Shares the author's experience as a third-grade teacher coping for two years with the changes in her classroom brought about by the schoolwide implementation of a comprehensive reading program called Success For All (SFA). Describes how she tries to incorporate what she believes to be effective without compromising the program's implementation.…

Discusses the benefits of collaborative writing in a writing workshop and the value of a social cognitive approach to learning for middle school students. Examines a taped collaborative writing workshop to demonstrate themes of using exploratory talk to stimulate thinking, promoting conceptual understanding, internalizing language to gain…

Presents the results of a study carried out in Sweden to investigate the promotion of self assessment and reflection in the adult second language classroom. Proposes a method in which the computer is used to record a writing session and later to replay the entire text production in retrospective peer sessions. After using the method, all writers…

Focuses on how teaching experience at a newly implemented second language writing center contributed towards personal theory development of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing for three teachers. Combined the literature on teacher knowledge with ESL writing to study teachers' changing beliefs about ESL writers, readers, texts, and contexts.…

Reports on the efficacy of interventions made to improve the attrition rates of students of Japanese as a foreign language at the University of Sydney, Australia. Specifically, the study sought to evaluate differences in outcomes between students with a background in a morphographic writing system and those without such a background. (Author/VWL)

Presents the position of the International Reading Association and the National Association for the Education of Young Children regarding early-literacy development to guide teachers of young children in schools and early childhood programs. Presents rationale and supporting research for their position. Describes early-literacy development and…

Presents the reflections of two ninth-grade students as they developed and implemented writing workshops for grade 2 and 3 classrooms. Notes that most of the mini-lessons worked, but some were not as successful. Notes the amazement of the authors regarding the positive relationships with teachers, students, and administrators that came out of the…

Discusses 7 questions developed by the author to evaluate web sites. Offers a list of 42 web sites in several categories useful to middle school teachers both for classroom use and professional development: super-linkers (indexes of useful sites); reference materials; writing instruction; literacy, reading, and literature; and educational…

Describes how the author's 6 middle school students living in a village in the Yukon, 100 miles off the road system just below the arctic circle, enthusiastically wrote stories or poems about their lives. The students shared their works via an online electronic conferencing system with students from the unimaginably different landscape of the…

Explores the portfolio process as an evaluation tool for authentic assessment of writing. Discusses (1) current literature related to use of portfolios; (2) the critical elements of the portfolio process; (3) their relationship to the authentic assessment of writing; and (4) effective ways of implementing individual educational portfolios for…

Discusses development of an integrated peer writing assistant program. Student feedback indicates out-of-class peer review is beneficial to them. Writing assistants reported their skills also improved from working with their peers. Offers suggestions for development, coordination, implementation, and integration of a successful peer writing…

Introduces the special issue on children's writing which contains seven articles that offer analytic portraits of the teaching and learning of writing from prekindergarten through seventh grade. Highlights the collective themes of a social perspective on writing, of children's diverse resources, and of the links between those resources and…

Suggests that the direct teaching of written language features is no substitute for extensive experience of written language. Gives a brief preliminary account of a recent Centre for Language in Primary Education (CLPE) research project on the influence of children's reading of literature on their writing at Key Stage 2. Highlights the value of…

Describes a first-grade teacher's collaboration with a university professor to combine a supportive classroom with on-the-spot conferencing and publishing to support and document growth in student writing. Discusses underlying theories of the practice and illustrates the four-step process for conferencing and publishing. Asserts that on-the-spot…

Discussion of assistive technology for students with learning disabilities in general education classrooms first reviews computer supports for writing including talking word processors, word prediction software, portable note-taking devices, prewriting organizers, multimedia prewriting prompts, and editing/publishing software. It then considers…