In the county schools, students are assessed every nine weeks based on a writing prompt using a rubric supplied by the county, but the students are often taught using Writer's Workshop. This action research attempted to determine if Writer's Workshop and the use of writing prompts have different effects on first graders' writing ability and…

A team of secondary school language teachers and a teacher trainer developed a new method for Dutch writing instruction. The principles underlying the method were derived from insights regarding activating instruction and self-directed student learning. The development entailed two phases. In the first phase, the exploration of actual problems in…

As teaching argumentative and persuasive writing returns to the classroom, so does the question of how to do so effectively. Process writing reforms over the past 30 years have sought to change the ways writing is taught from drill and practice in grammar exercises to a focus more on continuous writing and revision. Arguing from an ecological…

This casebook is part of a set of materials written by the members of the Making Thinking Visible Project. It offers high school, college, and community college teachers' multiple perspectives on the teaching and learning of collaborative planning, and on classroom inquiry and practice. The casebook explains collaborative planning (a writing…

Strange as it may seem, the classroom is not, by and large, accepted within the composition discipline as a scene for genuine knowledge-making and theory-building. Teachers should go back to the "concrete materials" from which knowledge and theory are made. An example of what can be learned in the classroom comes from an effort to…

An advanced composition curriculum was designed for a class of 20 juniors and seniors, and because of the constraints of a university grant with which it was associated, the majority of assignments had to be collaborative. The subject of investigation was composition. That is, the students were challenged to do what composition researchers and…

Investigates how classroom communities were created to support students' writing in two contrasting grade-10 English classrooms: one in a low-income urban school with a diverse population, one in a middle-class suburban school. Analyzes class discussions to see how they functioned in creating community. Portrays writing in both classrooms as…

The book describes one teacher's study of student journal writing in college-level English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction and explores the potential of student journals in second language teaching. It first introduces the research questions and methods guiding the study, then reviews the literature that informed the investigation of mental…