Differentiated Writing Interventions for High-Achieving Urban African American Elementary Students

Abstract

African American students are overrepresented in special education and underrepresented in gifted education. This is in large part due to students’ poor performance in core academic areas such as reading, math, and writing. Differentiating instruction in early grades could assist in closing the writing performance gap between African American and majority students, with the intended outcome of increasing the likelihood of students achieving their academic potential. Research-based strategies that improve fluency and vocabulary—potentially improving writing quality—include students counting the total number of words they have written and self-monitoring their progress. We examined the effects of self-counting (which included viewing graphs of the word counts students had written) and student use of synonym lists (which provided alternative words for students to use in their writing) on the length and quality of writing of 5 high-achieving urban African American first graders whose instruction took place in a first/second-grade split classroom. All 5 students demonstrated improved writing outcomes. The results of this study support the use of differentiated interventions for high-achieving students in order to better increase the likelihood that they will achieve in written expression at a level commensurate with their abilities.