Narrative Writing Progress of Rural Elementary Students in Mixed-Ability Online Pairings

Abstract

This article reports on a qualitative secondary data analysis of a study of upper elementary students’ narrative writing progress in U.S. rural schools. It compares students working online in pairs with those working alone. We explain why the intervention had some positive effects for struggling writers but few effects for skilled writers. The qualitative analysis of student online writing products, student peer feedback, and teacher interviews indicated that struggling writers in the experimental group wrote more ambitious but less coherent stories than struggling writers in the control group, and that skilled writers in the experimental group received poor-quality feedback and were less inclined to revise than skilled writers in the control group. We provide suggestions for writing instruction and technology support for skilled and struggling writers.