To investigate differences in students' writing development due to teacher modeling, a study examined students enrolled in whole language classrooms in grades 1 and 2 in two separate school districts. Students enrolled in independent classrooms where teachers did not provide writing models were in a school in a lower middle class neighborhood of…

Distinguishing between teaching writing and teaching word processing, this book is intended as a guide for teachers who wish to teach writing with microcomputers. The 13 chapters and authors are as follows: (1) "Integrating Composing and Computing," Elizabeth Sommers; (2) "A Writing Teacher's Guide to Computerese," James…

Assuming that learning to spell and punctuate involves making and testing hypotheses about how the orthographic style of English works, a study explored six children's classroom spelling during their third and fourth grade years. The subjects were American children of the Tonono O'odham (Papago) tribe of southwestern Arizona who were part of a…

Using ethnographic observations of 30 children in a multicultural inner-city fifth grade class over a period of one year, a study examined the children's classroom interactions with the literary genres of science fiction and fantasy, investigating their sequential acquisition of the constitutive elements of the two genres as well as their…

An addition to the "wholeness of language" debate, this document is divided into two sections. The first reviews theories regarding the reading writing relationship, suggesting that an awareness of the interdependencies and commonalities among various forms of communication may provide insights leading to students learning to read like…

Noting that computers have fascinated teachers looking for new and better ways of teaching writing, not because the machines make students into better writers, but because they are useful tools that make editing and revising much easier, this paper explores the use of computers to teach writing, based on the experiences of a writing laboratory…

A cooperative writing workshop that attempts to engage first-term college freshmen in a variety of genuine writing problems by stressing the class as audience, the use of daily journals, feedback from small group discussions, and frequent revision is described in the first part of this document. The remainder of the paper presents a case study of…

A longitudinal study investigated some of the home and school influences on the writing development of 20 children. Data collected in all three phases of the research included measures of preschool oral language development, transcripts and interviews concerning parental and child interest in literacy, classroom observations of primary schooling,…

Drawn from a California conference that brought together writing instructors and researchers, the papers in this compilation address problems in writing, policies affecting both writing instruction and assessment, and possibilities for improving both areas. Papers in the first section of the book represent positions of eight separate entities: (1)…

To learn more about the kind of learning that occurs when students read and receive response to their writing, a study was designed to develop an analytical system by which to describe the language of writing groups. Nine writing groups were examined, two from grade 5, four from grade 8, and three from grades 10 through 12. The data collected…

Using such ethnographic techniques as interviews, classroom observations, and videotape recordings, a study explored the impact of two kindergarten teachers' theoretical orientations to literacy (whole language versus mechanics/skills) on children's developing concepts of writing. Data analysis revealed that children in a communication/whole…

A two-part study intended to investigate what constitutes successful teacher response to student writing is described in this report. The described study consisted of a survey of response practices of 560 elementary and secondary school teachers who were among the most successful in their communities as judged by directors of the sites of the…

The reading/writing project described in this document examined the basic cognitive activities children engage in when reading and writing, involved 67 children from grades 3, 6, and 9, and addressed these questions: Since reading and writing both involve the development of meaning, is there a common language core, or routines, that children…

Forty-eight children, equally divided among three-, four-, and five-year-old groups, were subjects in a study that explored the development and interrelationships among several facets of writing knowledge and reading readiness skills. Three categories of tasks were administered: knowledge of functions, knowledge of forms, and reading readiness…

Acknowledging the importance of sight to the writing process, the paper elucidates the processes of vision related to the composing process. In the opening section the physics of light and vision, optic neuroanatomy, and cortical responses to visual stimuli are explained. Next, theories of vision and data mapping are examined and their…