A growing number of primary school students experience difficulties with grapho-motor skills involved in handwriting, which impact both form and content of their texts. Therefore, it is important to assess and monitor handwriting skills in primary school via standardized tests and detect specific grapho-motor parameters (GMPs) which impact…

The Annual Literacy Survey is a survey for teachers and other school staff, asking about their attitudes to literacy as a whole, as well as reading, writing and speaking and listening. There were responses from 1,535 teachers from across primary, secondary and other settings. As outlined in report, the survey particularly interested in how this…

The importance of teaching kindergarteners to be effective writers has been emphasized in recent years. The purpose of this article is to provide a systematic review of current experimental and/or quasi-experimental studies investigating writing instruction in the kindergarten setting. Framing the literature within three philosophical approaches,…

According to recent studies, over half of students in 4th, 8th, and 12th grades lack the ability to write proficiently on standardized writing assessments. Revealed in recent studies is that many students enter college and are unable to write at the college level, as well as enter the workforce lacking writing skills. The problem is that most…

There is a need to better understand the agentic choices that students make to communicate meaning through their multimodal compositions. Utilizing a case study approach, this article examines the composing of two first-grade students and discusses how these students utilized multimodal composing techniques from structured writing units during an…

Taking a languaging perspective, this paper considers how kindergarten students and their teacher are relationally and intellectually responsive to one another in authoring conversations by constructing a sense of copresence. Copresence is defined by Goffman (1966) as being "uniquely accessible, available, and subject to one another" (p.…

The aim of this research was to create spaces for kindergarten writers by collaborating with kindergarten teachers through action research cycles. The inquiry's problem of practice is situated in the understanding that writing instruction within kindergarten classrooms is being sidelined due to a drive to teach in ways aligned to a sub-skills…

Using the Learning by Design multiliteracies framework, writing workshop was transformed into composing workshop. The researcher worked with a team of four second grade teachers in an urban public elementary school to redesign their Kevin Henkes author study to equally value art and design, guiding their students in creating their own narrative…

The current study examined the effectiveness of a "writing is caught" approach with young developing writers in Norway. This method is based on the premise that writing competence is acquired naturally through real use in meaningful contexts. Our longitudinal randomized control trial study tested this proposition by examining if…

This article describes the development and administration of the "Kindergarten-Second Grade (K-2) Writing Data-Based Decision Making (DBDM) Survey." The "K-2 Writing DBDM Survey" was developed to learn more about current DBDM practices specific to early writing. A total of 376 educational professionals (175 general education…

Making connections between children's existing means of expression (play, art, and movement) and the intricacies of print is a necessary and time-honored approach to writing instruction in the early years of school, yet, after kindergarten, one that is easily overlooked. In this article, we examine an approach to writing instruction for…

This article captures lessons learned while coaching a team of writing teachers across a poetry writing unit of study. Because of the heightened pressure of successful implementation of curricular programs, coaching can become focused solely on implementation of resources with fidelity, which can neglect the art of teaching. This article captures…

LXD Research conducted a study to examine the relationship between investment in Zaner-Bloser Handwriting program and Grade 3 student proficiency in handwriting in Alabama. Data from 4,759 students across 54 schools were analyzed, with schools categorized into Low Zaner-Bloser Handwriting (>$1 and [less than or equal to]$5 per student per…

This study aimed to investigate the roles of transcription skills and oral language abilities in predicting writing quality and productivity among Spanish-speaking kindergarten children (N = 159). Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), the study examined associations between these foundational skills and writing outcomes. The model demonstrated…

This book introduces the Cycle of Responsibility (COR) model--the next step in the evolution of the Gradual Release of Responsibility model, which has been a conceptual mainstay of literacy education for decades. This new model shifts the current linear model to a cyclical process of multifaceted interactions that better reflect the complexities…