A collaborative student teaching team (involving a student teacher, classroom mentor, and university mentor) negotiated the fit between teacher preparation and middle school classroom life. Transcripts of weekly conferences and individual reflections highlighted the benefits of creating respectful environments, developing collegial relationships,…

This article offers an instructional intervention for teaching analytical writing skills to middle school students with and without learning difficulties. The intervention combines direct instruction, peer critiquing (cooperative learning), and a cognitive behavior modification self-regulation strategy. (DB)

Argues that grammar correction in second-language writing classes should be abandoned because it is ineffective, harmful, and unhelpful in any interesting sense for theoretical and practical reasons. The article also considers and rejects a number of arguments previously offered in favor of grammar correction. (122 references) (Author/CK)

International students who have learned English in the classroom have different writing problems than U.S. resident language minority students who have learned English primarily by listening. Non-native speakers need information and practice in specific areas of academic prose such as content and organization. Many language minority residents also…

Offers strategies for working with international students throughout the writing process to produce more critical thinking and better text. The process approach has specific advantages for non-native speakers of English. Implementing it involves techniques encouraging prewriting, planning, conference groups and peer support, and multiple drafts.…

Investigates the effects of training for peer revision in college freshman English composition classes, focusing on students' ability to critique peer writing; quality of student writing; and students' attitudes toward peer revision and writing in general. Findings revealed an improvement in students' ability to critique peers and in their…

Examines reading, writing, and mathematics for older primary children within the Montessori setting. Emphasizes normalization and engaging links with the prepared environment, focusing on how discovery moments in reading and contexts for learning around culture create natural conditions for learning. Asserts that the guided discovery approach…

Describes using drama to provide constant scaffolding as children learn to write stories. The 5-week process begins with collaboratively setting the stage, proceeds with scaffolding for reviewing the elements of stories (punctuation, the sequence of events, characterization, the plot problem and solution), and concludes with independent projects…

Describes the use of a local area network and video switching equipment in teaching revision skills on computer. Explains that reading stories from texts, rewriting them from differing character viewpoints, and editing them as a group exposed students to a variety of writing problems and stimulated various revision strategies. (SG)

Gives a history of the whole language movement. Looks at the early use of the term "whole language." Explores influences from philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and education on development of whole language. Discusses influences from early educational movements in the U.S., England, and New Zealand. (Author/BB)

Reviews Monsters and Make-Believe Plus, a computer program which supports learners in their quest to become skilled language users. Finds it to be one of the most powerful software programs available to implement a whole language program. (MG)

The viability of self-instructional strategy training was investigated in a study involving 22 learning disabled and 11 normal fifth and sixth graders. Training produced meaningful and lasting effects on composition skills and heightened the sense of self-efficacy of subjects. (TJH)

The pedagogical literature on the peer response group as a teaching method in the writing classroom is examined, within the context of current theories on teaching and learning of writing. The few empirical studies on the method are reviewed. Suggestions for reconceptualizing peer response to writing are provided. (TJH)

Suggests four overlapping areas of exploration that might help spark "creative re-formations" of the way English teachers think about computers and their relationship to writing: (1) computers and teaching writing, (2) computers and language theory, (3) computers and learning from the past, and (4) computer research in other fields. (GEA)

Explains the use of the Times Network System's (TTNS) Electronic Mailbox in the classroom, discussing advantages and disadvantages, and suggests conditions favorable to a successful program. (NH)