The speech-language pathologist's role in a writing lab approach.

In a writing lab approach, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) work on collaborative teams with general and special educators to foster language growth using inclusive, curriculum-based, computer-supported writing process instruction. By engaging students in authentic writing projects using recursive writing processes--planning, organizing, drafting, revising, editing, publishing, presenting--and supporting them with instructional scaffolding, peer feedback, and computers, SLPs can address individualized needs while achieving goals of the general education curriculum. Case examples illustrate how intervention can be designed to meet the needs of students with diverse disabilities to interact socially and progress academically within the general education curriculum.

The effects of text-based and graphics-based software tools on planning and organizing of stories.

This article describes a research study comparing the effects of two computer-based writing tools on the story-writing skills of fourth-through eighth-grade students with language-related learning disabilities. The first tool, the prompted writing feature of FrEdWriter (Rogers, 1985), allowed students to answer story grammar questions, then type stories using those responses as the plan; the second tool, Once Upon a Time (Urban, Rushing, & Star, 1990), allowed students to create graphic scenes, then type stories about those scenes. Nine students attended a series of after-school writing labs twice weekly for 11 weeks, using each tool for half of the writing sessions. Group results did not clearly favor either tool; however, individual differences suggested that use of planning features should be linked to student needs. Students who had less internal organizational ability benefited from the computer-presented story grammar prompts and wrote less mature stories when using the graphics-based tool. Students with relatively strong organizational skills wrote more mature stories with the graphics-based tool.

Effects of goal structures and performance contingencies on the math performance of adolescents with learning disabilities.

This study assessed the effects of assigned versus self-selected goals and contingent versus noncontingent gameplay conditions, delivered during computer-assisted math computation drill-and-practice sessions. Participants were 20 high school pupils with learning disabilities who had active Individualized Education Plan (IEP) goals that targeted the improvement of computational skills. Students were assigned randomly to goal conditions and, within goal conditions, to contingency groups. Math computation performance was measured pre-, mid-, and posttreatment. Analyses of variance indicated that students who selected their goals performed better than pupils with assigned goals. No differences existed between the contingency groups. Implications for practice are discussed.