Motivation impacts student academic performance. A performance task to directly assess writing motivation in young children is needed. The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the validity of the Writing Challenge Task (WCT), a task-oriented assessment created to measure writing motivation with 106 kindergarten students in the rural…

Learning to write is a complex process involving linguistic, cognitive, and socio-emotional factors. From a developmental perspective, little research has explored the content of young children's writings in terms of specific cognitive skills such as Theory of Mind (TOM). This study explores how young children's writing may foster representations…

This action research project involved the implementation of a program designed to improve student motivation to write through the use of children's literature. The targeted populations were students in one kindergarten class and one third grade ELL [English Language Learners] class in two elementary schools. Both schools were located in a…