The purpose of the following case study was to examine the daybooks of 3 fourth-grade writers who autonomously determined the content they included across the pages of their composition books. Three themes emerged from an analysis of their daybooks: (1) Students used their daybooks to engage their "writing process"; (2) students used…

Early writing (i.e. young children's emerging skills prior to the onset of skilled writing) provides important foundations for literacy; however, its components are not evenly understood, assessed, or supported. Transcription skills (handwriting/spelling) are emphasized, while other aspects of composing are often sidelined. Understanding multiple…

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…

According to recent studies, over half of students in 4th, 8th, and 12th grades lack the ability to write proficiently on standardized writing assessments. Revealed in recent studies is that many students enter college and are unable to write at the college level, as well as enter the workforce lacking writing skills. The problem is that most…

Educators often observe differences in students' writing productivity, with some students stopping early while others continue to write for the given time. This study demonstrates how planning and goal setting are related to these written production patterns. A Growth Mixture Model identified three groups of writers: the "Early…

Partly as result of the predominant 'narrow' view of writing in England's recent school curriculum and assessment, current primary school pupils often hold a skills-oriented view of 'good' writing for a substantially longer period than has traditionally been reported in the literature. This makes it difficult for teachers to promote and engage…

Teachers of young writers often feel pressure to focus on narrow, tested conventions, forms and processes of writing. These pressures can contribute to instruction that does not consider students' interests, experiences, language or cultures, but rather can further deficit views of students whose backgrounds do not closely align with those making…

We examined the effects of a text-based argument writing intervention, "Triple Q," on argument writing skills in a cluster-randomized trial where groups of middle schools were assigned to conditions within school-level SES blocks. The intervention comprised three 15-day units. Students read and discussed argument texts representing…

Making connections between children's existing means of expression (play, art, and movement) and the intricacies of print is a necessary and time-honored approach to writing instruction in the early years of school, yet, after kindergarten, one that is easily overlooked. In this article, we examine an approach to writing instruction for…

The act of writing involves decision-making that can be challenging for elementary students as they choose ideas, organization structures, and audiences for whom to share their messages. Teachers can support students in their decision-making through providing explicit explanation of the metacognitive decision-making that occurs at each stage of…

Despite the importance of writing skills to school and life success, there is scant research into the enabling and constraining conditions that shape elementary students' views about their writing practices. This paper examines students' views about writing through the lens of reflexivity theory. Applying an explanatory sequential model of…

Providing adequate writing instruction and practice in schools is an essential cornerstone of writing development and it affords a diagnostic approach for teachers. But what writing instruction is being practiced in Australian primary schools? The aim of this study was to survey a sample of teachers (n = 310) about their instructional practices…

The recent surge in studies on collaborative writing (CW) has provided valuable insights into the product and process of writing. When writing together, adults tend to produce better texts and generate and resolve a large number of language-related episodes (LREs). Also, analyses of the dialogues of collaborative writers show that learners are…

This article examines collaborative writing in schools by systematically reviewing peer-reviewed and empirical articles published in English in scientific journals between 1986 and 2020. Drawing on scoping review methodology and using the typology of collaborative writing, 107 studies on collaborative writing in first-language school contexts…

Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) is a method designed to explicitly teach students self-regulation skills and help them implement them. While SRSD's beneficial effect on writing quality has been confirmed in a large body of literature, the questions of why, how, and for whom SRSD works remain unclear. To investigate the underlying…