the special education students can stay in the classroom with their peers, the more successful they will be.

As a resource teacher, I always went to the students. I spent time with their regular education teacher; we reviewed the assignments and differentiated them based on the students. It benefits all students to be educated alongside their peers to keep the instruction in the general education classroom.

Other examples, as I mentioned earlier are: making use of the computer; making use of strategies such as TREE; showing good examples so they know their goals; and working with other students who are good writers. These are all things I have both used and seen used that are very effective.

I was amazed by how much the students generalized the strategies I taught them. How they were able to use them in different settings and continued to use them in middle school. I was surprised they didn't just look at me and say, "She's here and I better use that strategy." They were able to use them whenever it was appropriate. They knew when to use them and were able to use them, and they were able to keep them when they moved on into other grades.

These are struggling learners; that is not going to go away. But now they own strategies of learning, so they can get through mainstream content and learn from the standard materials. Mainstream students benefit from these strategies as well; but a mainstream student might use the strategies and be able to write ten essays in the time that a student with learning disabilities writes three.

Barbara, thank you for sharing your perspective on teaching writing, especially on how to modify and differentiate writing lessons and assignments so that they can benefit all students. We hope we can follow up with you this Spring to find how your thoughts have progressed as you become more involved with middle-school students.

Comments

[Amber]

As someone who is a future educator, I truely enjoyed you tips. My favorite one is the writing buddies. I have used this before and found that it has worked quite well.