Please
Welch, M., & Jensen, J.B. (1990). Write, P.L.E.A.S.E.: A video-assisted strategic
intervention to improve written expression of inefficient learners. Remedial
and Special Education, 12, 37-47.
This writing strategy was developed as a metacognitive strategy for written
expression to assist students in planning and writing compositions by modifying a
highly structured, step-by-step procedure. This is intended to enable students to
generate and organize ideas in simple paragraph form. The strategy Write
P.L.E.A.S.E., is a video-assisted strategy intended to aide teachers in teaching this
strategy.
Pick
• Pick a topic
• Pick your audience
• Pick the appropriate textual format given the topic, purpose and audience
List
• List ideas about the topic
• This is to be used for sentence generation
Evaluate
• Evaluate your list of ideas
• Determine if it is complete
• Plan the best way of organizing or sequencing the ideas that will be used to
generate supporting sentences
***The evaluation step is an ongoing quality control check in which the students can confirm the
appropriateness of the textual structure that was selected during the P or Pick step based on
the evaluation of their list. ***
Activate
• Activate with a topic sentence to introduce the paragraph
• Students are instructed how to write short and simple declarative topic
sentences that will “activate” the written idea for the reader.
Supply
• Supply supporting sentences
• Use the list generated for supporting sentence ideas
• Gradually enhance the idea by generating clarifying or “expansion” sentences
End
• End with a concluding sentence to summarize the paragraph and hold the
ideas together