Improving Essay Writing Among Intermediate Elementary Students

Forbes Road Elementary School embarked on this study in response to their writing curriculum’s failure to improve the quantity and quality of informational writing among its intermediate grade-level students using a Multi-Tiered Systems of Support framework. A substantive body of research has identified these skills as being essential for academic success. The study explored how explicit instruction in macro and micro skills affect written expression quantity and quality; how pre-teaching/re-teaching micro skills to struggling students affects written expression quantity and quality; how using Step Up to Writing, Sentence Sense, Spellography, and Word Generation affects teachers’ attitudes toward teaching writing; and how paired scoring of student essays impacts inter-rater reliability. The mixed-methods design utilized quantitative data from one written expression benchmark that measured total words written, words spelled correctly, and correct writing sequences, another benchmark that measured purpose/organization; evidence/elaboration; and conventions, and tiered progress monitoring of struggling students. Qualitative data was derived from pre- and post-programming focus groups in which teachers discussed their attitudes and feelings about teaching writing and their experiences in paired scoring of student writings. The prescribed course of study positively impacted students’ macro skills scores in fifth and sixth grade, but students’ scores in fourth grade plateaued and students’ micro skills scores in half or more students across grade levels and tiers. Teachers’ attitudes toward writing instruction were substantially more positive during the post-programming focus group, and the existing gap in scoring student essays using the same rubric was significantly reduced by partnered scoring and discussion.