Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD) have academic deficits that affect their success in school. However, there are few research studies investigating what strategies work best for this population, especially in the area of writing. One promising intervention to support the writing skills of students with and at risk for E/BD is…

Transforming Writing is a two-year action research project which aims to develop a model for the teaching and learning of writing that more fully incorporates a focus on embedded formative assessment. In the first year of the project, the 12 participating schools developed a model of writing underpinned by Talk for Writing, an approach developed…

Drawing upon information gathered in a survey of eight two-year colleges and one four-year college, this paper discusses the status of writing within the two-year college system. Following introductory remarks, the paper gives a brief profile of one two-year college, Casper College in Wyoming, including data about its background, curriculum,…

Draws from date collected in a study of effective college composition instruction to discover six instructional patterns: (1) the literature approach, (2) the peer workshop approach, (3) the individualized workshop approach, (4) the text-based modes approach, (5) the basic skills approach, and (6) the service course approach. (FL)

It was hypothesized that teacher participation in the New Jersey Writing Project (NJWF) would improve student writing performance. Eight NJWP school districts and seven control school districts contributed data on 225 high school student writers. Postwriting sample scores served as the dependent variable, while type of group (NJWF/control),…

A study examined three recent language arts textbook programs for grades one through six to determine the frequency of writing activities, the nature of the writing tasks, and the frequency of process-approach activities such as selecting topics, prewriting, sharing, revising, and publishing. The programs analyzed were Scott, Foresman's "Language:…

The writing center at Bluefield State College (West Virginia) is called the SPICE Center, SPICE being an acronym for Self Paced Instruction for Competency in English. In addition to emphasizing skill acquisition and flexibility, it stresses face-to-face evaluation of written work, and places heavy emphasis on writing as process instead of writing…

Materials pertinent to a study that surveyed and interviewed writing faculty and staff of the 19 campuses of The California State University are assembled in this volume. Various sections of the volume contain (1) a faculty questionnaire, (2) a campus fact sheet, (3) interview protocols for department chair and program coordinators, (4) a taxonomy…

A study determined whether former participants in the Winthrop Writing Institutes (annual summer institutes based on the National Writing Project model) had improved classroom instruction in writing by using strategies taught in the institutes and whether they had continued to grow professionally. Surveys were returned by 49 of the 89 (1981 to…

Outlines elements of instruction--knowledge, information, action--and describes each in the context of writing instruction, reviews writing research, and uses these components of instruction to explore possibilities for automated writing instruction. The Writer's Workbench language analysis programs are used to illustrate major points. Program…

Intended for administrators and policy makers as well as teachers, this digest explores the components common to effective writing programs. The digest first discusses activities at the classroom level as the foundation of a successful writing program and elements that should be included in classroom instruction, such as the process approach to…