Using Strategy Instruction and Self-Regulation to Improve Gifted Students' Creative Writing

Abstract

In an extension of a previous investigation, we examined the effects of an instructional package consisting of strategy instruction and self-regulation techniques on the story writing of two gifted, middle school students. Specifically, we used a multiple-baseline, time-series design across the two students to determine whether strategy instruction and self-regulation techniques would affect planning, text production, rates of writing (i.e., fluency), reviewing, and writing quality. Strategies for planning and reviewing involved the use of printed prompts that could be used by the participants. Self-regulation components included goal setting, charting, and monitoring the amount of time spent planning, number of words written, rate of words written per minute, and number of story elements. The findings indicated that, following application of the instructional package, both participants wrote longer stories, increased their writing fluency, and included more story elements. Conversely, we noted that the participants spent less time planning and reviewing and less time writing as the study progressed. Finally, independent raters judged stories the students wrote following intervention to be of higher overall quality than ones they had written earlier. We discuss limitations of the study and implications of the findings for practice and future research.