Choice Intervention on Writing Performance

Within the American education system, concerns linked to students’ academic skills have continuously developed. Currently, 10-15% of all elementary aged students in the United States are struggling to succeed in the areas of mathematics, reading, and writing, (Eckert, Lovett, Rosenthal, Jiao, Ricci, & Truckenmiller, 2006). Within these core academic areas, writing has been recognized as a neglected skill (National Commission on Writing, 2006). A recent writing intervention that has produced promising results involves providing students a choice of story prompts. This research was conducted to investigate the potential impact of a choice intervention on writing performance between genders across two studies. Participants included male and female elementary (sixth and second grade) students across two school settings who were randomly assigned to either choice or no choice group. Students’ writing responses following the provision of the choice or no choice intervention were assessed by examining two writing measures: total words written (TWW) and correct word sequences (CWS). Additionally, male and female writing responses were compared to identify potential gender differences