Standards can aid educators as they work to produce strong student writers who can create meaningful and skillfully crafted authentic pieces of writing. This once-a-month, yearlong professional development program, conducted during the school day, shifted a district's kindergarten writing program to a writing workshop model that enabled the…

This article reports on a design experiment in which 4th grade bilingual students were invited to engage in new literacy practices of linking, multimodality, and design using only ordinary, concrete materials like ink, paper, tape, and boxes. The inquiry was undertaken in the midst of a unit of study on memoir in a writing workshop, under…

Ken Goodman and Frank Smith met for the first time in 1970, though they had each been studying and writing, separately, about the reading process for several years prior to that. They commemorated the occasion by collaborating on an article, On the Psycholinguistic Method of Teaching Reading which appeared soon after in The Elementary School…

This paper describes a collaborative relationship between a community member and an eighth grade English teacher that was documented through an ethnographic study during an entire school year. The community member taught a weekly poetry workshop where students are encouraged to take risks in their writing and also take a critical stance towards…

This article illustrates not only how students with special needs grew as writers in an inclusive writing community, but also how a fourth-grade teacher systematically structured the learning environment and tailored her instruction to guide her students to develop as writers as well as to improve their language skills. (Contains 4 figures and a…

Uses visual images to open up spaces for imagination and to encourage children to go beyond the familiar during writing workshop. Shares ways to engage students with looking at the visual arts in order to write. Reflects on September 11. Explores the possibilities of the aesthetic response. (SG)

This article explores the ways three young students expressed their perceptions about literacy and investigates how their classroom identity shapes and is shaped by those perceptions. The ways in which positioning within a writing event and the classroom culture contributed to the development of writing voice and identity are examined. In…

Cauley's books about snakes demonstrate intentional and interesting decisions by a beginning writer. The conclusion states that learning to choose topics for writing in thoughtful ways is an important part of the curriculum in writing workshop.

Describes methods developed for a fourth- through sixth- grade writers' workshop designed to teach children to write within certain common structures. Separate workshop sessions dealt with descriptive writing, mood, characterization, adventure stories, tall tales, plays, autobiography, and reporting. (AEA)

The different ways of creating space for teaching writing and for test preparation as well the tension a teacher undergoes of implementing a writing workshop approach within a school context focused on high-test scores are described. The findings suggest maintaining teacher autonomy and surviving the high demands imposed upon teachers.

Addresses three questions: (1) what individual paths lead selected nonmainstream writers from the "Tenderloin" inner-city area of San Francisco to their craft; (2) how the contexts and relationships with the community support the growth of written expression; and (3) how this support affects individual and community growth. (MG)

Discusses the author's thoughts prior to, during, and after a literacy workshop for parents. Argues that parents want and need to play a stronger role in their children's education, and that educators and researchers need to find a different kind of language to communicate better with parents. (JAD)

Continues an exchange begun with the authors' April 1991 article in the same journal about a writers' workshop in one author's elementary school classroom. Describes her continuing process of questioning and strengthening a workshop approach to writing instruction. (SR)

This article begins with a "snapshot" of a fifth grade writing workshop and its study of op-ed writing to show an inquiry in action. The framework for this inquiry involves immersing students in reading multiple examples of the kind of text the teacher would like them to write, studying closely how the texts are crafted, and writing their own…

Outlines how the Talk Workshop Group of England, a support group model, was transplanted to inservice workshops conducted by Bay Area Writing Project personnel. (HTH)