Project WILLD – Writing in students with language-based learning disabilities (LLD)
Project WILLD is a development and innovation grant funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. The purpose of the project was to develop and demonstrate the promise of an intervention to support improved writing outcomes in fourth and fifth grade students with LLD. The fully developed intervention can be administered by special educators or speech language pathologists to students with LLD. Click here for more about Project WILLD.
Project Write to Learn
Project Write to Learn (PWTL) was a federally funded personnel training grant from the Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. PWTL provided an interprofessional learning experience to 40 program scholars (20 Occupational Therapy and 20 Speech Language Pathology graduate students) over five years, 2017 to 2022. The goal of PWTL was to provide program scholars interdisciplinary coursework, coordinated clinical experiences, and group projects for understanding, assessing, and treating written expression deficits in children with Specific Learning Disabilities such as Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, and other Language-based Learning Disabilities. For more information about PWTL click here.
Writing Process Performance in children with Language Learning Disabilities
This project, funded by the American Speech Language Hearing Foundation, is completed. The purpose of this research was to compare children with and without language learning disabilities on measures selected to represent the writing process. This is important because prior research is limited to writing samples collected in time limited contrived manners whereas the current study provides children extended time to write within and across days. The protocol reflects current instructional practices in writing and allows for the identification of future assessment and intervention targets in writing. The final data set included 4th and 6th grade students with and without LLD, addressing both developmental and group (TD,LLD) differences including descriptive studies on spelling and noun phrase elaboration. Publications and presentations from this work are included in the conference/presentations and publications tabs.
Literacy Abilities in Children with Hearing Impairments
This cross-sectional study describes reading and writing in a sample of students with hearing impairments who do and do not rely on acoustic input. Students with hearing impairments included those who received auditory impairment services through an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) in grades three through six. Thirty students participated in this study and were divided into two groups, those who rely on acoustic input through hearing assistive technology (HAT) and those who do not rely nor benefit from acoustic input communicating primarily through American Sign Language (ASL). The assessment battery included standardized reading, writing, and speech/language measures in addition to spoken and written language samples across genres. Presentations are available in the conference/presentation tab of this website, publications are forthcoming. This project was funded by a grant from the board of directors of Language Learning: A Journal of Research Studies in Language.
Reading, Writing, and Language Skills of College Freshman
An important consideration for success in higher education is the ability to read, write, and use language, for academic purposes. This study examined reading, oral language, and writing skills in college freshman as a benchmark for College and Career Readiness aligned with the nationwide implementation of the Common Core State Standards. See conference/poster presentation section of the ROW-Lab website for initial findings. Data collection is complete and analyses and manuscript preparation are underway.