Learning to write is a complex process and children have to orchestrate a range of processes and skills in order to produce written messages. Young children are facing increasing demands in terms of the expected complexity of their written messages in education settings across the world. Teachers, in turn, are challenged to support children and…

First-grader students engaged in a guided historical inquiry about Abraham Lincoln. The teacher carefully intertwined historical content, close reading, critical thinking, and text-based writing during Reading, Writing, and Social Studies classes. Students scrutinized secondary sources, which were largely biographies of Lincoln, to build their…

Despite calls to action, writing pedagogy in the English classroom remains outdated, and caustic partisanship among theorists may be to blame. The author proposes a "principled approach" to the teaching of writing, combining the best elements of verified instructional methods to generate six components ensuring student growth.

Sarah Irwin and Cyndi Knodle believe that by replacing the confines of content and form in writing instruction and assignments with ample "time and space for invention and arrangement, writing teachers can help to inspire student thinking rather than chopping it off to fit a required format." They elaborate on students' eagerness to be guided by a…

Content or subject matter, interpersonal relationships, and symbolic means of representing meaning are interacting elements that affect language use. The elements have been described as the field, tenor, and mode of discourse. The influence of these concepts on what children write, why they write, and for whom they write are explored. (DF)

Students can be motivated to write and be guided through the writing process without giving them the impression that they are doing it again until they get it right. To motivate students, make it known as specifically as possible what kind of written assignment will be required and how it will be graded. Then guide the students towards the goal by…

If properly administered, peer-group critiques in college writing classes can be an effective means of sharpening students' skills of critical reading while increasing their awareness of audience. If not properly administered, however, they can be unpleasant and nerve-racking for all involved. Finding that both she and her students dreaded peer…

Reviews some of the author's own mistakes and successes to help guide other writers and teachers interested in projects in which they collaborate with a visual artist to improve students' writing skills and visual art ability. (MG)

In the Albion Writing Project at the State University of New York at Brockport, teachers, students, administrators, and college consultants collaborated on improving writing and writing instruction from kindergarten through grade 6. Throughout the two-year project, teachers attended inservice workshops on such general topics as the composing…

Articles in this journal issue focus primarily on evaluation in the language arts and oral communication. Following an introduction to the two themes, the articles discuss the following: (1) pop quizzes in literature, (2) holistic scoring, (3) self-evaluation strategies in prewriting and rewriting, (4) what not to do in student/teacher…