A paragraph text-writing intervention for secondary students with intellectual and developmental disabilities: a single case design study

Having adequate writing skills can be an important part of success in school. Students complete writing assignments where they share their thinking about a class topic, and teachers can use such products to evaluate how well a student understands important concepts. Writing can also be important for finding employment and staying in touch with friends and family on popular social media websites. Unfortunately, many students in the United States struggle to develop adequate writing skills. Specifically, students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) experience numerous challenges, including difficulties with mastering grammar skills, evaluating their writing, and producing as much writing as their peers without disabilities. Students with IDD also have challenges with working memory that can impact the pace at which they learn academic skills.

There are a number of writing interventions for learners with IDD. Many of these interventions help students develop writing strategies, but they do not explicitly help students develop improved important paragraph text-writing skills such as composing multiple sentences about a single topic that have appropriate capitalization, punctuation, and grammar. Four high school students with IDD participated in this study. They completed a series of instructional lessons and timed writing practice lessons to improve such paragraph text-writing skills. This study provides evidence that a combination of explicit instruction and timed writing practice can help some students with IDD improve on several writing measures.