This descriptive study examined differences in children's text production as a function of the advanced planning strategies they used. A sample of 117 third-grade children engaged in independent advanced planning and then composed a compare-and-contrast essay both before and after receiving a six-week text production fluency intervention. Analyses…

We examined spelling errors patterns, cohesive ties, and syntax features in English and Spanish essays written by Spanish-English emergent bilinguals in Grades 1, 2, and 3 (N = 278; 51% female) enrolled in either English immersion or English-Spanish dual immersion programs. In Study 1, we addressed whether students made consistent spelling errors…

Machines have a long-demonstrated ability to find statistical relationships between qualities of texts and surface-level linguistic indicators of writing. More recently, unlocked by artificial intelligence, the potential of using machines to identify content-related writing trait criteria has been uncovered. This development is significant,…

This study examined the number of writing samples needed to obtain a reliable estimate of young struggling writers' capabilities. It further assessed if performance in one genre was reflective of performance in other genres for these children. Second- and third-grade students (81 boys, 56 girls), who were identified as struggling writers in need…

"Fable Writer" is an online reading, writing and research tool designed to facilitate synchronous, collaborative writing tool that enables learners to read and copy text and images from teacher-curated books and Web-based resources in the "Fable Reader" digital library. The "Fable Writer" project addressed two…

Two measures of syntactic complexity, clauses per T-unit and words per clause, were used to examine differences among four genres of text--narrative, descriptive, compare/contrast, and persuasive--written by the same two cohorts (83 students in grades three and five and 96 students in grades five and seven) on two occasions 2 years apart as part…

This article examines the "master" and "little" cultural narratives students perform in literacy narratives. Results show that students incorporate the literacy-equals-success master narrative most often, yet they also include in little narratives figures such as the hero, victim, and child prodigy. I consider how these findings can improve…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of TRALE (Technology-Rich Authentic Learning Environments) on children's writing development by tracing the logical sequence of how TRALE fostered goal-directed behavior and planning that resulted in initiating and maintaining cognitive components until a written product was completed. The…