Self-Regulated Strategy Development Study

Jasmine and Weiner (2007) believe that the writing process needs to be introduced to students as early as the primary level. While incorporating writing workshop in their study, the main goal was to examine the writing process in first graders while helping to support them and become independent writers. The researchers found that the writing workshop program helped increase the independence and enjoyment for writing in the first grade students. At the start of the study, students frequently didn’t know what to write and had a hard time coming up with topics, but over time, they began to look forward to it, felt they were better writers, and wanted more time in the workshop (2007). Tracey and Headley (2013) took on a different approach

In Helsel and Greenberg’s (2007) study, they use the Self-Regulated Strategy Development model (SRSD) to help students build their independence in their writing. SRSD is an observational approach to teaching students how to become effective writers. The model is organized into five stages. The first stage is “Build Background Knowledge.” Students work one-on-one with their teacher to build background knowledge about the given topic and the teacher helps by providing skills and strategies that the students might need to understand the material. In stage 2 “Discuss it”, the teacher discusses and describes the many strategies used to write different types of writing. During this stage, the teacher can then provide helpful ways to help the students remember the strategies, such as short songs or rhymes, mnemonics, and even acronyms. Stage 3, “Model it”, is when the teacher or proficient peer models the strategy as well as the types of self instruction he or she uses while writing.This allows the student to personalize the strategies taught to what works best for them. During stage 4, students memorize the strategies discussed in stage 2 and 3. To do so, they memorizes each step of the strategy along with one or more of the self instructions modeled in stage 3. The teacher then scaffolds the student’s learning as they write in the fifth stage, “Support it.” If the student needs extra help, additional strategies may be incorporated when scaffolding the students. The last step, “Independence Performance”, the students use the writing strategies learned to write their own paper individually. The teacher and student independently evaluate the strategies he or she used, as well as its effectiveness in their writing (Helsel &