Low proficiency levels in essential reading and writing skills continue to spur research into how to best teach these areas. There is no consensus about how early to start, however, and whether reading and writing practice might overwhelm younger learners. In this study, Harris and colleagues tested the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) Plus model, which focuses on close reading of informational texts to write informative essays supported by practice in transcription and oral language, by randomly assigning ninety-three 1st and 2nd graders in one southeastern US high-poverty school to either SRSD Plus or “business as usual” (writers workshop).
The study found that SRCD had a positive impact on most measured outcomes: writing quality (ES=+1.02), writing productivity (ES=+0.82-1.39), spelling (ES=+1.18), vocabulary (ES=+2.29), sentence proficiency (ES=+0.29), and discourse knowledge (ES=+0.43). No effects were found on handwriting fluency and there were no explicit reading comprehension measures. The study also reports in detail the skills SRSD Plus particularly helped to develop, such as planning writing and referring to source texts. Larger effects were found for second graders (compared to first) and for girls (compared to boys). Additionally, the authors tracked implementation and reported that SRCD Plus was implemented with high fidelity.
Important to note when reviewing these findings is the small sample (one school, less than 100 students) and reliance on many researcher-created outcome measures. Both of these factors may have led to effect sizes that are greater than they would be in a larger, more diverse sample, on more standardized measures.
Source: Harris, K. R., Kim, Y.-S., Yim, S., Camping, A., & Graham, S. (2023). Yes, they can: Developing transcription skills and oral language in tandem with SRSD instruction on close reading of science text to write informative essays at grades 1 and 2. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 73, 102150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2023.102150