Examines the teaching and learning of writing for secondary school students as it occurs in the interactive context of teacher-student writing conferences. Finds that collaboration is a shifting process shaped by conference participants and by the rhetorical circumstances of their talk. Describes collaboration as a continuum, varying both across…

Presents a basic framework for guiding children in report writing using children's informational books as models in the process. Discusses various aspects of report writing. Describes specific book titles as they relate to these aspects. (MG)

Reviews the scholarship on the connections between meditation and writing. Analyzes objections to the use of meditation in the writing classroom. Relates experiences using meditation techniques with various writing students. Suggests that writing teachers use meditation techniques with apprehensive or blocked writers. (HB)

Presents a transcript of the electronic discourse in response to Lester Faigley's recent book, "Fragments of Rationality," produced by a networked graduate seminar in composition studies. Discusses the impact of postmodernism on the composition classroom and the potential usefulness of similar networked attempts to write collaboratively.…

Asserts that the literature on the use of writing in sociology ignores a systematic view of how writing relates to the discipline of sociology. Examines C. Wright Mills' concept of "sociological imagination." Provides suggestions for teachers who require student writing and seek to help student become better writers. (CFR)

Discusses five writing exercises to improve teachers' and students' writing. Suggests using the exercises once a day. (RS)

Describes how the writer, an author of books for young adults, uses journal writing in many and varied ways: to deal with grief and confusion; capture his fascination with life; for free writing; keep quotes from people he admires; save things his friends say; keep wonderful passages from other books--a personal safe to keep precious things. (SR)

Offers a structural analysis of an explanatory text written by a 12-year-old pupil to demonstrate how the PISA technique (Procedures for Incremental Structural Analysis) contributes to the understanding of conceptual processes in writing. Discusses evidence for the validity of such analysis and its generalizability. (SR)

Explores claims about creative writing through students' experiences in a summer introductory fiction workshop for non-English majors. Suggests that in writing instruction, the critical and the creative need to go hand in hand. Concludes that critical reflection on the makings and use of stories is crucial for students planning careers in…

Examines the nature of literacy activities in a technology-based fourth-grade classroom, investigating how the writing process is affected when technology is part of the classroom routine. Discusses findings in five areas: defining the writing episode, examining the writing process, assessing growth in written expression, relating production to…

Suggests that the prewriting phase of the writing process is the most important and that a promising approach to the prewriting phase for students with learning difficulties is called Web-making (also called cognitive mapping, idea mapping, patterned note taking, construct procedure, graphic overview, networking, flowcharting, and semantic…

Suggests that keeping a writer's notebook can be a unit of study in itself and that students can learn to use the notebook as a workbench for drafting, crafting, revising, and editing. Describes the author's work using writer's notebooks across several classrooms and grade levels. (RS)

Gives suggestions for how to monitor student revision processes in computer-assisted writing assignments that leave no "paper trail." Demonstrates the process of self-critiquing in writing five assigned papers, where writers move beyond many of the simplistic or unformed critical concepts that appeared in the first critiques. (VWC)

Interviews author Jim Murphy, two-time winner of the Orbis Pictus award for children's nonfiction. Discusses his writing processes, finding subjects, his fascination with first-hand accounts of history, his use of visual displays that extend text, and ensuring accuracy. (SR)

This article reviews the literature on spelling development in alphabetic scripts. It describes how once children begin to learn that the function of alphabetic writing is to represent the sounds of language, they go through the process of learning sound-spelling correspondence in increasingly fine detail, from syllables to phonemes. (Contains…