Effective feedback is an essential tool for making learning explicit and an essential feature of classroom practice that promotes learner autonomy. Yet, it remains a pressing challenge for teachers to scaffold the active involvement of students as critical, reflective and autonomous learners who use feedback constructively. This paper seeks to…

Presents an instructional unit, "Literary Lifeboat," a purposeful writing exercise in which students write character justifications for familiar stories. Describes the unit's implementation in a Year 5 class, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the exercise. (MM)

Integrated approaches to the teaching of reading and writing being used in classrooms in Australia and New Zealand are described in this booklet. The first part of the booklet presents theoretical background on how children learn to talk and the reading and writing processes. The second and third parts of the booklet describe ways of putting…

Intended for use by students, this illustrated Australian classroom unit was designed to encourage young people to develop a lifelong habit of letter writing. The booklet begins with a letter to children from the Australian "Post," and excerpts from two poems about letter writing. A section on how letters can link the world emphasizes…

Prepared to accompany an Australian letter writing guide for students, this teachers' guide provides suggestions for integrating letter writing into the school curriculum, either through regularly scheduled activities during the school year, or through special letter writing units of a few weeks. Topics covered in the guide include: (1) the craft…

Specifically intended to address the teaching of spelling, this description of an elementary school program in Australia deals with many of the pedagogical problems that arise in whole language classrooms, and suggests ways for teachers to integrate a process approach to spelling with process writing to create a total language program. Following…