The purposes of this qualitative study, viewed through the New Literacy Studies (NLS) theoretical lens, were to explore third grade students' literacy practices as they composed multimodal informational texts in a digital writing workshop; and examine how these students composed multimodally in a digital format and what their perspectives were on…

Although performance feedback interventions successfully lead to improvements in students' performance, research suggests that the combination of feedback and goal setting leads to greater performance than either component alone and that graphing performance in relation to a goal can lead to improvements in academic performance. The goal of the…

The aim of this action research was to investigate the effects of digital storytelling in improving the writing skills of third grade students enrolled in rural primary schools. The writing performances of the students were measured before and after the teaching procedures of digital storytelling. Then, the process of narrative writing with…

Dual-language learner (DLL) children typically learn to write while still learning English, with vocabulary appearing to be a particularly vulnerable domain. This study investigates how a reduced English lexicon impacts English writing in DLL children. Participants were 100 Spanish-speaking DLLs and 100 of their monolingual classmates in first…

This study, based in a small rural school, explores the opportunities provided by collaborative learning with a mixed aged class of 7-11 year olds (Year 3-Year 6). This paper specifically focuses on those children aged 7-8 years (Year 3) and how they worked on improving the quality of their writing through optional and directed collaborative group…

We had 3 aims in the present study: (a) to examine the dimensionality of various evaluative approaches to scoring writing samples (e.g., quality, productivity, and curriculum-based measurement [CBM] writing scoring), (b) to investigate unique language and cognitive predictors of the identified dimensions, and (c) to examine gender gap in the…

Strategic and Interactive Writing Instruction (SIWI) has led to improved writing and language outcomes among deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) middle grades students. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of SIWI on the written expression of DHH elementary students across recount/personal narrative, information report, and persuasive…

The purpose of this study was to address the utility of curriculum-based measurements of written expression (CBM-W) for predicting writing growth longitudinally and address the extent to which CBM-W relate to other academic and behavior measures. CBM-W has been shown to be an appropriate and useful method for assessing and monitoring writing skill…

We had 3 aims in the present study: (a) to examine the dimensionality of various evaluative approaches to scoring writing samples (e.g., quality, productivity, and curriculum-based measurement [CBM] writing scoring), (b) to investigate unique language and cognitive predictors of the identified dimensions, and (c) to examine gender gap in the…

"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…

Research on evidence-based writing intervention practices as well as reliable and valid assessments of elementary-aged students' writing fluency has been lacking compared to other academic areas (i.e., reading). Performance feedback interventions targeting writing fluency are gaining empirical support (Eckert et al., 2006); however, growth…

The purpose of the study was to discover if there exists a statistically significant difference in DSTP student writing scores from spring 2007 third grade to spring 2007 fifth grade student writing scores for students of Delaware Writing Project (DWP) Partnership teachers and students in classrooms with teachers not participating in the DWP…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of cursive handwriting programs in improving letter legibility and form in third-grade students without identified handwriting problems. Four months into the school year, cursive handwriting was assessed for a sample of convenience of 50 third-grade students. Subsequently, students received…

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of reading a model written assignment, generating a list of criteria for the assignment, and self-assessing according to a rubric, as well as gender, time spent writing, prior rubric use, and previous achievement on elementary school students' scores for a written assignment (N = 116).…