Examines the reading personna of the writer and its functions. Discusses how a writing instructor, by means of listening in a conference setting, can bring this other personna into existence. (HTH)

Traces the development of a project that consisted of first graders developing a book. (DF)

Raises some questions about the way children write stories and the part teachers play in their writing. (HOD)

Offers a five-step support technique for transferring speaking to writing and offers observations on helping children with the conventions of writing. (HTH)

Discusses efforts at teaching children in kindergarten how to write, indicating that emergent readers can indeed write with scribbles, random letters, numerals, and sometimes words. Discusses their dictation, journal content, writing stages, and developmental trends. (HTH)

Explores the patterns in children's talk about their writing, by means of transcribed conversations during daily writing/sharing sessions in a first grade classroom. Discusses the importance of this kind of talk. (HTH)

Argues that children want to write and enjoy writing and that teachers need to provide them with suitable opportunities for doing so. Discusses different kinds of writing that allow children's voices to come through. (FL)

Reports on a recent study of first grade writing efforts that confirms the importance of scribble in the writing process when it is an accepted language behavior in the classroom. (FL)

Analyzes the composing processes of three children, aged two to four, as they composed with a responsible adult in a group setting. (HOD)

Offers guidelines on helping young children develop into independent writers. Explains what to expect at different stages, such as semiphonetic and phonetic stages, drawing as a prewriting activity, and writing and revising once drawing no longer dictates writing. Offers suggestions for providing an environment that supports the writing process.…

The rhetorical cycle is a step-by-step approach that provides classroom experience before students actually write, thereby making the writing process less frustrating for them. This approach consists of six sequential steps: reading, thinking, speaking, listening, discussing, and finally writing. Readings serve not only as models of rhetorical…

The teaching of writing as a process can be accomplished through an eight-step "prewriting process" approach. The eight steps include planning, organizing, establishing assumptions and premises, obtaining data, evaluating data, electing a course of action, control, and implementation. In the planning stage, students are asked to complete an…

Reviews what researchers have found out about prewriting, and postulates how this information can help teachers promote growth in writing. (CRH)

The relationships between the understandings children develop while learning the written form of their own names and those developed while learning other words were examined in a study. Twelve children, aged three, four, and five, were selected. The study involved three tasks which examined the subjects' expertise with letters, numbers, and the…

Research on the composition process and writing instruction has reiterated that red-pencilling students' literary efforts achieves mostly negative effects. Researchers contend that if teachers ignore the mechanics used (or misused) by beginning writers, if they encourage and stimulate the production of both oral and written language, reward the…