Teaching the Function of Writing to Middle School Students With Academic Delays

Using multiple baseline designs, we studied the effects of having seven 9 th graders edit their papers until a naive reader accomplished a drawing assignment during writer immersion (communication in writing only). During Experiment I, students received no feedback in the first phase, teacher editing feedback in phase 2, and writer immersion plus viewing the effects of their writing on a naive reader in phase 3. In Experiment II, students received the baseline followed by writer immersion and viewing effects on a reader. The dependent variables in both experiments were the structural components of the writing and accurately drawn components by a naive reader. The writer immersion and self-editing package increased accuracy in structure and function in both experiments.