Efficacy of a sentence writing strategy for postsecondary students with special needs

Students with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) struggle with writing. Writing is an important skill for everyday life; therefore, it is essential that students with ID receive effective writing instruction. Explicit writing instruction adhering to the Strategic Instruction Model (SIM) has shown to be an effective writing strategy for postsecondary students with ID. However, the impact of simple sentence writing instruction has not been studied for this population. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy of part I of the Proficiency in Sentence Writing Strategy (Sheldon & Schumaker, 1999). Results indicate that students were able to learn and apply the vocabulary concepts needed to use the strategy (ES = 0.808), but that the simple sentence writing intervention had no effect on students overall writing quality.