Uses an achievement-goal framework to examine changes in students' motivation for reading and writing (a longitudinal study involving 431 students in grades 3 through 5) and to evaluate a classroom-intervention project. Finds that, as teachers provided more opportunities for students to complete challenging, collaborative, and multiday…

Suggests that writing instruction for students attending residential public schools for gifted students must be tailored to this unique population. Writing instruction should include the writing conventions of various disciplines, writing for the general public, writing across the curriculum, technical writing, expressive writing, and persuasive…

This article presents practical and specific strategies for helping students with writing difficulties become successful in each of the following stages of the writing process: prewriting, writing, revising, and publishing. Recommendations include using visual images, modeling prewriting procedures, providing word banks, providing a…

Examined the cognitive processes through which writing contributes to science learning among elementary school students. Analyzed four aspects of students' verbal learning strategies: writing operations, transitional sequences among writing operations, text features, and strategies for generating content. Concluded that for elementary students,…

Describes collaborative study done by a prekindergarten teacher, staff developer, and college teacher educator utilizing a highly integrated curriculum whose core was multiple symbol systems. Notes focus on literacy as well as beginnings of writing and reading. Concludes that within the context of high-stakes schooling, the teacher managed to…

Describes a project that used photography to inspire and structure creative writing among students who were struggling writers. Outlines the writing process and the problems struggling writers encounter. Provides information for taking good photographs, making photographs interesting, and choosing subject ideas to get students started. (SD)

Examines the benefits of reader response by means of student letters to authors. Notes that students involved in response writing become more interested in reading, are more reflective individuals, and more responsible for monitoring and resolving their own questions. (SD)

Teacher educator and researcher Peterson works with eighth-grade science teacher, Rochwerger, who believes that writing is a learning tool that will enable her students to become scientifically literate. Here, we see this belief played out through an action research project that found students using a genre of their choice to write about what they…

This study examined the writing strategies and text characteristics associated with discovering a scientific principle by writing about an experiment. Sixty-four university students (non-science majors) carried out a physics experiment concerning either buoyancy, or the forces acting on a balance scale, then wrote an informal journal-style note…

Children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at increased risk of academic difficulties and special education placement (Barkley, 1998). One academic area, written expression, has received little research attention. This study assessed the effectiveness of a validated strategy instruction model--Self-Regulated Strategy…

Focused freewriting, broadly defined as writing without stopping and editing about a specific topic, has been viewed and used as a powerful tool for developing student writing in a wide spectrum of educational contexts. This study aimed to further explore the use of focused freewriting in the context of promoting students' academic skills…

This article describes the preliminary exploratory process used to develop the research questions that will be addressed during a project to be offered in the 2005-2006 academic year. The project will bring together Maine high school and college faculty to learn from each other about shared needs, methods and priorities, in a year long series of…

Focusing on issues that define the multicultural society and intended to help students become alert readers, more purposeful and effective writers, and thinking members of the larger community, this book is built around selections by committed writers who demonstrate the power of the written word to record, interpret, and change today's social and…

This paper discusses expressive writing, which can be defined as writing in a conversational and personal way. The paper explains that, in this expressive mode, writers are allowed the freedom to mull over ideas and to highlight certain ideas, even as they write, making it a vehicle for learning. The paper presents discussion on the time (i.e.,…

Reading for meaning is the primary objective of reading instruction. Therefore, it is imperative that teachers focus on effective ways to instruct comprehension strategies. Concurrently, holistic assessment that is authentic, varied, reflective and ongoing is also a critical objective of reading instruction. These two objectives can be met when…