Don Graves died Tuesday, September 28, 2010. In the early 1980s, Don blew open the door to teaching children to write. His qualitative research and subsequent 26 books transformed the teaching of writing in elementary schools. He showed how much could be learned by the simple, powerful strategy of sitting beside children and asking them about…

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…

Discusses the roles that writers must assume during the writing process and offers suggestions to help children prevent these roles from conflicting or interfering with each other during writing. (HTH)

Outlines the stages of the composing process, differentiating between those of skilled and unskilled writers. Provides a list of suggestions for elementary school writing instruction. (HTH)

Describes the writing apprehension and difficulty encountered by a teacher participating in a writing institute. Includes a copy of her final essay and some reflections on what the experience and institute taught her. (HTH)

Surveys materials in the ERIC system supporting the theory that children have a natural inclination to write that teachers are not taking advantage of and that offer practical suggestions to encourage writing skills and interest. (HTH)

Describes a "directed writing activity" that teachers can use in developing writing sessions that consistently produce good results. Outlines six steps in the writing activity: prewriting, framing the writing assignment, writing the assignment, revising the draft, editing, and writing the final draft. (AEA)

Describes ways that word-processing computers can be used to teach writing and editing skills and related attitudes. Explores the advantages and disadvantages of using computers in writing programs, as well as some misconceptions about computers. (HTH)

This fourth article in a series on the writing process describes one child's writing process and draws implications for teaching first grade writing. (DD)

Interviews Jan Turbull about her work with writing teachers in the St. George Writing Project in Australia. (HTH)

Discusses the use of models for teaching children to write, suggesting that successive drafts rather than a finished poem used as models of the revision process might be more effective. Includes three drafts of a poem by the author, discussing observations for teaching illustrated by the poem's revision process. (HTH)

Describes working with multiage elementary school students on demand writing--writing to meet deadlines. Discusses why to teach it, practical applications, what teachers need to know before beginning instruction, getting started, introducing demand writing, modeling it, teaching beginnings and endings, and revising and editing/proofreading. (SR)

Writing is a powerful social tool that offers students opportunities to chisel their identities as they position themselves and others on issues and beliefs (Dyson, 1992). This article presents the story of how Mark, a fifth-grade student who resisted writing in certain classroom contexts, used positional writing practices to shape his identities.…

Describes a language arts program in a Brooklyn, New York, public school in which children are questioned about their writing and their interests and allowed the freedom to put any interest on paper. Discusses the problems children encounter with such writing freedom, as well as the program's effectiveness. (HTH)

Describes a way to teach children the research paper through personal discovery without constraints that usually compel them to copy from reference books. The process demonstrates that organizational schemes for children are intuitive, and that teachers can show children how to use peer response groups during their writing to aid in…