Language First Learning Library

Dr. Kimberly Wolbers is Professor and Coordinator of Deaf Education at the University of Tennessee. Her research centers on designing and evaluating sign-multilingual writing and language instruction. She has conceptualized an approach called Strategic and Interactive Writing Instruction (SIWI) to be responsive to the unique language needs of deaf students. SIWI draws upon evidence-based approaches to teaching writing such as strategy instruction in writing and collaborative, interactive writing. SIWI also contains language-specific elements that provide teachers with direction on how to, for example, navigate between ASL and English when teaching developing bilinguals, or facilitate greater expressive language clarity and complexity among students with language delays. There is growing evidence to suggest SIWI has a positive impact on students’ expressive language, motivation, and writing outcomes at the word-, sentence-, and discourse-levels.