Contemporary perspectives on emergent literacy in preschool emphasize the importance of providing developmentally appropriate, authentic, early writing experiences and supporting students' home language and culture. The current study analyzed kindergarten outcomes for 82 linguistically diverse, low-income children (60% Black, 40% Latino) who…

A substantial body of research has demonstrated the efficacy of early writing interventions that target skills and composing processes; however, much less is known about the effectiveness of classroom writing instruction outside of the context of an intervention. The goal of this study was to investigate if writing instruction and student practice…

Learning to read and write efficiently is of the utmost importance in elementary school. However, writing is frequently difficult and can be demotivating for beginning writers. Fortunately these barriers can be partially alleviated with parental help. Many studies showed that parental involvement influences children's competence and motivation in…

The purpose of this single-case study was to evaluate the effects of a peer-tutoring intervention on the text production skills of three third graders with severe learning and speech difficulties. All tutees were initially able to produce only very short stories. During the course of the treatment, higher performing classmates taught them how to…

Drawing on assets-oriented, sociocultural theories of imagination and learning, the authors argue that the improvisational qualities and expanded resources of dramatic approaches to teaching make a positive difference in the quality of and persistence in students' story writing. The authors describe findings from a controlled quasi-experimental…

This qualitative study describes the experience of a cross-age tutoring intervention for three PreKindergarten/Kindergarten-aged students with autism and their fourth grade general education tutors. Data were collected in an inclusive environment; the school library. Three fourth grade general education cross-age tutors were trained to use a…