Description of the Research Project
Although this study gathered data on prewriting strategy instruction, the entire project
was larger in scope and focused on the writing process in its entirety since I worked with
students in a Composition 101 class. Students read extensively from a textbook entitled A
Reader for College Writers by Santi Buscemi (2008). This textbook offers essay models that
help students practice specific analytical skills, consider the editing process with a variety of
rough drafts, and read genre-specific exemplars. The textbook, in other words, allowed
students to build background knowledge for composition writing. Building background
knowledge is one ofthe key concepts of strategy instruction. Students also developed
background knowledge in the concept of metacognition through reading and in-class
discussion. Prior to delving into any curriculum material, students took a pretest in which
they wrote an essay. This allowed me to establish a baseline score for clarity, organization,
and development of their essay ideas. In the first weeks of class, I also administered the
Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (Schraw & Dennison, 1994).
Prior to beginning this intervention in February of 2012, students read and discussed a
chapter on central ideas in A Reader for College Writers (Buscemi, 2008). This chapter
included model essays and questions that focused students’ attention on central ideas in
paragraph writing as well as essay writing. Students also read a chapter entitled “Getting
Started” which introduced concepts such as active reading, planning and drafting during
the writing process, webbing and outlining ideas, as well as drafting and revising. We
discussed and questioned the information in both of these chapters as a whole-class as
well as in small groups. Students engaged in freewriting as well as paragraph writing to
develop understanding and foundation skills in concepts necessary for success in essay
writing. In conjunction with the reading, we reviewed the 6 + 1 Traitwriting rubric
(Appendix A) and used it to evaluate the model essays in the textbook chapters.
Furthermore, the class read and discussed material on metacognition. All of this work
developed preskills or background knowledge for future writing instruction. The study
itself took place over an eight week period from mid-February through April during the
2012 spring semester.
On the first day of the research, students wrote on an assigned topic through a
freewrite in their writer’s logs. After this initial, unstructured writing designed to tap into
prior knowledge of the topic and engage students in brainstorming around a particular
idea, students reviewed the PLAN mnemonic (pay attention to the prompt, list ideas, add
supporting details, and number ideas) (De La Paz & Graham, 2002). I modeled my
planning process, using the think-aloud methodology to reflect on the prompt. I
considered aloud what it was I was being asked to write about, and how I should develop
my essay. Next, using the graphic organizer (Sundeen, 2007, Appendix C), I listed my
main ideas for my paper and add supporting details to support my main ideas. Then I
considered the order of my details and number them as needed. Finally, I emphasized that
this plan I made was recursive, and that it may need to be changed as I wrote. This initial
introduction to the PLAN mnemonic and to the writing task combined with my modeling of
the planning process took two class periods.
During the second half of the second session and some of a third, students began to
plan their own essay. This included reviewing the freewrite and culling possible ideas from
it. I scaffolded student planning by providing a template for a graphic organizer (Sundeen,
2007, Appendix C), circulating while students were working, and stopping to help
whenever needed. When students completed their graphic organizers, they submitted these
to me prior to writing their rough drafts. I provided written feedback and then handed
back the organizers for students to use in the drafting of their essays. After students
wrote and revised their final draft of their essay, they reflected upon their writing process
by engaging in class discussion and then drafting goals for the next writing task.
Discussion included dialogue about the use of strategies during the planning process as
well as new or enhanced awareness of their own thinking. After each writing unit, I
administered a questionnaire that asked students to rate strategies they implemented.
Two more compositions were assigned over the course of this eight-week study. Each
followed the same instructional format as the first. We read sections from the textbook,
which included explicit instruction on writing types or genres as well as model essays. We
discussed textbook ideas as a whole class and in small groups and evaluated the model
essays with the guidance of the scoring rubric. At the beginning of each of the three
writing tasks, students revisited the elements of the PLAN mnemonic and engaged in
freewriting related to a particular topic. For each writing task, students also created a
graphic organizer based on the provided template. At the end of the study, which was also
the end of the semester, students took the metacognitive assessment again and wrote a
last essay for their final exam. This assessment provided data regarding the effectiveness
of the intervention.
