One mandate of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 is that students develop a writing portfolio. The Kentucky Department of Education and AEL, Inc., collaborated to help schools discern areas for improvement in their writing programs, then developed a needs assessment process instrument, the School Study of Writing Instruction (SSWI). This…

Not only inspiring teachers to help students become environmentally literate, this book also provides the tools to make it happen in the literature classroom. Beginning with readings and exercises about perception, it explores a wealth of nature writing activities, the history of people's relationship with nature from mythological times to the…

Understanding collaborative writing as a form of networking is useful in that it highlights the fact that composition students do not have the same type of networks or networking skills. Composition assignments should take into account the digital divide and should foster networking across social class divisions because invention is a social act.…

Seven years of changes in a Practicum in Reading course has altered the responsibilities and accountabilities for preservice teachers tutoring in a public school. Changes, formative and summative assessment results for tutored children and implications for the program's future are discussed. A study examined whether the college literacy practicum…

This book brings together research on student writing carried out by practitioners in a number of international university contexts. Each of the chapters focuses on some aspect of "new contexts" for student writing, either by examining the writing and assessment practices of nontraditional university courses or by exploring attempts to introduce…

Noting the field of literacy education is vast and complicated, this book identifies the most significant issues and trends facing literacy educators today and to locate sources that explain principal viewpoints on these issues. Each chapter is made up of four parts: a brief introduction to the topic, the articles themselves, an annotated…

To teach writing well, teachers need three things: first, they have to understand writing itself, as well as writing pedagogy; second, they need to be writers themselves; and third, they need to know how to communicate their knowledge about writing effectively to their students. This book is based on the premise that writing ability--and teaching…

Students will work in groups to read and analyze fairy tales, brainstorm for events in their lives that could be changed into fairy tales, develop setting, characters, and plot for their fairy tale, write, illustrate, and compile their fairy tales into group books. During ten 45-minute lessons, students will: choose three fairy tales and read them…

Research indicates that for students to perform well in speaking, reading, and writing they need to possess a rich vocabulary. Studies have consistently shown that "vocabulary size correlates with success in all areas of the curriculum" (Manning, 1999). This Topical Bibliography and Commentary reviews the recent research literature on the…

This videotape series and viewing guide is designed to complement the book "In the Company of Children." Each videotape includes four brief, real-life classroom segments that illustrate different aspects of workshop instruction. The guide will help teachers link readings from the book with different segments from the videotapes,…

Noting that when students are immersed in reading and writing poetry they benefit from revisions in writing and learn to critically analyze text, this book outlines the ways that poetry workshops can excite students' interest. Chapter 1, "Laying a Foundation for Poetry Workshop" defines poetry workshop and explains its value in the reading and…

These medium-term plans have been produced to support, but not prescribe, teachers' planning. They exemplify ways in which England's National Literacy Strategy (NLS) Framework objectives (and the Early Learning Goals) can be clustered. The Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 medium term plans cluster the NLS text, sentence and word level objectives into…

This group of three leaflets summarizes the grammatical content of England's National Literacy Strategy course "Grammar for Writing." The leaflets are entitled: (1) "From Word to Text"; (2) "From Sentence to Text"; and (3) "From Grammar to Writing." The first leaflet notes that today teaching grammar is…

This book contains materials to support the introduction of Early Literacy Support (ELS) in Year 1 schools in England. The 60 sessions outlined in the book are designed to revisit key objectives from the National Literacy Strategy Framework. The ELS program involves comprehension training for Year 1 teachers and teaching assistants. The training…

This is a prewriting activity for personal memoir or autobiographical writing. Grade 6-8 students brainstorm for important memories, create graphics or symbols for their most important memories, and construct a life map on tag board or construction paper, connecting drawings and captions of high and low points with a highway. During four 50-minute…