This article describes how third graders combine traditional literacy practices, including writer's notebooks and graphic organizers, with new literacies, such as video editing software, to create digital personal narratives. The authors emphasize the role of planning in the recursive writing process and describe how technology-based audio…

The famed playwright Harold Pinter, having just been introduced as a very good writer, was once asked by a six-year-old boy if he could do a "w." The author suspects that "w" was a difficult letter for this young man, and he judged the writing capability of others accordingly. This student's assumption--that being a "good…

"Blogging across the curriculum: Integrating blogging in the elementary classroom" is an Action Research Project that sought to explore the level of engagement in the writing process by students in grades 3, 4 & 5 while blogging across the curriculum. Blogging took place in homeroom classrooms as well as in the school's math, science and…

While interactive writing has typically been utilized and researched in the primary grades, little has been written about its use with older students. The author briefly describes the historic use of interactive writing, along with appropriate research, then goes on to describe its use in her third-grade classroom as a tool to teach writer's craft…

Teacher-librarians have implemented collaborations, becoming facilitators of literacy development throughout their schools as library research moves into multimodal forms. For instance, Wolf & Jordan (2006) studied teacher-librarian collaboration with third grade students researching and writing within a unit on severe weather preparedness. The…

In recent years effective instruction in reading for learners with physical and educational disabilities has received great attention in the schools. However, instruction in the corollary skill of writing has received considerably less emphasis. This review paper notes that through the use of assistive technology, students with a variety of…

This is the description of a teacher using the creation of a class newspaper as a vehicle to improve the writing ability of Grade 3 students. In this instance, there was the added benefit of creating a community of learners who worked and supported each other in their classroom. Notes from parents, comments from students and teacher observations…

This article presents a comprehensive model of daily, classroom informal writing assessment that is constantly linked to instruction and the characteristics of proficient writers. Methods for promoting teacher, student, and parent collaboration and their roles in dialoguing, conferencing, and reflection are discussed. Strategies for including…