Abstract
Statement of Problem
In today's fast-changing world it is more important than ever for students to be given the skills and opportunities to become proficient writers (National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges, 2003). Yet, less and less time is being spent on teaching writing in classrooms now because of over-bloated curriculums (Kauffman, 2004). It is often the case that teachers are not adequately prepared to teach writing and do not receive much training once they are on the job (National Commission on Writing, 2003). To address this problem, many schools are adopting formulaic writing programs that rely heavily on the use of graphic organizers. The purpose of this study was to explore "What are the effects of graphic organizers on writing development in young students?" To answer this question narrative and expository stories were written by a group of 18 second graders without the aid of graphic organizers. The subjects were then introduced to organizers, which were used during the drafting phase of the story writing process and had specific sentence and paragraph requirements. After students were given instruction on how to use the organizers, they were asked to complete writing assignments with the aid of this prewriting strategy. The writing samples were then scored using a rubric that included the writing categories of idea, organization, sentence fluency, word choice, and voice.
Sources of Data
Data collected included 72 narrative and expository work samples written by 18 second graders and gathered over a six week period. In addition, a subset of three students was chosen to participate in audio taped interviews for the purpose of gathering information on the thought processes that students use when writing. Informal observations were also conducted to give insight into the responses of the
students to writing activities completed with and without the aid of graphic organizers. A teacher scored all of the work samples using a rubric that included five of the six traits of writing (Spandel, 1996). A second teacher scored 50% of the samples to establish reliability of scoring techniques.
Conclusions Reached
Overall results revealed that students' work samples improved slightly in the area of organization and staying on the writing topic. Work samples and teacher observations provided information that students had a more difficult task producing writing that was strong in the area of sentence fluency; there was less variety in sentence length and structure when a graphic organizer was used. Students also had a
harder time. retaining their own writing voice when using a writing scaffold, and in addition, were less likely to use interesting and colorful words in their stories. Composite scores comparing narrative and expository work samples gave evidence that overall, graphic organizers did not significantly benefit one type of writing more. When looking at the number of students who showed improvement in writing after the introduction of graphic organizers, slightly more students improved in their expository writing samples than in their narrative samples. During writing activities it was observed that some students, especially those who struggle with writing, appreciated the guidance provided by the writing scaffold, while other students felt the flow of thoughts was hindered by the procedure of filling out the organizer.