Using Self-Monitoring to Improve a Fourth Grade Student's Writing
Abstract
A single case study was conducted with a 10-year-old fourth-grader who struggled with writing. The goal of the study was to increase the quantity and quality of words written by the student when he wrote a story. The interventions being assessed were self-monitoring with and without goal setting and story starter selection. Self-monitoring required the student to graph the number of words that he wrote in a ten-minute period to improve his writing output. To improve his writing quality, the student was taught to self-monitor correct capitalization and punctuation. Story starter selection involved the researcher providing various types of story starters as prompts for the student’s writing.
Results indicated that the student did not experience a substantial change in writing output with self-monitoring or story starter choice, but demonstrated an immediate and significant change in writing output when goal setting was introduced. Only one session was conducted to introduce elf-monitoring quality. Therefore, the study is inconclusive regarding the effects of self-monitoring capitalization and punctuation on writing quality. Implications and suggestions for future research are included.
Citation
Lott, Kellie (2012). Using Self-Monitoring to Improve a Fourth Grade Student's Writing. Honors and Undergraduate Research. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /148810.