Traditionally, assessing student writing ability has often been product-focused. Advocates of child-centered process-oriented classrooms, however, suggest that teachers should also focus on understanding children's writing behaviors in the context of meaningful communicative tasks. In such an approach, writing conferences are one way in which…

A systematic, coherent reading program leads to improvement in the achievement of an entire elementary school. (DD)

Reviews the ERIC documents that examine teachers experiencing the writing process and that describe the format of workshop and inservice programs that seek to involve teachers in writing. (JL)

Describes three approaches to language arts instruction--student centered/integrated, content centered/segmented, and a combination of these two--and examines the strong and weak points of each. (HTH)

Discusses a model for teaching reading and writing in which skilled language users provide support for new language activities in context. Gives examples of typical classroom activities that provide too little or too much support for natural language growth and of activities with a balanced instructional "scaffolding." (HTH)