Investigated Greek elementary teachers' personal theories on student writing. Surveys of teachers from urban and suburban schools indicated that teachers considered good writing a gift, not a teachable skill. They viewed the teachers' role as that of a judge, not a helper or collaborator, and students' writing as a product, not a process and as…

Describes a writing program involving second/third grade students and a university language arts class. Discusses a thematic unit and associated writing activities on the themes of winter and poetry. Notes that both groups of students developed better clarity in their written work. (RS)

Examines whether storybook exposure and the amount of teaching in reading and writing skills reported by middle-class parents were related to oral language skills and written language skills of kindergarten children. Shows that storybook exposure explained statistically significant unique variance in children's oral language skills but not in…

Combines reading workshops and writing workshops with drama to help students understand and develop skill with writing and presentation. Includes four dramatic-writing mini-lessons. (RS)

Examined how first, second, and third graders learned to spell and investigated other questions related to learning to spell. Data came from teacher notes, spelling pretests and posttests, and interviews about students' perceptions of writing samples and of themselves as spellers. Results indicated that spelling was a developmental process, and…

Discusses extending the "Witch's Hat" technique with the Problem-Solution pattern and the dialog projection technique to help learners comprehend and produce basic narrative discourse in English by developing awareness of the rhetorical structure of stories. Discusses benefits of the combined strategy. (RS)

Recognizes the desire to discuss current environmental issues as a significant learning motive. Describes a course in which a student debates facilitate learning. A student moderator conducts debates between two groups of students, and the debates are organized using lecture material, internet searches, numerical analysis, and research projects.…

Proposes a rethinking of what professors should teach technical writing students, based on actual experience with three organizations in Oregon. Discusses how to design assignments for students that simulate the reality of a work environment. Explores types of technical writing skills that are increasingly in demand. Offers several strategies for…

Discusses how students can thoroughly understand the process of revising a few sentences by discussing revisions with a partner, reading the revisions of the same sentences by other students, and reviewing the best revisions with the whole class. (RS)

Describes a collaborative writing project at Adrian College in Michigan. Students in a general chemistry class collaborated with those from a freshman writing course; the intention was to have students combine their talents to improve their ability to express scientific ideas in a clear and accurate manner. Discusses student reactions and…

Describes a faculty development workshop designed to teach about the Six Trait Analytical Model, explaining how the facilitator's presentation and the attending teachers' attitudes combined to make the workshop a grueling experience. (SM)

Provides advice to teacher educators who are first-time grant writers about how to ensure that their proposals are competitive, noting common pitfalls frequently seen by those reviewing and evaluating grant proposals (e.g., waiting until the last minute to write, writing poorly, and not stating specific outcomes). A list of federal grant resources…

Examined the effects of both general and task-specific writing experiences on college students' writing-skill development. As predicted, repeated practice was associated with superior writing skills and after controlling for repeated practice, writing within a specific test domain was associated with superior writing skills. Implications for…

Describes writing as a complex process requiring cooperation of cognitive, perceptual, and motor activities. Examines current trends in handwriting instruction and Montessori's approach to handwriting instruction. Describes the indirect preparation through Montessori materials and a direct teaching approach involving a simplification of the…

Discusses how an online environment enhances the effectiveness of peer critique. Describes experiences with peer critiquing by computer. Notes that students responded favorably to online critiquing. Concludes that the results were critiques that were lively and personable--not matter-of-fact and dull like many handwritten ones. (SG)