The authors explored the impact of a novel, interactive performing arts-based program on students' writing skills. The program featured the Story Pirates, a group that teaches children how to write stories and then turns their stories into a musical sketch comedy show. Written stories from the third-grade students in an elementary school were…

A process writing project in a third-grade classroom explored the idea of using nonfiction mentor texts to assist students in writing their own creative informational texts about animals. By looking at author craft and structure during close reading activities with nonfiction Twin Texts, students were taught how to emulate these techniques in…