What is the impact of peer-assisted sentence-combining teaching on primary pupils' writing performance?
This digest found in
English
How were the findings measured?
Researchers used extensive measures to ensure that both treatments were applied rigorously, including tape recording 30% of lessons, which were scored for accuracy in terms of the procedure and quality. The ratings were conducted by two people independently. In order to assess development of pupils’ writing skills measures were taken at various points throughout the intervention. Pupils were required to complete a five-item progress monitoring test during the fifth lesson of each unit. Writing quality was assessed by scoring the first and second drafts of a story. Great care was taken to ensure that the examiners analysed the work accurately.
Pupils' writing skills were measured in relation to:
- sentence combining;
- quality and length of writing; and
- number and type of revisions made to improve the work.
According to the researchers there are few validated practices beyond teaching sentence-combining to improve children’s sentence-construction skills. They suggest that further research is needed to examine other approaches to improving children’s ability in this area.
