Teaching students to become readers who can work with an author to "build" a text requires a better understanding of the nature of the author-reader relationship. This essay discusses the rights and responsibilities of that relationship by presenting writing and reading as a rhetorical situation--an interaction between author,…

Examines the principles of the writing process and applies them to reading. Discusses the parallels between these components of reading and writing: invention, choice, discussion, revision, and publication. (HTH)

Shares how students in second through sixth grade learn the "language of challenge" as they learn to read and write in their classrooms. Describes how the teachers and students challenge each other to grow as readers and writers and how they support each other in this process. (MG)

An elementary school reading teacher describes how she restructured her teaching methods by encouraging children to read and write as part of an integrated process, rather than teaching reading alone as a set of fragmented steps. (GC)

Describes some of the ways in which students can be organized for reading and writing instruction. Suggests that educators must first identify the key components of literacy, then clarify a view of instruction and learning. Argues that recent literacy research has analyzed processes and texts but has overlooked the larger literacy contexts. (SG)

Argues that conversations about books should be everyday occurrences in classrooms. Suggests that busy reading teachers try retellings. Includes a sample lesson. (RS)

Suggesting that the process of reading, however complex, is knowable, and that the scientific study of reading is both necessary and possible, this book brings together what has been learned through the scientific study of reading by carefully observing readers in the act of reading. The book looks at reading in the real world, at how readers and…

Describes an informal classroom study in which students tape recorded their thoughts as they read, wrote, and "conferenced" with classmates, and how they discovered the organizational benefits of using the recorder. Also describes the writing conferences and workshops that took place in the classroom. (HTH)

Argues that, while children need to learn the syntactic, symantic, and graphonic cuing systems necessary to reading, the ultimate focus of elementary reading instruction should be reading for meaning. Describes an ideal classroom where students constantly interact with reading and writing and developing personal motivations for effective language…

Uses findings from story grammar research to create guidelines to help students in writing book reports and describes applications of the guidelines as they were used in a second and a fifth grade classroom. (FL)

Argues that society's capacity to become more powerfully literate depends on its capacity to develop better ways to explain to and to show others what people do when they read and write. Offers ways in which schools and communities can help students go beyond current inadequate but deeply entrenched verbal constructs. (HTH)

Describes and discusses six recent books for teachers that illuminate, from different perspectives, aspects of the reading-writing connection for struggling readers, and how to teach reading and writing effectively. (SR)

Describes author-reader-text interactions which play roles in both revision in writing and critical reading. Examines the processes of revision in writing and critical reading as thought processes mirroring one another. Presents two examples of group classroom activities which nurture revision in both writing and critical reading. (MM)

Discusses the part reading and writing play in the whole language approach. Offers 11 recommendations to help teachers provide a functional approach to language development. (MG)

Argues that the specialized knowledge that writing demands can only be acquired through a particular kind of reading. Illustrates how this kind of reading occurs and considers ways teachers can facilitate such learning. (JL)