Effects of Sentence Instruction and Frequency Building to a Performance Criterion on Elementary-Aged Students with Behavioral Concerns and EBD

Elementary-aged students with behavioral concerns and disabilities struggling to construct sentences stand a high likelihood for continued academic difficulty. Several studies have used sentence instruction with picture-word prompts to improve sentence level writing skills, including construction of simple sentences, syntax, capitalization, and punctuation. Research in other academic areas, such as mathematics and reading, have found students benefited from deliberate practice procedures resulting in fluency. The present study combined sentence instruction with a practice procedure and measured its impact on the writing performance of four elementary-aged students with behavioral concerns and disabilities. The study used a single case experimental design. The intervention produced gains in the frequency of simple sentences constructed and other sentence level writing skills.