As an educator, according to the author, the most important objective is to know what they want students to take away with them after the unit ends, the enduring understandings that will stay with them long after they leave the classroom. The author states they wanted their students to understand that writing is a journey, one that starts with the…

In his foundational work, "English Composition and Rhetoric," Alexander Bain set forth the framework for what students and teachers now routinely refer to as the five-paragraph essay. Teachers were so inculcated with Bain's paradigm for the "perfect" essay format, they in turn have inculcated their students, and they just say now, "Write an…

High school teacher Bonnie Mary Warne facilitates students' ease and awareness of their writing processes as they learn to apply knowledge of it on state assessment tests. Through ongoing discussion, practice, observations of patterns in their writing, and shared terminology, students begin to understand how individualized writing processes are,…

The wiki is an excellent tool for student collaboration and teacher assessment. Students' comfort with online social networking makes the wiki a perfect forum for students to coauthor works and to respond to each other's writing. In this article, the author discusses how to use a wiki to promote discussion and aid students with writing. He tested…

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…

Teachers across the country consider the best methods to teach writing in the middle school and high school. They aspire for students to produce writing aimed at real audiences and purposes, writing that follows the author's thinking and leads readers to discoveries about the topic. Many teachers believe that a formula in writing could offer…

Explains how a teacher teaches process writing in her mainstream high school classes, despite her obligation to cover grammar, literature, vocabulary, research, and communication. Shows how some approaches to process writing can be modified to fit it into a tighter, more structured course. (TB)

Asserts that writing assessment should reflect current composition pedagogy, and offers a design to assess process writing. Discusses the development of the scoring criteria and the selection of range finders, as well as the standardization of training and scoring procedures. (PRA)

Argues the relative merits of using in-process and retrospective journals, during and after the writing process, to empower students to explore and use their own ways of constructing knowledge to make connections as they write. (KEH)

Maintains that the unfettered process approach to writing instruction has been just as artificial as the traditional skill training approach and that students need structure, models to practice from, and improvement of mechanical skills, as well as time to think through their ideas, to revise them, and to write for real audiences. (EL)

Looks at how writing instruction has progressed 25 years after Janet Emig and other scholars investigated the composing process of writing students and put forth the notion of process writing. Presents three teacher profiles that demonstrate the wide variety of classroom practice in writing instruction now in use. (TB)

Discusses the processes by which students think through and compose essays. Shows how writers often begin with the conclusion, or the ending. Provides a basic three-step model which allows students to analyze literary works systematically, with the objective of producing organized essays. (HB)

Explains how an English teacher settled into an unproductive, formulaic approach to teaching writing and how he reformed himself and his teaching through a discovery of the processes involved in writing. Describes exercises and notebooks that furthered his new "process" approach to teaching writing. (TB)

Responds to Raymond Rodrigues's l985 "English Journal" article presenting reservations about a too-narrow and too-dogmatic definition and application of the writing process approach to the teaching of writing. Addresses concerns that the article would provide ammunition from the traditionalists and that new writing process converts would find…

Suggests that peer group instruction is one of the most significant benefits to have emerged from the process approach to writing instruction. Presents a teacher's classroom research on the peer group response method. (ARH)