This discussion introduces a heuristic to guide writing instruction with adolescents and young adults. Our framework, called "Open World Writing," consists of six writing territories (vision, material, design, voice, flow, polish) that provide focus and clarity for writing and educators working across academic and creative writing…

Adolescents today need mental health support (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2024), and schools are a place where a universal approach to positive well-being can be promoted (Weissberg, 2019). While programs exist for social and emotional learning (SEL), there is a call for teachers to find a way for daily SEL integration into the…

This case study of teacher research explores the utility of framing the writing development of adolescent writers in terms of their discursive identities and strategic behaviors. By merging our understandings of these frameworks, I argue that we can examine how adolescents' goals, values, and beliefs associated with writing inform the strategic…

In this article, the authors report on what began as a series of rather desperate English teacher acts: The authors implemented a youth participatory action research photovoice research project with adolescents in a range of diverse communities that were united by young adults' detachment from their writing processes and products and from their…

Many students with learning disabilities struggle with the writing process throughout their school years. As students approach graduation, effective communication though writing becomes more critical. Writing is a skill that can directly impact the quality of life for older students preparing to graduate and progress to college, a career, or…

Adolescent writing proficiency is widely considered to be in a state of crisis nationally, and new instructional approaches are needed to raise writing proficiency among all adolescents, with special attention to those students who struggle most (Graham & Perin, 2007). The affordances of digital communication media, such as online discussion…

Adolescents with learning disabilities need explicit supports to improve their written expression, but those structures and supports are best utilized in an environment that promotes authentic writing resembling the writing students will produce in adult life and work. Classroom blogs may offer special educators an authentic context for writing…

Writing, for adolescents who live in an age of digital communication, has taken on new importance and plays a prominent role in the way they socialize, share information, and structure communication. New literacies expand the literacy realm by considering the skills needed to function using media other than the printed page. Internet resources can…

There is considerable concern that the majority of adolescents do not develop the competence in writing they need to be successful in school, the workplace, or their personal lives. A common explanation for why youngsters do not write well is that schools do not do a good job of teaching this complex skill. In an effort to identify effective…

The study investigated the effects of intrinsic motivation training and/or written language training on the written language achievement and motivation of 55 learning disabled adolescents (grades 10-12). Interventions included Alley and Deshler's "Learning Strategies" approach (writing strand) and "TARGETS," a systematic instructional strategy…

Describes one teacher's approach to process writing, a mainstay for Montessori adolescent classrooms. The premise of the method is that everyone has the natural potential to write and that the emergence of the inner voice must be nurtured by extended conferencing and revision combined with taking risks, experimenting, and continually revising.…

With important implications for all language arts teachers, grades kindergarten through 12, this book is about what one teacher and her eighth grade students learned together as collaborating writers and readers. It is also a book about adolescents themselves: how they learn, what they believe and value, and what others can learn from and about…