Guiding Students in Special Education to Generate Ideas for Writing

When students are stuck, breaking the brainstorming stage down into separate steps can help them get started writing. Most students don’t have too much trouble following the traditional steps of the writing process: brainstorm, outline, and draft, then revise and edit. Some students, though, get stuck in the brainstorming phase. As a special educator, I have encountered the “stuck” student many times. When we treat brainstorming as an opportunity for skill building, students can feel more confident developing ideas for writing. Writing requires many skills to work together at the same time: idea generation, hand strength and stamina, letter formation, spelling, sentence composition, grammar, editing, proofreading, and so forth. If any of those skills is weak, it makes writing significantly harder. Many students who struggle with writing have not had sufficient practice building each foundational skill to a point where they readily access it when performing more complex skills in the classroom. In other cases, a student’s disability may impair some aspect of their learning, be it fine motor or cognitive. They learn to master skills when instruction and practice is broken into small pieces. Many of my interactions with students looked something like this: Teacher: In Charlotte’s Web , a major theme is friendship. You are going to write a paragraph that shows how the characters were good friends and helped each other. Student: (Sitting, not working.) Teacher: Sally, can I help you get started? Student: I don’t have any ideas. Teacher: Let’s brainstorm together using your graphic organizer. Student: No! Teacher: OK. Try on your own, and I’ll check back with you in a couple of minutes. Student: No ideas! No ideas! (Runs out of the classroom.) If student behavior is viewed as some type of communication, this example shows that a learner is likely communicating that they don’t have a skill required or are not able to access this skill at this time. By breaking a skill into small parts and allowing your students to practice those parts until they become automatic and effortless, an instructor can decrease a student’s frustration level and remove a significant […]

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