Author: katie

Implementing Proven Teaching Techniques

When a study lasts nearly two years and follows almost a thousand students, educators take notice. That’s exactly what happened in 2025, when researcher Dr. Naymé Salas and her colleagues published one of the most extensive longitudinal studies ever conducted on Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD).

Their goal was simple yet ambitious: determining whether students could maintain SRSD-related writing gains over time. What they discovered was both encouraging and instructive, offering fresh insight into how explicit writing instruction shapes student growth long after a unit ends.

Let’s look at what they found in the Long-term effects of an SRSD writing intervention for elementary school children (2025) and how their results reinforce what SRSD Online has built into our long-term professional-learning model.

What the Study Showed

Dr. Salas’s team worked with second- and fourth-grade students across 13 schools in Catalonia, gathering vital feedback on the effectiveness of their interventions. Using materials adapted from Limpo & Alves (2013), they taught a planning strategy—the first of SRSD’s core writing strategies through 11 one-hour lessons focused on opinion writing.

Each session reflected key SRSD principles:

• Explicit strategy instruction that showed students how to plan before writing, organize ideas, and create structured essays.
• Guided modeling and practice that allowed students to watch the process and then try it themselves with teacher support.
• Gradual release of responsibility, giving students more control over planning with each session.

Although the intervention centered only on the planning component of SRSD (and did not assess student confidence, attitudes toward writing or sentence components like grammar or handwriting), the effects on the writing process were clear. Immediately after instruction, students’ essays were better organized and more complete, and their planning quality improved substantially, demonstrating effective writing strategies.

Even 18 months later, these students still outperformed peers who had not received the SRSD-based instruction. This highlights the importance of integrating the writing process into effective instruction, particularly in planning quality and text structure. That level of durability is rare in writing research and underscores how even one SRSD strategy, when taught explicitly, can make a long-term difference in how students approach writing.

What We Can Learn from the Study

Dr. Salas’s team also identified a significant challenge: even substantial gains begin to fade without continued support.

By the 18-month follow-up, some decline appeared, especially among younger students who no longer had opportunities to apply or revisit the planning strategy in later grades. The researchers noted several contributing factors related to the writing process:

• The intervention concluded after the first year, with no additional SRSD instruction or reinforcement.
• Teachers and administrators did not receive ongoing professional development or coaching in SRSD.
• The planning strategy was not integrated into the broader writing curriculum once the study ended.

In other words, the SRSD framework itself was highly effective, but the surrounding system did not sustain it. Rather than a shortcoming, this finding offers valuable guidance: to preserve writing gains, schools must embed SRSD within a lasting instructional ecosystem that supports teachers, connects to curriculum, and reinforces strategies across years.

Curriculum Integration: The Key to Sustainability

A key difference between controlled research settings and school-wide implementation is curriculum integration. In Dr. Salas’s study, SRSD was implemented as a discrete set of lessons, a necessary choice for scientific clarity, but not a sustainable school structure.

At SRSD Online, we’ve built our professional-learning system around this insight. We help teachers weave SRSD into their curriculum, ensuring it complements rather than competes with their adopted materials.

Educators learn to enhance literacy by:

• Map SRSD strategies such as TREE, TIDE, and C-SPACE onto existing ELA and content-area units.
• Use SRSD as the how behind their current writing lessons.
• Align each SRSD stage from Develop Background Knowledge to Independent Performance with pacing guides and assessment frameworks.

When SRSD lives inside the curriculum rather than beside it, sustainability follows naturally, enhancing the writing process for students and educators alike. This alignment is what transforms short-term intervention effects into long-term instructional habits.

What We Recommend for Long-Term Sustainability

Over the past decade, SRSD Online has developed a professional-learning model designed to address the research’s call to move beyond a single-year intervention toward a sustainable, whole-school approach.

Our framework blends high-fidelity SRSD training with the structures schools need to maintain: coaching, curriculum integration, and multi-year maintenance.

Here’s how we make it work.

Year 1: Training and Capacity Building

The first year establishes shared understanding and confidence.

• Administrators, coaches, and teachers train together, ensuring leadership and instruction are aligned.
• Each school receives a custom pacing plan—whether starting with one grade, a cluster, or a full-school rollout.
• Teachers learn to deliver SRSD lessons across multiple genres: opinion (TREE), informative (TIDE), and personal narrative (C-SPACE).
• Fidelity and data tools support reflection and progress monitoring.

By the end of Year 1, SRSD becomes part of the school’s instructional DNA. Teachers collaborate through a common language, students internalize writing strategies, and administrators can track measurable growth.

Year 2: Integration and Sustainability

With the foundation set, Year 2 deepens expertise and expands reach.

• Teachers receive advanced training and live coaching to refine modeling, feedback, and differentiation.
• SRSD extends into content-area writing in science, social studies, and other subjects, integrating the writing process to turn writing into a tool for thinking.
• Administrators and coaches craft a sustainability plan with data review, mentor development, and staff-turnover support.

Year 2 shifts schools from learning SRSD to owning it, where teachers mentor peers and students independently integrate the writing process strategies.

Years 3 and On: Maintenance and Growth

After two full years of training, SRSD Online continues partnering with schools for guided maintenance focused on refinement and reflection:

• Annual data reviews and goal-setting with leadership teams.
• Targeted refreshers for teachers and coaches.
• Ongoing fidelity checks to maintain instructional quality.
• Lesson updates and new exemplars added to each site’s lifetime library.
• Support expanding SRSD into new grade levels or subjects using mentor texts as a key resource.

These maintenance years directly answer the challenge Dr. Salas’s research illuminated, keeping writing instruction active and visible long after the initial implementation period ends.

A Study That Proves the Foundation and a Model That Builds on It

Dr. Salas’s 2025 study is a landmark in writing research. It demonstrates that even teaching one core SRSD strategy, planning, can yield long-term gains in students’ writing performance.

At the same time, her findings point to what’s next: to sustain and deepen those gains, schools need an ongoing system that supports teachers, aligns curricula, and nurtures education and SRSD across grades.

That’s precisely what SRSD Online provides:
Our two-year training ensures mastery.
Our curriculum integration ensures alignment.
And our ongoing maintenance ensures longevity.

Because when it comes to writing instruction within the writing process, short-term success isn’t enough. The real goal, shared by Dr. Salas and SRSD Online alike, is lasting transformation for students, teachers, and entire school communities.

Ready to Bring Long-Term SRSD Success to Your School?

Learn more about our two-year training and sustainability model: srsdonline.org

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Evolution of Educational Techniques

Over the past century, educators and researchers have been chasing the same elusive goal: How do we teach students to write well? Writing isn’t just a set of skills; it’s a complex act of thinking, problem-solving, and self-expression that requires a clear methodology to guide effective instruction. Yet, for much of the twentieth century, writing instruction focused narrowly on surface features like grammar, handwriting, and correctness rather than the cognitive and motivational processes that make writing meaningful.

That long arc of trial and discovery is exactly what Steve Graham and his colleagues examined in Trends in Writing Intervention Research: 1930s and Onward (2025). Their review traces the evolution of writing intervention studies across nine decades, revealing how our field has moved from mechanical drills to the deeply strategic and self-regulated approaches that define the science of writing today.

What emerges from this sweeping analysis is more than a historical account; it’s a powerful validation of how far we’ve come and where the evidence leads us next. For educators searching for what truly works in writing instruction, the story points squarely toward frameworks like Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD), a model grounded in decades of research on what helps students not only write better but also think and learn through writing.

The Early Years: When Writing Wasn’t About Writing

In the early decades of writing research, instruction was dominated by mechanical concerns. Classrooms in the 1930s through the 1960s often treated writing as a product to be corrected, not a process to be taught. Interventions focused on penmanship, spelling, and grammar drills. Students were expected to improve by practicing these isolated skills repeatedly, much like athletes refining a single motion.

This approach reflected a behaviorist view of learning. Students could master writing through imitation and reinforcement, without exploring the cognitive work behind composing text. The assumption was that good writing would naturally emerge once students could form letters, spell words, and follow grammatical conventions.

But over time, educators began to notice that despite hours of practice, students still struggled to express ideas clearly, organize their thoughts, or engage readers. The focus on correctness didn’t translate into better thinking or communication. Something fundamental was missing: instruction that engaged the mind, not just the mechanics.

The Process Revolution: From Product to Process

By the 1970s and 1980s, the field of writing instruction experienced a profound shift. Researchers began to recognize that writing wasn’t simply a matter of recording thoughts but a way of generating them. The cognitive revolution reframed writing as a process involving planning, translating, editing, and revising, all driven by purposeful thinking.

This new lens sparked a wave of studies exploring how writers plan their ideas, set goals, and monitor their progress. The work of scholars like Flower and Hayes provided a blueprint for understanding writing as problem-solving, a task that required mental strategies rather than mechanical routines.

In classrooms, this thinking evolved into what became known as “process writing,” which aimed to improve literacy through active engagement with the writing process. Teachers often encouraged students to brainstorm, draft, revise, and publish in workshop-style settings. Students were given more ownership and time to discover their voices. For the first time, writing instruction acknowledged that good writing develops through reflection and iteration.

Yet process writing, while liberating, often lacked structure. Many students, especially those who struggled academically, floundered when asked to “just write.” The freedom to explore didn’t necessarily provide the guidance they needed to plan effectively or sustain motivation. Researchers began asking: What if we could make the invisible mental processes of good writers explicit? What if we could teach struggling writers the strategies that strong writers instinctively use?

The Strategy Instruction Era: Teaching the Writer How to Think

These questions gave rise to a new generation of research in the 1980s and 1990s that would transform writing instruction forever. Instead of assuming students would “discover” how to write, researchers began teaching them how to plan, organize, and regulate their thinking through techniques such as sentence combining.

Steve Graham and Karen Harris emerged at the forefront of this movement. Through decades of research, they developed what would become the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model, a structured, flexible framework for teaching students both the strategies for writing and the self-regulatory skills to use them effectively.

The core idea was simple yet revolutionary: strong writing requires both knowledge (what to do) and control (how to manage yourself as you do it). Students learned explicit strategies like POW (Pick ideas, Organize notes, Write and say more) and TREE (Topic sentence, Reasons, Explain reasons, Ending). But they also learned how to set goals, talk themselves through challenges, and reflect on their progress.

This dual focus addressed what earlier decades had missed. Teaching writing wasn’t just about cognitive strategies but about motivation, confidence, and persistence. SRSD showed that students achieve remarkable growth when they understand why strategies work and learn to take charge of their writing.

The Self-Regulation Breakthrough: Writing as Thinking and Self-Management

SRSD didn’t just change how we teach writing; it changed how we understand writers. By combining cognitive, behavioral, and emotional components, SRSD reframed writing as a self-regulated act of problem-solving. Students weren’t passive recipients of instruction; they became active agents in their learning.

The research that followed was extraordinary. Study after study revealed that SRSD improved the quality of student writing and enhanced motivation, self-efficacy, and independence. Students learned to see themselves as capable writers, an identity shift that research consistently connects to higher achievement.

This was the breakthrough decades of fragmented interventions had been building toward: a model that treated writing as a teachable, transferable, and empowering skill.

The Twenty-First Century: Expanding What Writing Means

As the field entered the new millennium, writing research began to diversify in scope and purpose, with a growing emphasis on assessment. Studies explored how writing strategies could be applied across genres like narrative, opinion, and informative, as well as across populations from early elementary through high school and beyond.

Researchers also began to examine how writing connects to other domains: reading comprehension, critical thinking, content learning, and even emotional regulation. The line between reading and writing blurred, as evidence showed that the two processes feed each other in powerful ways. When students write about what they read, they deepen comprehension; when they read to learn how authors express ideas, they become stronger writers.

Technology further reshaped the landscape. Digital writing tools, collaborative platforms, and multimodal composition expanded what it means to “write.” Yet even in these new contexts, strategy instruction and self-regulation principles held strong. Students still needed structure, guidance, and reflection to make meaning—exactly what SRSD provides, regardless of medium.

Patterns Across Ninety Years: What the Research Reveals

The Graham et al. (2025) review offers a remarkable bird’s-eye view of the entire field. Over ninety years of intervention studies, a clear trend emerges: writing instruction has steadily moved away from isolated skill drills and toward integrated, strategic, and self-regulated approaches.

The evidence shows that interventions focused on grammar or handwriting alone rarely improve overall writing quality. By contrast, programs that explicitly teach planning, organizing, revising, and self-regulation consistently yield stronger results. These patterns hold true across ages, ability levels, and instructional settings.

In other words, the science of writing has reached consensus on what works: teach students how to think like writers, not just write like students. The SRSD framework embodies that shift more comprehensively than any model to date.

What This Means for Classrooms Today

This history carries a clear message for teachers and administrators: effective writing instruction is intentional, explicit, and deeply human. It’s not about assigning more writing, it’s about teaching students how to write well and giving them tools to sustain effort when it gets hard.

The research legacy summarized by Graham and colleagues underscores several key practices that schools should prioritize today, emphasizing the critical role of literacy in these practices:

• Teach writing strategies explicitly. Don’t assume students know how to plan or elaborate; show them, model it, and let them practice with support.
• Link writing and reading. Treat them as two sides of the same coin. Writing deepens reading comprehension and vice versa.
• Build metacognition and motivation. Teach students to set goals, use self-talk, and reflect on their growth.
• Create consistent systems across grades. When every teacher shares a common language and structure for writing, students build transferable habits of mind.
• Use evidence-based models like SRSD. Frameworks developed through decades of research ensure that instruction is engaging and effective.

The most encouraging insight from this 90-year journey is that change is possible and doesn’t take decades. Once teachers implement structured, evidence-based approaches like SRSD, student writing quality, confidence, and independence gains appear rapidly. Teachers often say they can never return to how they taught writing.

Looking Ahead: The Next Chapter in Writing Research

If history has shown us anything, it’s that writing research is never static. Graham et al. note that the next frontier lies in integrating writing instruction with technology, collaboration, and reading-to-learn models. Artificial intelligence and adaptive learning tools are already beginning to reshape how students receive feedback and plan their writing.

Yet even as tools evolve, the principles remain the same. Students will always need to understand why they write, how to organize their ideas, and how to persevere when challenges arise. Self-regulation, strategy use, and explicit instruction are the constants that define the foundation of effective writing, regardless of future innovations.

SRSD offers precisely that adaptable foundation. It’s not a script or a program; it’s a framework teachers can make their own. Whether guiding first graders through their first opinion paragraphs or helping high school students compose persuasive essays, SRSD allows educators to teach writing as both a skill and empowerment.

A Century in the Making

The story told in Trends in Writing Intervention Research: 1930s and Onward is ultimately one of progress and persistence. For ninety years, researchers have been refining our understanding of what helps students become writers. Each decade builds on the lessons of the last, gradually revealing that writing success depends not on correction or compliance but on cognition, motivation, and self-direction.

Today, educators have the advantage of standing on that century of evidence. We know what works, which includes regular assessment to measure progress and inform instruction. We have models integrating cognitive science, motivation theory, and classroom practicality. And we have proof: thousands of teachers and students worldwide who have seen that everything changes when writing instruction becomes strategic and self-regulated.

SRSD didn’t appear overnight. It represents the culmination of decades of research, collaboration, and classroom testing. But its true power lies in what it offers to the next generation of teachers and learners: a pathway to make writing not just a skill to master, but a way of thinking that transforms learning.

As we look ahead to the next century of writing research, one truth endures: effective writing instruction begins when we teach students to take charge of their own minds, one strategy at a time.

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Benefits of Structured Writing Approaches Building on Engelmann’s Legacy

In my last blog, I explored how Siegfried Engelmann’s design principles, clarity, sequencing, and evidence-based lesson design parallel the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) structure. Engelmann proved that lesson design matters. If instruction isn’t engineered with precision, students are left behind.

But Engelmann’s approach wasn’t perfect. Critics argued that, while powerful, Direct Instruction (DI) sometimes felt too rigid. Teachers reported that scripted lessons reduced their opportunity to use their professional skills and autonomy. Others worried DI’s focus on whole-class mastery left little room for differentiation. And many schools balked at the cost of consumable workbooks tied narrowly to literacy programs.

SRSD keeps Engelmann’s rigor but updates it for today’s classrooms by incorporating techniques from the Hochman Method. It adds what modern teachers and students need most: self-regulation, flexibility, and sustainability.

What Critics Said About Engelmann

Engelmann’s work was revolutionary, but no approach is beyond critique. Teachers often raised three concerns:

Too Scripted In some classrooms, DI was so tightly scripted that teachers felt like actors reading lines. One Queensland teacher described it bluntly: “I felt like a robot. I wasn’t teaching anymore; I was performing someone else’s words. “While the structure produced results, it also risked alienating professionals who value creativity and responsiveness.

Whole-Class Mastery DI tended to move entire classes forward at the same pace. That worked for many, but not all. Advanced students could feel bored, while those who struggled sometimes needed more scaffolding. Teachers craved tools to flex instruction without breaking fidelity.

Costly, Siloed Materials DI programs often came packaged with consumable student workbooks and teacher guides that had to be repurchased each year. They were also narrowly tied to literacy or numeracy, making them harder to integrate across the curriculum.

These criticisms didn’t diminish Engelmann’s impact. Still, they highlighted the need for a next-generation approach that preserved design rigor while addressing teacher autonomy, differentiation, cost, and incorporating regular feedback from both teachers and students.

How SRSD Extends Engelmann’s Principles

This is where SRSD shines. Developed by Karen Harris and Steve Graham, SRSD builds on Engelmann’s foundation while expanding it to meet the realities of modern classrooms.

Self-Regulation & Goal Setting Unlike DI, which focuses mainly on task execution, SRSD teaches students to manage themselves as writers. Students learn to set personal goals, monitor progress, and use self-talk to stay motivated. A sixth-grade student put it this way: “When I get stuck now, I tell myself to use POW and TREE. It’s like I’ve got a plan inside my head.”

Differentiation SRSD is designed for flexibility. Teachers can implement strategies with the whole class, small groups, or individual students. The model grows with students, making it far less rigid than DI.

Professional Judgment Instead of word-for-word scripts, SRSD Online lessons provide “meta scripts”, structured guidance, and think-aloud examples that teachers can adapt. As Harris & Graham argued, SRSD trusts teachers’ expertise to decide how and when to adjust the pacing or language (source).

Collaboration SRSD encourages peer-to-peer scaffolding. Students brainstorm together, share strategies, and even use their own language to co-construct essays. This collaborative aspect was largely absent in Engelmann’s DI but is critical for building classroom community and engagement.

Sustainability Instead of consumable workbooks, SRSD Online provides teachers with lifetime licenses and downloadable resources. Teachers aren’t locked into annual repurchasing cycles and can revisit materials whenever needed.

Broader Impact Perhaps most importantly, SRSD isn’t just about writing. Teaching students to plan, monitor, and revise strengthens reading comprehension and content-area learning. Students apply SRSD strategies in science reports, history analyses, and math explanations.

An Australian Lens That Translates Everywhere

The Australian teaching context makes SRSD’s extensions especially relevant.

Workload and Burnout The Grattan Institute reports that 92% of teachers feel they don’t have enough time for effective lesson preparation. Teachers spend, on average, six hours each week creating or sourcing materials, and a quarter spend more than ten. This workload contributes directly to burnout and turnover.

SRSD reduces this burden. Instead of cobbling lessons together, teachers can access fully developed routines, then spend their energy on delivery and adaptation.

Curriculum Integration
SRSD aligns seamlessly with the priorities of the Australian Curriculum (ACARA). It supports General Capabilities such as literacy, critical and creative thinking, and personal and social capability. It also works well with EAL/D frameworks, giving teachers clear scaffolds for students learning English.

In the United States, SRSD integrates with Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts by directly addressing writing, reading, and language anchor standards. Teachers have successfully used SRSD strategies like TREE and TIDE within widely adopted programs, and the framework is also recognized in the What Works Clearinghouse as an evidence-based practice.

In Canada, SRSD dovetails with provincial priorities such as Ontario’s Language Curriculum and the literacy outcomes measured by the EQAO assessments. Because SRSD emphasizes explicit strategy instruction and self-regulation, it supports the foundational writing expectations and the broader cross-curricular competencies emphasized in Canadian classrooms, including critical thinking and communication skills.

NAPLAN Readiness Every Australian teacher knows the pressure of NAPLAN writing tasks. With SRSD, students don’t just practice random prompts; they learn structured planning strategies like TREE and TIDE that they can apply under timed conditions. One Sydney student explained after an SRSD lesson: “Before, I’d stare at the page. Now, I just start with POW and I know what to do next.”

Why SRSD Is the 2025 Gold Standard

In the 1970s–1990s, Engelmann’s DI was rightly considered the gold standard for explicit instruction. But education has evolved.

Today, SRSD is the gold standard for writing instruction:

• Evidence-Based: Recognized by the What Works Clearinghouse as a proven intervention.
• Meta-Analytic Support: Decades of meta-analyses show large effects on writing quality, motivation, and self-regulation.
• Global Reach: SRSD is now implemented in over 20 countries, including Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Canada.

Where Engelmann engineered lessons for consistency, SRSD modernizes the model, blending explicit instruction with self-regulation, collaboration, and adaptability.

Conclusion

SRSD doesn’t discard Engelmann’s legacy; it builds on it. It keeps the clarity, sequencing, and evidence-based approach that made DI effective, while addressing the realities of modern classrooms. The call is simple: stop DIY’ing writing lessons. Explore SRSD Online, join the evidence-based writing movement, and bring explicit, adaptive, and sustainable instruction to your classroom.

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Advice from Down Under: The Sunday Night Struggle in Australia That Teachers Experience in All Countries

It’s Sunday night in Melbourne. The weekend is nearly over, but one Year 5 teacher sits at her kitchen table surrounded by papers, colored pens, and a glowing laptop. The television hums in the background, though she isn’t watching, as she wonders how to effectively engage her class in the upcoming writing workshop. Her browser has half a dozen tabs open: a Pinterest board of writing prompts, a Teachers Pay Teachers worksheet on persuasive essays, a tutorial on lesson planning, and a NAPLAN practice booklet she downloaded from a colleague, all of which require extensive reading.

She sighs and mutters: “I just need something that will work tomorrow. Why is teaching writing always this hard to plan?”

This scene isn’t unusual. Teachers in every country know it well. Writing is high-stakes, especially in Australia, where students face the NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy). NAPLAN is a national standardized test given to students in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9, designed to measure core reading, writing, spelling, grammar, and math skills.

For Australian teachers, the writing component of NAPLAN is particularly stressful. Students are asked to produce a whole piece of writing, often persuasive or narrative, within a strict time limit. The results are reported nationally, compared across states, and scrutinized by parents and policymakers. In other words, teachers feel the weight of those essays.

If you’re reading from outside Australia, think of NAPLAN as Australia’s equivalent to the U.S. state assessments aligned to the Common Core (like the Smarter Balanced or PARCC tests), or to Canada’s provincial assessments, such as Ontario’s EQAO writing assessment. All of these are large-scale measures where writing is tested for accuracy, structure, clarity, and adherence to genre expectations.

The challenge is the same across countries: teachers know writing matters, but too often they lack high-quality, ready-to-use instructional resources. And so, Sunday night turns into another round of lesson cobbling, a patchwork of worksheets, websites, and wishful thinking.

The result? Burnout for teachers and inconsistent instruction for students.

What Improvising Taught Us, and How SRSD Brings It to Writing Instruction

Education writer Robert Pondiscio captured this dilemma in his essay Three Good Reasons Teachers Shouldn’t DIY Their Lessons. He argues that designing curriculum is a specialist task, not something individual teachers should do alone, after hours, in isolation.

This isn’t a new idea. Decades ago, Siegfried Engelmann made the same case. Through Direct Instruction (DI) and the groundbreaking Project Follow Through, Engelmann demonstrated that effective teaching depends on engineered, tested, and refined lessons.

Today, Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) takes Engelmann’s design logic and applies it directly to writing. It gives teachers structured, evidence-based routines so writing is no longer guesswork, for them or their students.

Engelmann’s Design Principles

Engelmann wasn’t a philosopher dreaming up theories; he was a designer and problem-solver. He treated teaching the way an engineer treats building a bridge: with precision, sequencing, and testing.

Here are the principles he lived by:

Faultless Communication: Engelmann believed that if students didn’t learn something, it wasn’t their fault; it was the design of the lesson, emphasizing the importance of learning through faultless communication. Every instruction had to be clear, direct, and unambiguous.

Carefully Sequenced Lessons: Each skill needed to build logically on the last. Engelmann designed programs like staircases: no skipped steps, no leaps too wide.

Repetition and Mastery: Exposure wasn’t enough. Students had to practice until a skill became fluent. As Engelmann put it, “If they don’t remember it, they haven’t learned it.”

Explicit Materials for Teachers and Students: Teachers and children couldn’t improvise. Engelmann provided scripts, examples, and guided responses for various activities. Students worked through scaffolded tasks that gradually faded support.

Evidence Over Ideology: The real clincher was Project Follow Through. In the largest education study ever conducted, DI consistently outperformed other approaches, especially for disadvantaged learners.

The lesson is timeless: teaching works best when instruction is intentionally designed, not patched together.

Why Teachers Shouldn’t DIY Writing Lessons

So why are teachers still expected to DIY writing lessons in 2025?

Lack of Training: Many Australian teachers report little formal preparation in writing pedagogy. A Year 6 teacher in Sydney told us: “I know how to mark essays, but no one ever trained me in the skills needed to teach students to actually write them.”

Overloaded Workloads: The Grattan Institute found that 90% of teachers don’t have enough prep time, with many spending six to ten hours each week just creating materials. Another NSW workload audit revealed that teachers are buried under administrative work, leaving less planning time.

High-Stakes Assessments: With NAPLAN writing and testing student ability nationwide, pressure is immense. One Brisbane teacher said, “Parents ask me in March how I’m preparing their child for NAPLAN. But with what materials? I end up making my own, and I’m never sure it’s enough.”

Complexity of Writing: Writing isn’t just about spelling or grammar. It involves planning, organizing ideas, sustaining motivation, revising drafts, and applying genre knowledge. Expecting teachers to improvise this, much like some parents might in a homeschool setting, is like asking surgeons to invent their own procedures for each operation.

When you add it all up, the DIY approach is inefficient and inequitable. Teachers lose time and energy, and students lose access to consistent, evidence-based instruction.

How SRSD Parallels Engelmann

This is where SRSD comes in. Developed by Karen Harris and Steve Graham, SRSD mirrors Engelmann’s design logic but applies it specifically to writing.

Explicitness: Like Engelmann’s DI, SRSD emphasizes explicit instruction with gradual release. Teachers model strategies through think-alouds and self-talk before asking students to try them. This echoes Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction.

Packaged Materials: SRSD Online provides teacher scripts, lesson plans, and student-friendly materials, helping teachers craft more effective writing lessons. Teachers aren’t left reinventing the wheel.

Repetition and Mastery: Mnemonics like TREE (opinion), TIDE (informative), and C-SPACE (narrative) are rehearsed until fluent.

Positive and Negative Examples: Teachers share model essays and weak drafts, analyzing what’s present and missing, just as Engelmann used examples and non-examples.

Evidence-Based: With more than 40 years of research and multiple meta-analyses, SRSD consistently shows large positive effects on writing quality, motivation, and self-efficacy.

In short, SRSD is to writing what Engelmann’s DI was to reading and math: engineered, explicit, and effective.

Hypothetical Case Example 

Let’s compare two teachers.

Teacher A: The DIY Approach 

Every week, Teacher A searches online for new writing tasks. She prints off worksheets, tries to weave in NAPLAN-style prompts, and spends Sunday night writing her own “lesson outline.” In class, she feels uncertain. Students write, but their essays vary widely in quality.

At lunch with colleagues, she sighs: “I wish I had a program I could rely on. I’m tired of guessing.”

Teacher B: The SRSD Approach 

Teacher B logs into SRSD Online. She opens the Year 5 opinion writing sequence, which includes a scripted think-aloud, a student handout with the TREE mnemonic, and a model essay to enhance writing skills. On Monday morning, she teaches confidently.

She tells her students, “Writers don’t just start writing; they plan. Watch me use TREE: Topic sentence, Reasons, Explanations, Ending.” Students repeat the mnemonic, practice it orally, and then apply it to their own essays.

By the end of the term, she reflects: “I’m not working harder than before. But my students are writing better. And I’m not exhausted every Sunday night.”

The difference isn’t effort. Its design.

Conclusion

Engelmann taught us that effective instruction is engineered, not improvised. Whether in traditional schools or homeschool settings, teachers shouldn’t be left to design their own writing class lessons in isolation. SRSD takes Engelmann’s philosophy and applies it to writing, delivering structured, evidence-based routines that reduce workload, increase consistency, and lift student achievement.

But SRSD doesn’t stop there. In the next blog, we’ll explore how SRSD extends and modernizes Engelmann’s vision, giving teachers autonomy, flexibility, and sustainability for the realities of 2025 classrooms.

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In our first blog, we broke down what High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM) are and why they matter to teachers in the United States and Canada. We explained how HQIM sets a quality bar for curriculum and helps schools avoid piecing together instructional materials that may not align with standards or support all students.

But many teachers asked us a follow-up question:

Is SRSD HQIM?

Since SRSD (Self-Regulated Strategy Development) is not a core curriculum, it won’t appear on an HQIM adoption list. But here’s the critical part: SRSD meets the same level of rigor as HQIM and, more importantly, brings HQIM to life in classrooms.

This blog explores how SRSD aligns with HQIM expectations, how it strengthens provincial and state curriculum systems, and why it should be considered one of the strongest examples of Curriculum-Based Professional Learning (CBPL).

What Is Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD)?

At its core, SRSD is an evidence-based instructional framework designed to help students become effective, independent writers. It was created by researchers Karen Harris and Steve Graham and has been tested for more than 40 years across grade levels, student populations, and instructional settings.

SRSD guides teachers through six clear stages of instruction:

1. Develop background knowledge: Students build an understanding of the genre and the strategies they will use.
2. Discuss it: Teachers and students discuss why the strategy matters and when to use it.
3. Model it: Teachers demonstrate with think-alouds so students can “see” the invisible steps of planning, drafting, and revising.
4. Memorize it: Students internalize the strategy and key prompts.
5. Support it: Students practice with scaffolds, feedback, and teacher guidance.
6. Independent performance: Students apply strategies on their own with increasing independence.

This process helps students master genre-specific strategies such as TREE (Topic sentence, Reasons, Explanations, Ending) for opinion/argument writing and TIDE (Topic, Important information, Details, Ending) for informative writing.

SRSD is more than a writing method. It’s about teaching students how to regulate their learning, set goals, monitor progress, and reflect on outcomes. Think of it as a self-regulation plus strategy instruction model.

The What Works Clearinghouse recognizes SRSD as an evidence-based practice with positive effects on writing quality, especially for students with disabilities. Meta-analyses by Graham & Perin (2007), Harris & Graham (2009), and Graham et al. (2012) show moderate to large effect sizes, making SRSD one of the most effective writing interventions studied in education.

Why HQIM Alone Isn’t Enough

High-quality instructional materials (HQIM) are essential. They give schools content that is aligned, coherent, and equitable. Adopting strong materials is the first step toward consistent, standards-based instruction.

But here’s the catch: materials alone don’t change outcomes.

The Research Is Clear

Large-scale studies confirm this. A Harvard Center for Education Policy Research review concluded that “current levels of curriculum usage and professional development, textbook choice alone does not seem to improve student achievement” (CEPR, Harvard). In other words, swapping one set of materials for another doesn’t automatically lead to better results if nothing else changes.

The National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) put it more bluntly:

“High-quality curriculum without teacher supports is not going to have a positive impact. Availability isn’t usage, and usage ‘in some fashion’ isn’t going to move the needle on student outcomes.” (NIET)

Similarly, a research synthesis on instructional materials found that their potential is often “underutilized” in classrooms unless paired with role-specific professional learning and coaching directly tied to the curriculum (Instructional Materials Research Synthesis).

Why Teachers Matter Most

The difference is clear: teachers are the deciding factor. Even the best curriculum can fall flat in practice without strong instructional routines. Teachers need opportunities to learn how to bring materials to life, to adapt lessons for their students, and to receive feedback and coaching along the way.

That’s why states like Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Tennessee, leaders in the HQIM movement, don’t stop at curriculum adoption. They pair HQIM with professional learning that is directly tied to those materials. Teachers don’t just get the “what”; they get the “how.”

The SRSD Advantage

This is precisely the gap SRSD fills. SRSD is not a replacement for HQIM. Instead, it provides the instructional routines and strategies that make materials effective. When teachers use SRSD, they:

• Model writing strategies explicitly.
• Guide students through planning, drafting, and revising.
• Teach self-regulation so students stay motivated and persistent.

The result? Students engage deeply with the curriculum rather than skimming its surface. Teachers don’t just deliver materials; they empower writers.

SRSD as Curriculum-Based Professional Learning (CBPL)

One of the most critical insights from HQIM research is this:

A strong curriculum is necessary, but not sufficient.

Teachers need professional learning that demonstrates how to implement those materials with fidelity. That’s what educators now call Curriculum-Based Professional Learning (CBPL).

CBPL is not a generic workshop. It is:

• Curriculum-tied: Focused on the actual instructional materials teachers will use.
• Job-embedded: Happening in classrooms, during planning, and in coaching cycles.
• Sustained: Ongoing, not a one-and-done session.
• Collaborative: Teachers working together, sharing strategies, and reflecting.

The Kentucky Department of Education defines it this way:

“Curriculum-based professional learning (CBPL) supports educators as they implement the local curriculum using high-quality instructional resources (HQIRs)… and focuses on how to teach a specific content area or grade level using the instructional resource(s) teachers will then use with their students.” (KDE CBPL Guidance)

Ohio’s Department of Education adds that CBPL is essential to move from adopting high-quality materials to real student learning (Ohio CBPL Guidance).

SRSD is one of the strongest examples of CBPL because it:

• Provides evidence-based strategies that slot directly into curriculum units.
• Gives teachers clear, replicable routines that coaches and leaders can observe and support.
• It has an extensive research base  shows positive effects for all students, including multilingual learners and students with disabilities.
• Encourages collaboration and reflection, as teachers plan, model, and refine strategies together.

Rivet Education’s Professional Learning Partner Guide (PLPG) is the best-known national directory for CBPL providers. SRSD fits squarely within the vision of what Rivet calls for: high-quality professional learning that helps teachers implement HQIM with fidelity.

How SRSD Meets HQIM Criteria in the Classroom

In our first blog on HQIM, I explained how reviews from EdReports and state panels like Massachusetts CURATE evaluate curriculum for alignment, usability, assessment, and equity.

This blog is different: instead of reviewing HQIM criteria, we’ll show you how SRSD brings those criteria to life in instruction.

• Alignment & Coherence: HQIM asks whether materials align with standards and build logically across grades. SRSD provides strategies (like TREE and TIDE) that map directly onto writing standards and create vertical coherence across grade levels. Students use the same strategy language year after year, building fluency.
• Usability & Teacher Supports: HQIM reviewers look for lesson-level clarity. SRSD gives teachers a six-stage “instructional spine” that is observable, repeatable, and coachable. This usability ensures teachers know what to teach and how to prepare it.
• Assessment & Monitoring: HQIM emphasizes formative assessment. SRSD embeds assessment into instruction through goal-setting, self-monitoring, rubrics, and reflection. Teachers see learning as it happens.
• Equity & Access: HQIM requires inclusivity for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. SRSD research shows it works especially well for these students by making invisible thought processes visible through modeling and scaffolding.

In other words, if you read an HQIM rubric as a checklist for classroom practice, SRSD checks every box.

How SRSD Strengthens Provincial Curriculum Systems in Canada

Canada doesn’t have a national HQIM process. Each province maintains its own list of authorized or recommended instructional materials. In our first blog, I detailed how those systems work.

The key point is simple here: SRSD strengthens provincial curriculum systems by ensuring that approved materials lead to real learning gains.

• Ontario (Trillium List): SRSD routines integrate with Trillium-approved textbooks, giving teachers the instructional strategies to make those texts effective.
• Alberta (Authorized Learning Resources): The ALR database provides approved programs. SRSD ensures teachers implement those programs consistently and effectively.
• British Columbia (Focused Education Resources): Focused ED emphasizes inclusivity and cultural responsiveness. SRSD supports this by promoting student voice, self-regulation, and metacognitive reflection.
• Saskatchewan: Ministry-recommended resources set the “what.” SRSD provides the “how.”
• Nova Scotia (NSSBB Authorized Resources): SRSD is the instructional engine behind provincially approved content.
• Québec (BAMD List): While SRSD is not an official didactic material on the BAMD list, it aligns with its emphasis on effectiveness, inclusion, and teacher support.

Across provinces, the story is the same: curriculum lists determine what resources are available. SRSD ensures students benefit from them.

The Classroom Test: Is SRSD HQIM?

Strictly speaking, SRSD is not HQIM because it isn’t a full curriculum. But the answer is clear if you apply HQIM’s standards for daily instruction. SRSD is a “yes” to all of these:

• Is SRSD aligned to standards and curriculum?
• Does it provide usable teacher supports?
• Does it embed assessment and reflection?
• Does it support equity for diverse learners?
• Does research back it?

By every meaningful measure, SRSD meets HQIM’s expectations and adds the essential element of teaching that HQIM frameworks often leave out.

The Big Picture

HQIM matters because it ensures schools adopt aligned, high-quality instructional materials. But implementation matters just as much. Without strong strategies, students may never experience the full benefit of those materials.

SRSD fills that gap. It is an evidence-based instructional framework that provides students with strategies, routines, and self-regulation practices to thrive. It ensures that the curriculum isn’t just delivered, it’s learned.

So while you won’t see SRSD on an official HQIM adoption list, it passes the classroom test with flying colors. Teachers and leaders who pair HQIM with SRSD get the best of both worlds:

• High-quality materials that set the foundation.
• Evidence-based instruction that makes those materials work for all students.

The conclusion is simple: SRSD is not HQIM on paper, but it embodies everything HQIM is designed to achieve in practice.

Sources for Further Reading

• EdReports HQIM Reviews
• Massachusetts CURATE
• Rivet Education: CBPL Framework
• Alberta Authorized Learning Resources
• Focused Education Resources (BC)
• Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing Next. Carnegie Corporation.
• Harris, K. R., & Graham, S. (2009). Self-Regulated Strategy Development in Writing: An Overview.
• Graham, S., McKeown, D., Kiuhara, S., & Harris, K. (2012). Meta-analysis of writing instruction for students in elementary grades.

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Enhancing Student Engagement Through Superior Educational Content

If you’ve been in a school meeting lately, you’ve probably heard the term High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM). At first, it may sound like another piece of education jargon. But HQIM isn’t just a passing trend. It represents a shift in how schools in the United States and Canada think about curriculum, equity, and student success.

This blog will explain what HQIM means, how it works in the U.S. and Canada, and, most importantly, why it matters to educators in everyday classrooms. And, yes, SRSD is HQIM! I will talk all about that in our next blog.

Why HQIM Became a Priority

For decades, many teachers worked with a mix of materials: district-provided textbooks, their own lesson banks, and educational resources pulled from the internet. Some of those materials were excellent. Others were misaligned, inconsistent, or left gaps in instruction.

National studies revealed just how uneven this landscape was. Research from RAND found that teachers often rely on self-created lessons or websites like Teachers Pay Teachers, where quality and alignment vary widely. Meanwhile, state test scores and international benchmarks like PISA continued to show significant inequities in student learning outcomes.

Policymakers, researchers, and school leaders asked: What if we could guarantee every classroom access to strong, standards-aligned materials, regardless of zip code?

That question led to the rise of HQIM.

What Does HQIM Actually Mean?

The simplest way to define HQIM is: instructional materials that meet a high bar for alignment, usability, and equity.

Let’s break those words down:

• Aligned: HQIM connects directly to state or provincial standards. Teachers don’t have to guess if the lesson covers required skills.
• Coherent: Lessons build logically over time, helping students make connections and deepen understanding.
• Usable: Materials provide clear guidance so teachers can focus on teaching, not rewriting lessons.
• Equitable: HQIM includes supports and scaffolds so that multilingual learners, students with disabilities, and struggling readers can access the content.

In short, HQIM ensures that the “what” of teaching, the texts, tasks, and units we use, is as strong as possible.

HQIM in the United States

In the U.S., HQIM is closely tied to independent review organizations and state processes. The goal is to remove some of the guesswork from adoption decisions.

EdReports

EdReports is perhaps the best-known organization in this space. It publishes free K–12 ELA, math, and science curricula reviews. Expert reviewers, often classroom teachers, examine programs for alignment to college and career-ready standards, usability, and quality of instruction.

Districts can see at a glance whether a program meets expectations, partially meets expectations, or does not meet expectations. This transparency helps districts move beyond glossy marketing materials from publishers.

State-level Systems

Some states go further by running their own HQIM processes.

• Louisiana was an early leader, creating its own review rubric and encouraging districts to adopt only “Tier 1” materials.
• Massachusetts launched CURATE, where panels of teachers review programs and publish short, easy-to-use reports.
• Other states, like Texas and Tennessee, have also adopted vetting systems to steer schools toward high-quality curricula.

The trend is clear: more states are pressuring districts to adopt only programs with high-quality instructional materials and strong ratings through improved instructional design.

HQIM in Canada

Canada takes a different approach because education is a provincial responsibility. There is no national EdReports-style system. Instead, each province (and sometimes individual districts) handles resource approval.

Here are a few examples:

• Ontario: The Trillium List is the province’s official list of approved textbooks. Schools are expected to choose from this list for core subjects.
• Alberta: Schools use the Authorized Learning Resources database to find provincially approved resources.
• British Columbia: Approval is decentralized. Districts can choose resources, often using Focused Education Resources tools, which also evaluate materials for social considerations like cultural representation and inclusivity.
• Saskatchewan: The Ministry of Education publishes recommended or core resource lists aligned to the provincial curriculum.
• Nova Scotia: Teachers access the Nova Scotia School Book Bureau for authorized resources.
• Québec: The BAMD list is the official repository of approved didactic materials; schools must choose from it.

The systems look different, but the goals echo the U.S.: give teachers access to vetted, curriculum-aligned, and inclusive resources.

Why HQIM Matters for Teachers

It’s easy to think of HQIM as something only administrators worry about. But the reality is that the choice of materials impacts your daily teaching life. Here’s how:

1. HQIM Saves Time

Teachers often spend hours searching online for lessons. HQIM reduces this burden by providing ready-to-use lessons and teacher guides. Instead of reinventing the wheel, you can spend your prep time thinking about how to adapt materials for your students.

2. HQIM Builds Consistency across Classrooms

When everyone in a grade level or district uses the same strong materials, students benefit from a more consistent experience. This consistency matters when students move schools or when teachers collaborate across classrooms.

3. HQIM Supports Diverse Learners

Strong materials include scaffolds, visual supports, language routines, and multiple entry points. This ensures that multilingual learners, students with disabilities, and students at different readiness levels can all participate meaningfully.

4. HQIM Lets You Focus on the “How” of Teaching

Instead of worrying if the curriculum is aligned, you can put your energy into the strategies, routines, and relationships that bring learning to life.

Challenges and Criticisms

Of course, HQIM isn’t a magic wand. Teachers and leaders have raised some critical challenges:

• Implementation Takes Time: Even the best materials need strong professional learning for teachers. Without training, HQIM can feel overwhelming.
• Cost: High-quality programs often have a high price tag, limiting access in underfunded districts.
• Local Fit: Sometimes HQIM materials don’t match a community’s context or students’ cultural backgrounds. Teachers may need to adapt lessons to make them relevant.
• Over-Reliance on Programs: HQIM is powerful but not a replacement for teacher expertise. Materials are tools; teachers are the ones who make them work.

Recognizing these challenges helps schools avoid treating HQIM as a checklist item and instead focus on implementation that supports teachers and students.

Key Differences Between the U.S. and Canada

To recap, here’s how HQIM differs across the two countries:

• United States: HQIM is tied to large-scale review systems like EdReports and state-level processes like CURATE. Many states now encourage or require districts to adopt only “green-rated” materials.
• Canada: Each province manages its own system. While Ontario, Alberta, Québec, and others maintain official lists, British Columbia and some smaller provinces give districts more flexibility.

For teachers, the practical experience is similar: strong HQIM helps ensure access to aligned, usable, and inclusive resources.

What Teachers Can Do

Even though HQIM adoption often happens at the district or provincial level, teachers can play an active role. Here are a few ways:

• Ask Questions During Adoption: Does the curriculum align with standards? Does it include support for multilingual learners and students with disabilities?
• Advocate for Professional Learning: HQIM works best when paired with training. Ask your leaders what support will be provided.
• Adapt Thoughtfully: Strong materials are a foundation, but your students’ needs and effective pedagogy will always guide your choices. Use HQIM as a base and adapt where necessary.
• Collaborate Across Classrooms: Consistency is one of HQIM’s biggest strengths. Work with colleagues to ensure students are coherently experiencing strategies and routines.

The Bottom Line

HQIM is not just another buzzword. It’s a serious effort to ensure that what we teach students every day is rigorous, aligned, and inclusive.

In the U.S., this means using systems like EdReports and state adoption processes. In Canada, it means following provincial approval lists and resources.

But remember: materials alone don’t guarantee learning. The magic happens when strong materials meet strong teaching. Teachers bring HQIM to life through modeling, discussion, scaffolding, and support for diverse learners.

In other words: HQIM matters—but so do you.

Sources for Further Reading

• EdReports HQIM Reviews
• Massachusetts CURATE
• RAND American Teacher Panel
• Ontario Trillium List
• Alberta Authorized Learning Resources
• Focused Education Resources (BC)
• Nova Scotia School Book Bureau

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When we think about improving student writing, the research is clear: it’s not enough for teachers to attend one-day workshops or hear about “best practices.” What really moves the needle is professional development (PD) that is practice-based: PBPD that helps teachers learn, try out, reflect on, and embed instructional practices in their own classrooms, with support over time. This kind of PD aligns closely with the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model. In fact, a randomized controlled study by Harris et al. (2012) shows how practice-based professional development (PBPD) tied to SRSD can produce strong improvements in student writing (Harris et al., 2012).

In this blog, I’ll define practice-based Professional Development (PBPD), summarize what we learn from Harris et al. (2012) and other research on effective PD, then offer practical suggestions for how middle school teachers (especially those teaching grades 6–8) can use PBPD to improve writing outcomes in their classrooms.

What Is Practice-Based Professional Development?

Practice-based professional development means PD that is not just about theory or strategy in the abstract, but that is tied tightly to teachers’ actual classroom work. Key features include:

• Active learning: Teachers engage in learning by doing—modeling, rehearsing, trying out new strategies, analyzing student work, etc.
• Classroom-embedded: The PD involves materials, genres, or tasks teachers already use (or will use) with their students.
• Ongoing support and feedback: Rather than a “one and done” session, teachers receive help over time through coaching, peer observation, feedback, and reflection opportunities (Desimone, 2009).
• Tailoring to student needs: Teachers examine their students’ writing, strengths, and weaknesses and adjust instruction accordingly.
• Collaborative learning: Teachers work together, grade teams, cross-grade, or in partnership with universities, to share practices, observe each other, provide feedback, and problem solve (Borko, 2004).

Practice-based PD differs from generic workshops in that it is more sustained and contextual and aims for fidelity in implementation and relevance to student outcomes.

What We Learn from Harris et al. (2012): PBPD + SRSD in Elementary Grades

Harris and colleagues’ 2012 study, Practice-Based Professional Development for Self-Regulated Strategies Development in Writing: A Randomized Controlled Study, provides strong evidence of how PBPD can work. Here are the main lessons:

1. Setting
   • The study involved 20 teachers (grades 2 and 3) in three rural elementary schools. Teachers were randomly assigned to use SRSD in either story writing or opinion essay writing.
   • The PD was tied to a broader three-tiered prevention model, combining academic, behavioral, and social supports.
2. What the PD looked like
   • Intensive initial PD: about 12–14 hours in small teams, using materials they’d actually use with students; teachers practiced lessons, observed models, etc.
   • Support after training: observations in about one out of every three lessons, feedback, and help with problem-solving. Teachers used checklists, shared exemplar student work, and adapted lessons to student needs.
3. What happened to students
   • Students in SRSD (PBPD) classrooms showed significant gains in writing quality, inclusion of genre elements (story or opinion), and transitions (for opinion essays).
   • Teachers implemented with high fidelity, and teachers and students viewed the instruction as socially valid (they believed it mattered and was acceptable).
4. Challenges and caveats
   • Time constraints limited the number of sessions (max 24 class sessions), which may have limited growth on some measures.
   • Story writing was more complex for young students; opinion essays showed clearer gains.
   • The study did not include very intensive coaching beyond observations, so the impact of extended coaching remains an open question.

(Harris et al., 2012)

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Other Research on Effective PD / PBPD

To place the Harris et al. study in a broader context, here are other recent, credible studies and reviews that tell us what makes PD effective, particularly for writing and student growth.

1. These features overlap strongly with what Harris et al. did in their PBPD in SRSD:
   • Content focused (specific subject matter)
   • Active learning
   • Collaboration among teachers
   • Models of effective practice
   • Coaching or expert support
   • Feedback and reflection
   • Sustained duration over time (Learning Policy Institute, 2017)
2. Sims, Fletcher-Wood, & O’Mara-Eves (2022): This meta-analysis of 104 randomized controlled trials found that PD programs are most effective when they combine “causally active components” that support insight, goal setting, technique, and practice (UCL CEPEO Report).
3. Meta-analyses and reviews:
   • A meta-analysis of STEM PD found that programs with more than ~80 hours of training yield larger impacts on pedagogy and student outcomes (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017).
   • Another review (Ventista, 2023) found that continuous PD that includes training, coaching, and collaboration improves student learning.
4. Characteristics & obstacles:
   • PD fails when disconnected from teachers’ daily work, practice isn’t built in, or follow-up is absent (Learning Forward).
   • Teachers need time, resources, and support for implementation, or PD risks burnout and low fidelity.

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Practice-Based Coaching (PBC): A Model for Sustained Teacher Growth

Another model closely tied to practice-based professional development is Practice-Based Coaching (PBC). PBC is a structured approach that supports teachers in applying evidence-based practices with fidelity through ongoing, job-embedded learning cycles. Each cycle includes three components: setting shared goals and creating an action plan, focused observation of teaching practices, and collaborative reflection with feedback. Unlike traditional PD workshops that end once training is over, PBC provides continuous support in the classroom, ensuring that teachers receive feedback and can refine their practice in real time (Office of Head Start, 2020).

In many ways, PBC can serve as the engine that keeps PBPD moving forward. Shared goal-setting and observation cycles help teachers stay accountable, while reflection and feedback encourage growth and problem-solving. Research from the Office of Head Start and others shows that PBC strengthens teacher implementation and positively impacts student outcomes when applied consistently. For schools looking to integrate SRSD or other writing frameworks, embedding PBC into PBPD ensures that teachers learn strategies and sustain them with confidence and fidelity over time.

Applying PBPD in Middle School Writing: Strategies & Suggestions

Given what the research shows, here are practical tips for middle school (grades 6–8) teachers or instructional leaders looking to implement PBPD, especially to improve writing outcomes:

1. Diagnose Teachers’ and Students’ Needs: Collect baseline writing samples and analyze areas of strength/weakness. Align PD goals to real student needs (Learning Policy Institute, 2017).
2. Select PD Content: Focus on genres and self-regulation strategies (e.g., SRSD).
3. Plan PD with Active Learning & Modeling: Use authentic materials and exemplars.
4. Provide Ongoing Coaching / Observation / Feedback: Coaching cycles are essential (Sims et al., 2022).
5. Encourage Teacher Collaboration – Build collective expertise through grade teams.
6. Use Frequent Reflection & Adjustment – Analyze student work as evidence of impact.
7. Sustain PD – Duration, Follow-through, Scaling – Effective PD requires time and institutional support (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017).

How PBPD Aligns with SRSD (for Middle School Writing)

• Recursion of SRSD stages as PD itself – Teachers mirror the same learn → observe → model → support → independent practice cycle.
• Genre focus – Argumentative, explanatory, and narrative genres can be emphasized through PBPD.
• Self-regulation for teachers and students – Goal-setting, monitoring, and reflection benefit both.
• Social validity & teacher beliefs – Teachers must believe in the value and feasibility of the strategies (Harris et al., 2012).

Key Metrics to Know It’s Working

• Teacher implementation fidelity
• Teacher attitudes and beliefs about PD
• Student writing quality, coherence, and use of strategies
• Student confidence and ownership in writing
• Sustainability over time

Why This Matters: Impacts on Students & Equity

PBPD goes beyond skills training. Research suggests it:

• Improves student agency and ownership through self-regulation strategies.
• Helps close achievement gaps, especially for struggling students or multilingual learners (Harris et al., 2012).
• Builds teacher efficacy, confidence, and retention (Learning Forward).
• Promotes long-term skill transfer across writing and learning contexts.

References

• Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain. Educational Researcher, 33(8), 3–15. Link
• Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M. E., & Gardner, M. (2017). Effective Teacher Professional Development. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute. Link
• Desimone, L. M. (2009). Improving impact studies of teachers’ professional development: Toward better conceptualizations and measures. Educational Researcher, 38(3), 181–199. Link
• Harris, K. R., Lane, K. L., Graham, S., Brindle, M., Sandmel, K., Driscoll, S., & Schatschneider, C. (2012). Practice-Based Professional Development for Self-Regulated Strategies Development in Writing: A Randomized Controlled Study. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(2), 103–119. 
• Learning Forward. (n.d.). Standards for Professional Learning. Link
• Office of Head Start. (2020). Practice-Based Coaching (PBC). Link
• Sims, S., Fletcher-Wood, H., & O’Mara-Eves, A. (2022). Effective Teacher Professional Development: New Theory and a Meta-Analytic Test. UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO). Link
• Ventista, O. (2023). What makes teacher professional development effective? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Teaching and Teacher Education, 122, 103951. 

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What Happens When Teachers Learn SRSD Online? Real Results from Middle School Classrooms

You know the challenge if you teach writing in grades 6–8. Standards keep rising, time feels short, and many students struggle with argumentative writing. Planning, organizing, and supporting a claim with evidence often trips them up. Too often, it feels like you’re pulling strategies from different programs and hoping something sticks while also trying to keep students motivated.

The good news: research shows that Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) can make a real difference. A recent peer-reviewed study found that teaching and student writing improve when teachers learn SRSD through online, practice-based professional development (PBPD) with coaching. The approach works in real schools with real constraints, and it helps students write stronger argumentative essays with clear structure, claims, evidence, and counterarguments.

This blog unpacks the study in teacher-friendly terms. You’ll see why SRSD works in middle schools, what online PD with coaching looks like, and how you can use these strategies to support your students.

The Study in Plain Language

Study: Ray, Mason, Connor, & Williams (2024), Education Sciences
Focus: Can online PBPD + coaching help teachers implement SRSD for argumentative writing? Do students’ essays improve?
Who: 5 middle school teachers across Washington, Kentucky, and New York; 55 students with disabilities or below-proficient writing skills
How: Teachers completed 14 asynchronous modules, joined two live PBPD sessions, and received ongoing coaching. They taught SRSD strategies for argumentative essays, including the general strategy POW (Pull apart the prompt, Organize notes, Write and say more) and the genre strategy HIT SONGS³.
What was measured: Teacher fidelity, quality of instruction, student planning, essay length, essay quality, inclusion of genre elements, transitions, and student confidence.

Headline findings:

• Teachers implemented SRSD with high fidelity and quality.
• Students showed significant gains in planning, length, overall quality, and inclusion of argumentative elements.
• Students reported higher confidence in their writing abilities.
• Both teachers and students rated the approach as highly useful and acceptable.

Why This Matters for Your Classroom

Telling students to “write more” doesn’t solve the problem. Without strategies, time on task often leads to frustration, not growth. Students need a clear path to plan, draft, revise, and monitor their efforts. That is where SRSD comes in.

This study proves that teachers can learn SRSD through online modules and coaching, and more importantly, they can implement it with quality. The impact shows up in the writing that matters most, argumentative essays that require structure, evidence, and clear support for claims.

What Is SRSD?

SRSD is a research-based framework for teaching writing. It blends strategies, explicit instruction, and self-regulation to help students take control of their writing.

• Six stages of instruction: Develop background knowledge, Discuss it, Model it, Memorize it, Support it, and Independent performance.
• General strategies: Such as POWre for breaking down prompts, organizing notes, and elaborating on ideas.
• Genre-specific strategies: Such as HIT SONGS³ for argumentative writing, which guides students through crafting a hook, thesis, reasons with evidence, counterarguments, and a strong conclusion.
• Self-regulation: Students set goals, use positive self-talk, monitor progress, and evaluate their work.

The teacher models the moves of an expert writer, and students practice with scaffolds. Over time, support fades, and students gain independence. The result is stronger writing, clearer essays, and more confident learners.

What Online PBPD + Coaching Looked Like

Teachers in the study didn’t just read about SRSD, they learned it in a structured, supportive way:

1. 14 short online modules they could watch and revisit anytime.
2. Two live sessions to practice lessons with peers and get real-time feedback.
3. Ongoing coaching with email check-ins and one-on-one meetings.
4. Ready-to-teach resources like organizers, exemplars, and rubrics.
5. Clear expectations with checklists to track fidelity and quality.

This professional development model gave teachers practical support while respecting their time and needs.

The Results for Teachers

• High fidelity: Teachers followed the SRSD structure as intended, with observers rating fidelity at 86%.
• High quality: Lessons were well-paced, engaging, and responsive to students (96% quality rating).
• High social validity: Teachers found the strategies useful, reasonable, and appropriate for middle school.

Teachers reported that SRSD gave them confidence to teach argumentative writing and provide meaningful feedback. They planned to keep using the strategies and recommended them to their peers.

The Results for Students

For the 55 participating students, all with disabilities or below-proficient writing skills, results were powerful:

• Planning: Students used strategy-aligned plans and improved them while drafting.
• Length: Essays expanded to four or five paragraphs with a clear structure.
• Quality: Writing became more organized, detailed, and persuasive.
• Argumentative elements: Essays included hooks, thesis statements, evidence, and summaries.
• Confidence: Students felt more capable of writing argumentative essays.

Transitions needed more support, which did not improve as much as other elements. This suggests that teachers may need to add mini-lessons on transitions during later stages.

Why SRSD Works for Argumentative Writing

Argumentative writing in middle school is demanding. Students must:

• Understand a complex prompt.
• Select relevant evidence from sources.
• Organize their claim and support logically.
• Anticipate counterarguments.
• Write with a clear structure and revise with purpose.

SRSD directly addresses these challenges:

• POW streamlines the process: pull apart the prompt, organize notes, and write more.
• HIT SONGS³ provides a checklist for structure in student-friendly terms.
• Self-talk routines keep students moving forward when they feel stuck.
• Graphic organizers and modeled think-alouds make expert techniques visible.

With practice, students internalize these writing techniques. They set goals, monitor progress, and reflect, which makes writing strategies stick and builds durable skills.

What It Looks Like in a Unit

Here’s how SRSD unfolds step by step:

1. Develop and discuss: Introduce argumentative writing, share exemplars, and set goals.
2. Model it: Read sources, annotate, pull apart the prompt, and write an essay for students. Model self-talk.
3. Memorize it: Practice strategy names, run retrieval drills, and personalize self-statements.
4. Support it by co-writing essays, working in groups, and gradually fading scaffolds. If needed, add mini-lessons on transitions or evidence.
5. Independent performance: Students draft their argumentative essays, check their work against the strategy, and reflect on progress.

This isn’t about formulas. It’s about teaching students how to think and write like real writers.

What Teachers Loved

Teachers in the study, and many in SRSD classrooms, appreciated:

• Clarity: The six stages create a steady path for instruction.
• Reusability: The same framework adapts to other genres.
• Confidence: Teachers felt prepared to give specific feedback.
• Student ownership: Learners used their voice and supported their claims with evidence.
• Transfer: Students applied strategies in other classes and on tests.

One teacher noted that students remembered HIT SONGS³ and used it beyond English class, indicating that strategies were sticking.

How SRSD Online Mirrors the Evidence

The PD model tested in the study is exactly how SRSD Online designs its courses:

• Asynchronous micro-modules for flexibility.
• Student-ready resources including slides, rubrics, and exemplars.
• Live coaching to address pacing, differentiation, and challenges.
• Built-in self-regulation supports for diverse learners.
• Progress monitoring tools that don’t add grading burden.

Our approach helps you adapt SRSD to your curriculum while staying true to the strategies.

Common Concerns Answered

“I don’t have time.”
You don’t need extra minutes. SRSD makes existing writing time more effective by giving students strategies and structure.

“My students are too different.”
SRSD was designed for diverse learners, including those with disabilities and multilingual backgrounds. Supports can be scaled up or down.

“We already have a program.”
SRSD is a framework, not a replacement curriculum. It strengthens what you already use by adding strategies and resources.

“Will this help with state tests?”
Yes. The study focused on argumentative writing from sources—the same task on most assessments. Students improved in planning, evidence use, and essay quality.

Quick Wins You Can Try Next Week

1. Teach POW during your next source-based prompt.
2. Model one paragraph with a think-aloud, naming each strategic move.
3. Post self-statements in your classroom: “What must I do?” “Use my plan.”
4. Graph one class goal, like “two pieces of source evidence per reason,” and track progress.
5. Run a 10-minute mini-lesson on transitions with examples for contrast, cause/effect, and addition.

These moves give students a taste of SRSD and build momentum.

For Coaches and Leaders

SRSD fits perfectly in multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS). It offers:

• Teacher-centered professional development.
• Practice and feedback for fidelity.
• Coaching that solves problems quickly.
• Data tools for actionable feedback.
• Sustainable strategies that stay with teachers.

SRSD provides a coherent pathway for Tier 1 and Tier 2 writing supports, ensuring students build lasting strategies.

Limitations and Lessons

The study had no control group, and one teacher couldn’t teach all the lessons. Still, two key lessons emerged:

1. Fidelity matters: students make bigger gains when teachers teach the stages as intended.
2. Transitions need extra attention: brief, focused mini-lessons can close the gap.

The study shows that online PBPD plus coaching leads to meaningful gains even with these limits.

The Bottom Line

Teachers learned SRSD online, taught it with fidelity, and saw real results. Students planned, wrote, and produced clearer, more complete argumentative essays. They felt confident, and teachers valued the strategies enough to use them.

This is the kind of progress schools need: practical, sustainable, and evidence-based.

Ready to See SRSD in Action?

At SRSD Online, you can:

• Explore Writing to Learn™ courses for grades K–5 and 6–12.
• Access ready-to-use resources like student-facing slides and organizers.
• Join live coaching sessions to plan your first unit and troubleshoot.
• Use implementation tools for MTSS, curriculum alignment, and monitoring.

Bring a colleague or your grade-level team, and we’ll help you start strong.

Reference

Ray, A. B., Mason, T. E., Connor, K. E., & Williams, C. S. (2024). Online PBPD and Coaching for Teaching SRSD Argumentative Writing in Middle School Classrooms. Education Sciences, 14(6), 603. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14060603

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Implementing Effective Writing Solutions for Students in Need

Within a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), Tier 3 is the most intensive level of intervention. Only a small percentage of students receive this individualized, high-frequency support, but for them, it is often the difference between continued struggle and measurable progress.

When we think about Tier 3 writing intervention, we usually work with students who experience persistent challenges in areas such as planning, organizing ideas, generating sentences, maintaining attention, or managing the anxiety that accompanies writing. For many, writing difficulties are compounded by decoding, fluency, comprehension, or other reading difficulties.

It’s important to stress that Tier 3 isn’t a separate universe. It follows the same logic as Tiers 1 and 2. The difference is intensity: instruction is more explicit, more precise, more frequent, and driven by close progress monitoring. Decisions are based on data, and instruction is continually adjusted. (MTSS4Success)

When Tier 3 succeeds, schools stop guessing and commit to evidence-based instruction. That means identifying a small set of high-leverage skills, choosing evidence-based strategies, setting clear goals, teaching explicitly, and checking progress frequently enough to make real-time adjustments. That description aligns directly with Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD), a framework built for students who need individualized instruction, and it has decades of evidence to prove it works.

A Quick History: SRSD before “Tier 3” Existed

The language of MTSS and “Tier 3” is relatively new, but SRSD has predated it for decades. In the early 1980s, Dr. Karen R. Harris and Dr. Steve Graham began working with students with significant writing difficulties and learning disabilities. They observed that traditional instruction wasn’t sufficient. Students needed explicit instruction in writing strategies and the self-regulation processes that drive learning: setting goals, engaging in positive self-talk, monitoring progress, and reflecting on success.

This blend of explicit strategy instruction and self-regulation became SRSD. Over the next 40 years, study after study confirmed its effectiveness not only for students with disabilities but also for struggling writers, typical learners, and advanced writers. (Institute of Education Sciences)

Today, SRSD is widely recognized by the research community and independent reviewers as an evidence-based practice in writing instruction. While refinements continue, the foundation remains the same: teach strategies explicitly, promote self-regulation, and gradually release responsibility to the student. (SAGE Journals)

What Tier 3 Writing Intervention Looks Like

In most schools, Tier 3 writing support has four defining features:

• Intensity and Time: Daily or near-daily sessions, often 40–60 minutes, delivered in addition to core instruction.
• Individualization: Each plan targets a particular set of skills, such as writing a clear topic sentence, generating reasons, or using transitions effectively. Instruction adapts as progress monitoring data comes in.
• Frequent Progress Monitoring: Weekly (or more frequent) checks inform decisions about when to increase support, adjust goals, or fade scaffolds.
• Instructional Match: Students work on grade-level-aligned tasks broken into manageable steps, supported by explicit modeling, guided practice, feedback, and repeated opportunities for success.

SRSD aligns perfectly with this model. It provides named, research-tested strategies like TREE for opinion writing and TIDE for informative writing. It offers a predictable lesson routine that blends explicit teaching with self-regulation practices. Most importantly, it builds the internal goal setting, monitoring, and reflection habits that struggling writers need to become independent.

Why SRSD Is So Effective for Tier 3

1. It addresses the real bottlenecks.
Tier 3 writers struggle most with planning, organization, and sustaining effort. SRSD tackles these directly: students learn to generate ideas before drafting, structure writing around clear patterns (e.g., topic–reasons–ending), and use self-regulation tools like goal setting and checklists to stay on track.

2. It has a proven track record with struggling writers.
Multiple studies, including research with students with learning disabilities, show significant gains in writing quality, length, and organization after SRSD instruction. Students taught with SRSD consistently outperform peers receiving traditional instruction, and many show increased motivation to write.

3. It works across tiers.
The same strategies used in Tier 1 and Tier 2 classrooms can be intensified for Tier 3 by slowing the pace, modeling more often, and keeping supports in place longer. This consistency reduces stigma and makes it easier for students to transfer what they learn in the intervention back into the general classroom.

4. It builds independence rather than dependence.
Tier 3 is not meant to be a permanent placement. SRSD helps students internalize the moves of good writers: setting goals, talking themselves through challenges, checking their work against a strategy, and celebrating success. As students master these habits, they can confidently return to less intensive supports.

SRSD’s Six Stages, Adapted for Tier 3

SRSD is taught through six flexible stages. In Tier 3, each stage tightens to provide more repetition, structure, and feedback.

1. Develop Background Knowledge
Identify the specific barriers to effective writing, such as difficulty generating ideas, organizing reasons, or adding evidence. Start with a brief warm-up that primes students to think about reasons, examples, and transitions.

2. Discuss It
Make the strategy’s purpose clear: “This helps me plan so I don’t stare at a blank page.” Turn broad goals into concrete targets (e.g., “two clear reasons with one example each”). Tie goals to the student’s values, like finishing on time or feeling proud to share work.

3. Model It (Think-Aloud)
Provide frequent, short models instead of one long demonstration. Narrate self-talk (“If I get stuck, I check my TREE strategy”). Model overcoming mistakes or writer’s block, not just the polished version.

4. Memorize It
In Tier 3, mnemonics must become automatic. Over-teach TREE, TIDE, or POW+TREE using call-and-response, quick checks, and personal cue cards. Students should be able to recite and explain the strategy steps before applying them in writing.

5. Support It (Guided Practice)
This stage requires the most time. Begin with structured prompts and graphic organizers, then gradually fade to mnemonic cards and memory. Provide immediate, specific feedback tied to strategy steps.

6. Independent Performance
Supports remain nearby but discreet, such as a strategy card taped inside a notebook. Weekly progress monitoring and student self-checks continue. Supports are faded only when data show consistent success.

Sample Tier 3 SRSD Plan

Student Profile

A sixth-grade student with a history of learning disabilities in writing produces short, unorganized responses and often avoids writing. Goals for the next 6–8 weeks are:

• Use TREE to plan and draft a paragraph with one opinion, two reasons, and a wrap-up.
• Change the goal the student sets after accomplishing the first one.
• Complete a self-monitoring checklist in under 2 minutes after each write.

Schedule

Tier 3 requires frequent, intensive practice to build fluency and confidence. Sessions occur:

• Frequency: 5 times per week
• Duration: 45 minutes each
• Format: 1:1 or 1:2 instruction to allow individualized attention

Session Routine

• 5-minute Strategy Warm-Up: Oral rehearsal of TREE and one quick review question anchors the student in the strategy and creates predictability.
• 5–8 minute Model & Discussion: The teacher models one step of TREE with a think-aloud, explaining why it helps. Short, frequent models reinforce learning.
• 20–25 minute Guided or Independent Writing: Students begin with scaffolds like graphic organizers and gradually rely only on mnemonic cards. Teacher feedback is immediate and specific.
• 5 minutes Self-Monitoring & Goal Reflection: Student completes a self-checklist, reflects on progress, and may briefly conference with the teacher.
• 2–5 minutes Progress Tracking: Teacher logs checklist completion and rubric data.

Progress Monitoring

Weekly short writes are scored with a focused rubric (organization + reasons + wrap-up) and word count. The aim is steady growth, not perfection. Scaffolds are adjusted based on data to ensure responsiveness.

What the Research Says

• Strong effects for struggling writers and students with disabilities. SRSD instruction leads to improved writing quality, length, and organization, with gains surpassing those of typical instruction. (SAGE Journals)
• Meta-analytic support. Reviews across decades show SRSD produces large, statistically significant effects for students with and without disabilities. (acuresearchbank)
• Independent recognition. The What Works Clearinghouse has published an intervention report on SRSD, validating its evidence base for leaders. (Institute of Education Sciences)

How Tier 3 Connects to Tiers 1 and 2

When schools use SRSD in Tier 1, Tier 3 becomes far more efficient. Students already recognize the mnemonics, have seen think-alouds, and understand the language of self-regulation. Tier 3 can then zero in on filling deep gaps like generating reasons or adding evidence rather than reteaching the whole framework. This shared foundation is a key reason SRSD scales seamlessly across all tiers of instruction.

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Practical Tips for Tier 3 with SRSD

1. Tighten your aim. Select one or two must-address skills for 4–8 weeks (e.g., plan with TREE; add examples to reasons). Small wins build motivation.
2. Over-teach self-regulation. Have students verbalize strategies, set micro-goals, and complete self-checks. Seeing themselves succeed fuels persistence.
3. Write short, write often. Multiple brief writings yield more data, feedback cycles, and less avoidance than one long assignment.
4. Keep data simple. Track words written, rubric scores, and independence. Share graphs with students weekly to highlight progress.
5. Connect to content areas. Use science and social studies prompts so students experience transfer to the curriculum.
6. Involve families. Provide simple at-home routines such as “Ask me to say my TREE steps,” or “Listen as I explain my two reasons.”

When Progress Stalls

Even with strong instruction, plateaus happen. Here are quick adjustments:

• Zoom in further: Break goals into smaller targets (e.g., one detail per reason).
• Re-model the shaky step: Pinpoint the problem area and model it again the next day.
• Shift the entry point: Try oral rehearsal or sentence starters before drafting.
• Reset goals: Set an easier target to rebuild confidence and momentum.

What Leaders Should Know

For administrators and coaches, Tier 3 success depends on systems:

• Materials: Cue cards, graphic organizers, self-monitoring sheets.
• Time: Protected daily Tier 3 slots, even in tight schedules.
• Data cadence: Decide what to track weekly and review regularly.
• PD & coaching: Give teachers time to practice think-alouds and analyze Tier 3 data in coaching cycles.
• Continuity: Encourage Tier 1 teachers to use the same mnemonics and language so students move across tiers smoothly.

Credible Places to Learn More

• National Center on Intensive Intervention – Tools and guides linking intensive intervention with MTSS, including progress monitoring.  (Intensive Intervention)
• Center on MTSS – Clear explanations and visuals on Tier 3 for staff development. (MTSS4Success)
• What Works Clearinghouse SRSD Report – Independent review of SRSD’s origins and effects. Institute of Education Sciences
• Research on SRSD with struggling writers and students with learning disabilities – Harris, Graham & Mason (2006); Saddler (2006/2007); Graham (2005); and meta-analytic reviews. (ResearchGate)

The Takeaway for Teachers

Tier 3 writing intervention is not mysterious—it’s focused, frequent, and responsive. For students with persistent reading difficulties, challenges with fluency or comprehension, or learning disabilities, success hinges on explicit instruction, individualized goals, and progress monitoring.

SRSD provides a clear structure: teach a strategy explicitly, build self-regulation, and collect data to guide next steps. Because SRSD operates seamlessly across tiers, students don’t feel like they’re in a different system when receiving Tier 3 support. Instead, they experience consistency, clarity, and, most importantly, academic success.

If your school already implements SRSD in Tiers 1 and 2, adding a targeted Tier 3 cycle is the natural next step. It completes the picture: a coherent, tiered intervention system where every student, including those who struggle the most, has a way forward grounded in evidence, individualized instruction, and daily wins.

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Key Differences Between Tier 1 and Tier 2 Writing Interventions

One of the biggest trends in schools right now is the use of MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Supports). Teachers hear about it in meetings. Leaders bring it up in professional development. Parents even ask how it works. MTSS is not new, but more districts are leaning on it to guide literacy decisions.

Most conversations focus on reading and math, and writing is often overlooked. That is starting to change. Districts realize that students cannot succeed without strong writing and need a plan for how writing fits into Tier 1 and Tier 2.

We believe this is a current trend for two reasons:

1. Policy pressure. State standards and tests require source-based writing. Schools cannot meet benchmarks without writing instruction at every level.
2. Equity needs. NAEP data show that only about one in four students writes proficiently. Students with disabilities and multilingual learners are especially at risk.

This blog is meant to make the subject feel less overwhelming. We’ll explain how writing fits into MTSS and show how SRSD can help teachers feel confident with Tier 1 and Tier 2 supports.

MTSS in Plain Language

MTSS is a school-wide framework. The goal is to ensure all students get the proper support at the right time. It has three tiers:

• Tier 1: Core instruction for all students. High-quality teaching is what every child receives.
• Tier 2: Targeted small-group support for students who need extra help.
• Tier 3: Intensive, individualized intervention for a few students with significant needs.

Research shows that outcomes improve across subjects when MTSS is applied well (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2017). But writing is often underdeveloped in MTSS plans. Teachers may have a reading scope and sequence, yet little guidance for writing beyond daily assignments.

Note on Tier 3: Intensive Writing Intervention Tier 3 in MTSS is reserved for the few students who need intensive, individualized support. In writing, this often includes students with learning disabilities or significant difficulties who require one-on-one or highly specialized small-group instruction. Interventions at this level are frequent, closely monitored, and tailored to each student’s specific needs. SRSD has a strong evidence base with these learners, showing that explicit strategy instruction paired with self-regulation can make meaningful gains even for students who struggle the most.

Why This Blog Focuses on Tiers 1 and 2 While Tier 3 is essential, this post focuses on Tiers 1 and 2 because these are the levels where most schools are currently building writing supports. Strong Tier 1 instruction ensures all students have access to clear, consistent writing strategies. An effective Tier 2 intervention provides targeted help for those who need more. Together, these tiers prevent many students from slipping through the cracks and reduce the number who require Tier 3. I’ll return to Tier 3 in my next post dedicated to intensive interventions and special education.

Why Writing belongs in Tier 1

Tier 1 is about giving all students strong instruction. Writing needs to be part of this core because it is a skill every student must master.

A Common Paragraph Structure

One way schools strengthen Tier 1 writing is by teaching a shared paragraph structure. For example, students across grades learn how to build a topic sentence, add reasons or evidence, and wrap up with a conclusion. This creates consistency.

When teachers share a structure, students know what is expected from grade to grade. Research shows that explicit instruction in text structure boosts writing outcomes (Graham & Perin, 2007).

PLC Rubrics

Another Tier 1 move is using common rubrics in PLCs (Professional Learning Communities). A shared rubric makes writing expectations clear across classrooms, ensuring that the content being assessed is consistent and fair and allowing for the effective measurement of student progress. It also helps teachers talk about student work using the same language.

For example, a rubric might highlight organization, use of evidence, and clarity. Teachers can then compare notes: “Our fifth graders are strong at topic sentences but weak in supporting details.” This leads to aligned instruction and less guesswork.

SRSD and Tier 1

SRSD fits Tier 1 because it is both explicit and flexible. The strategies (like TREE for opinion writing or TIDE for informative writing) give students a roadmap for paragraphs and essays. The self-regulation tools (goal setting, self-talk, self-monitoring) make writing feel doable.

Meta-analyses confirm that SRSD strongly affects general education classrooms (Graham et al., 2013). It works as a Tier 1 support because it raises the quality of all core writing and reading instruction.

Why Writing belongs in Tier 2

Tier 2 is for students who need more than core instruction. These students are not meeting grade-level expectations and require targeted support.

Small-Group Focus

Tier 2 often occurs in small groups, utilizing additional resources to support targeted instruction. Students might work with a literacy coach, interventionist, or classroom teacher. The goal is to give extra time and scaffolding.

For writing, this might mean:

• Extra modeling of how to plan with a graphic organizer.
• Guided practice writing sentences before paragraphs.
• Close progress monitoring with feedback loops.

Addressing Specific Needs

Some students struggle with sentence construction. Others have ideas but cannot organize them. Research shows that targeted support in sentence combining, strategy instruction, and handwriting/typing fluency can make a difference (Graham, McKeown, Kiuhara, & Harris, 2012).

Tier 2 is the place for this kind of tailored help. The intervention should connect to Tier 1, not replace it.

SRSD and Tier 2

SRSD shines in Tier 2 because it is evidence-based for struggling writers, including students with learning disabilities (Harris et al., 2008). Teachers can slow the pacing, add more modeling, or provide extra graphic organizers.

A study by Saddler (2006) showed that struggling writers who learned SRSD strategies outperformed peers in both composition quality and length. This proves that SRSD is effective in general classrooms and powerful for intervention.

How Tier 1 and Tier 2 Work Together

The strength of MTSS is that the tiers connect. Tier 1 lays the foundation. Tier 2 builds on it with more intensity.

Here’s an example:

• Tier 1: All fourth graders learn TREE for opinion writing. They practice using mentor texts and write essays together.
• Tier 2: A small group of four students who are still struggling meets three times a week. The teacher re-teaches TREE with extra modeling, then guides them through writing one reason at a time.

Because the strategy is the same, students do not feel singled out. They get more practice with the tools they already know. This creates consistency and confidence.

Addressing Teacher Concerns

“We Don’t Have Time.”

Time is always tight, but integration is key. Writing can be embedded into reading lessons, and SRSD strategies fit within existing blocks, so no new time slot is needed.

“Our PLCs Don’t Talk About Writing.”

PLC rubrics can help. The conversation shifts when teachers bring writing samples to the table with a shared rubric. Everyone starts to see patterns and next steps.

“I’m Not Trained in Writing Intervention.”

Many teachers feel underprepared to teach writing. Professional learning is crucial. SRSD training teaches teachers how to model, guide, and scaffold writing. Once they see it in action, they feel more confident supporting Tier 1 and Tier 2.

A Classroom Example

Imagine a middle school that has made writing a school-wide priority within MTSS.

At Tier 1, every teacher, ELA, science, and social studies, uses the same common paragraph structure. In PLCs, teachers use a rubric to review writing samples once a month. Students begin to see writing as consistent across subjects.

At Tier 2, the literacy coach runs a small group for students who scored below the benchmark, utilizing progress monitoring to track their improvements over time. She uses formative assessments alongside SRSD with extra modeling and daily self-monitoring checklists. Over six weeks, students move from writing incomplete responses to producing whole, organized paragraphs.

The result: a school where writing is not an afterthought, but a visible part of the MTSS system.

Conclusion and Call to Action

Writing must be part of MTSS, emphasizing differentiated instruction to meet the diverse needs of all students. Without it, students miss half of literacy. At Tier 1, schools can create consistency with common structures and rubrics. At Tier 2, they can provide targeted, research-based interventions.

The science is clear. As stated above, meta-analyses show that explicit strategy instruction improves writing across the board. Studies confirm that SRSD is one of the most effective interventions for both general and struggling writers (Harris & Graham, 2019).

At SRSD Online, we help schools make this vision real. Our Writing to Learn™ courses give teachers the tools to support Tier 1. Our professional learning shows how to adapt SRSD for Tier 2. With both levels, MTSS becomes a framework where writing is no longer left behind.

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