Effects of High Interest Opinion Writing Prompts for 5th Grade Students with Learning Disabilities

The purpose of this creative project is to examine the extent to which high interest opinion writing prompts for four 5th grade students with learning disabilities (LD) improve the planning, organization and structure of their opinion essays as measured by the total words they write on the topic (TWW) the number of correct writing sequences (CWS) the overall accuracy of their writing, and critical components of opinion writing (CCOW) in a timed writing sample when compared to low interest opinion writing prompts. Initially participants will select high and low interest writing topics using a prompt selection procedure. Given 50 potential writing topics, students will select their top 10 high and low interest prompts. After being explicitly taught the SRSD – POW+TREE writing strategy, participants will complete 20 timed opinion writing samples based on high and low interest opinion writing prompts. TWW, CWS, Accuracy and CCOW will be measured and recorded by the researcher. This information will be used to determine areas of needed instruction for 5th grade students with LD in the curriculum area of writing