Integrating Writing Strategy Instruction With Content-Area Instruction: Part I—Orienting Students to Organizational Devices

Introduces guidelines for teaching content-area lessons using graphic organizers as a way to meet the needs of adolescents with mild learning handicaps By Edwin S. Ellis Learning content-area subjects such as social studies, geog-raphy, or history, as well as meeting the writing expecta-tions of secondary schools are two sig-nificant challenges for many adoles-cents with mild learning handicaps (MLH). This article is the first of a two-part series that focuses on guidelines for facilitating success in these areas by integrating instruction in them. In this first article, the primary focus will be on outlining guidelines for teaching content-area lessons using graphic organizers. The second article in the series focuses on how teachers can cap-italize on students ' knowledge of infor-mation structures developed when learning content-area lessons via graph-ic organizers to enable them to use a writing strategy effectively and effi-ciently. Together, these articles reflect components of the Integrated Strate-gies Instruction (ISI) model developed by Ellis (1993)