With artificial intelligence (AI) now producing human-quality text in seconds via natural language generation, urgent questions arise about the nature and purpose of the teaching of writing in English. Humans have already been co-composing with digital tools for decades, in the form of spelling and grammar checkers built into word processing…

Engaging young students in an authentic writing process is an important part of their literacy development. Equally important is maintaining a developmentally appropriate classroom where young students explore, create, and play. In this article, the author shares her endeavors into implementing an illustration study during writer's workshop and…

In contrast to the product approach to writing, which is based on studying and replicating textual models, the process approach involves multiple and repeated steps that compel the writer to closely consider the topic, language, purpose for writing, and social reality of an audience. In addition to discussing the benefits of the process approach…

This article shares strategies that educators can use to assist students in meeting the challenges of academic writing more effectively. In order to foreground an understanding of struggling writers, the text begins with a brief review of composition theory and history related to basic writers and identity. It goes on to examine classroom…

This paper explores the learning spaces associated with two geography undergraduate research journals. Wikis provide dedicated spaces for postgraduate reviewers to collaboratively develop constructive feedback to authors creating a supportive online learning environment. In becoming published authors, undergraduates reported that they gained not…

Describes techniques used in a 9-week unit in creative writing for elementary school children. Emphasizes the importance of learning that thinking, reading, and writing are facets of the same processes. Lists readings and books to read aloud and imitate. (DMM)

Describes a simple writing process to help students become more effective writers in which students, by writing one sentence at a time on a single strip of paper, learn how to write a paragraph. (SR)

Suggests that students can improve their writing by being instructed on how to write badly. Applies the criteria of testability, tunnel-vision, excessive vagueness, flying in the face of established fact, and hazy authority to tabloid newspaper stories. Discusses how students can write their own "rotten" tabloid stories by taking these…

Discusses how current scholarship argues against one-shot, high-stakes writing tasks. Presents work from students that were part of a team-taught curriculum that coordinated writing and reading classes. Designs activities that would provide a core of material for students to draw on in their final testing situations. (SG)

Discusses a thinking-writing-organizing technique that Kenneth Burke called the dramatistic method. Suggests that having students ask and answer a series of questions prompted by five words (who, what, where, why, and how) placed at each of the points of a star can help students think and write about works of literature. (RS)

Examines the use of music as a springboard for writing. Provides an explanation of how basic writing students can use music-writing activities to discover meaningful topics and ideas, to develop specific supporting details, and to understand the connections between purpose and audience. (RS)

Organization and word processing software programs empower students with disabilities to become more independent in their writing. In this article, the authors describe techniques for incorporating organizational programs and word processing features into the writing process. Beneficial features include word prediction, voice output, spell…

Notes that teachers at every grade level have discovered that engaging children in book making has the power to motivate even the most reluctant writers. Notes that most curricula for teaching writing ignore the role of visual images in the writing process. Contends that by creating a combination of graphics and written text, children engage in a…

Considers that the author has a responsibility to help her students understand the situations of others. Wants students to try and get "inside the skins" of people so different from them. Describes how her students research, write, edit, rewrite, redo, and finally publish their original pieces in conjunction with each study they undertake. (SG)

Presents excerpts from eight of the many manuscripts received in response to a call for papers about whether other teachers could become like Nancie Atwell by reading her book "In the Middle." Results indicate that junior high teachers all over the country are emulating, adapting, and extending her methods. (RS)