This qualitative study investigated the influence of Metawriting, or "writing about writing," on fifth-grade students' knowledge of writing and proficiency in composing informative essays. Using a Think-TalkWrite model, students explored their existing writing knowledge and experiences, analyzed their essays using genre-specific tools,…

This action research study was conducted to improve the skills of writing a thought paragraph in 7th grade students. The study was planned for a 14-week period and a total of 25 activities were implemented with students during the study. Interviews held with Turkish teachers, journals kept by the researcher and the students in relation to the…

In the current study, we investigated the effects of an instructional package (i.e., response prompting, sentence frames) on sentence writing for three middle school participants (ages 12-13) with moderate to severe disabilities. We employed a multiple probe across behaviors design to evaluate the efficacy of the intervention package and also used…

Despite the emphasis on increasing the frequency with which students engage in analytic writing, we know very little about the "writing diet" of adolescents. Student notebooks, used as a daily record of in-class work, provide one source of evidence about the diversity of writing expectations that students face. Through careful…

This article analyzes data from a summer literacy program for intermediate and middle-level children of migrant farmworkers. The program was grounded in a sociocultural perspective on literacy, stressing the importance of interaction and collaboration within socioculturally responsive pedagogy, using enabling literature to empower students.…

The case study investigates what impact extensive reading of authentic picture books/illustrated books had on the learners' writing skills in a Norwegian EFL (English as a foreign language) classroom of 11-year-olds. Furthermore, the study also looks into the importance the pictures/illustrations had for the learners and what type of picture-text…

The Common Core State Standards emphasize students writing analytically in response to texts. Questions remain about the nature of instruction that develops students' text-based writing skills. In the present study, we examined the role that writing task quality plays in students' mastery of analytic text-based writing. Text-based writing tasks…

This article provides an overview of the Writers Matter program, which allows adolescents to use their life stories as a vehicle for self-expression and writing skill development. Evaluations of the program have show increased writing skills among participating students in the areas of focus, content, organization, and grammar. Additional benefits…

In an effort to use adolescents' enthusiasm about blogging to design more effective writing experiences, Read analyzed its appeal and found that blogging satisfied two of Maslow's "hierarchy of needs": relatedness needs and growth needs. By studying the blogs of 6 adolescents, Read also discovered that the process of writing in blogs helps…

Students who engage in the writing process learn to write. Period. And yet many teachers, including Lain when she was a beginning teacher, don't know how to make the time for it, how to structure it, and how to evaluate it. Here, Lain offers us the help we need by focusing on the teaching tools for introducing students to this format, the…

Long an advocate of literature circles, Daniels recaps the history of literature circles and cautions against the "terminology drift" that labels practices as literature circles when, in fact, they are not. He offers resources that anchor best practice in this area, and discusses how the concept is evolving and expanding. He also introduces us to…