English III writing assessments: Strategies that work for inclusion students

This dissertation explored the effectiveness of a writing workshop at a large, urban high school. A workshop was developed to improve the writing ability of special education students in English III Inclusion by homogeneously grouping students by writing ability. The teachers used specific strategies to target certain skills and improve the writing of all students involved in the workshop. The results revealed that the majority of SPED students improved their writing to the extent that they were considered competent by the Tennessee Department of Education. Learning the strategies helped the junior class post a 97.9% pass rate with an overall mean score of 4.567 on the 2010 TCAP Writing Assessment. The mean score for the SPED students was a 3.93.