As a new faculty member, the author was invited by colleagues to help protect a resource they believed was essential to their instructional program. The importance of teaching grammar in a didactic fashion as a precursor to student writing constituted an unchallenged belief in the department. Faculty members were committed to the notion that…

This textbook book is an English course intended for use during the seventh and eighth grades and provides for study along both lines of language work, grammar and composition. The book includes a section on dictionary use. The final chapter is devoted to word analysis and was designed especially for the benefit of that great majority of grammar…

Finding voice is often the most intimidating stumbling block to authentic writing in the classroom. Linda Rief offers insight into tapping students' passion and promoting personal responsibility for learning with her "quickwrites," and includes a checklist of ways to elicit writing that matters.

This study investigates the possibility that multimedia authorship may help students become more proficient writers. Four classes of 8th-grade students in an urban setting participated in the study, which took place over seven successive class periods. Students were given a 7-paragraph article on teen smoking to use in developing a nonlinear…

In this paper, the role of computers in writing process was investigated. Last 25 years of journals were searched to find related articles. Articles and books were classified under prewriting, composing, and revising and editing headings. The review results showed that computers can make writers' job easy in the writing process. In addition,…

The spin on Frazer School Librarian Laurie LeFever's entry for Syracuse University's 2007 E*LIT competition is what made her school literacy project for children with disabilities really unique. Instead of working with students to create a project that would be targeted toward children with disabilities, she actually used students with…

This textbook book is an English course intended for use during the seventh and eighth grades and provides for study along both lines of language work, grammar and composition. The book includes a section on dictionary use. The final chapter is devoted to word analysis and was designed especially for the benefit of that great majority of grammar…

Writing comes to life when students remember to watch for and express detail--name names. Examples from favorite authors, classroom exercises and discussion, and practice with absolutes and appositives all support students as they focus the "camera" on vivid descriptive elements. (Contains 3 figures.)

Public school students have completed this year's testing under the 2003-04 Wisconsin Student Assessment System "Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations" (WKCE). These examinations were administered at grades 4, 8, and 10 as required by s. 118.30, Wis. Stats. The test results will provide important information about what students know and…

This qualitative study explored 8th-grade students' responses to hearing stories about the lived experience of violence. A convenience sample of 13 students attending health education classes at a public middle school was used. After hearing each story, students answered a series of questions using the process of free writing. Free writing is a…

The effects of a widely used expressive writing intervention on adolescents' somatic symptoms, distress, and positive psychological functioning were evaluated. Eighth-grade (n = 106) students were randomly assigned to write about either an emotional or a neutral topic for 3 consecutive days. Students completed measures of somatic symptoms, medical…

Having students express their understanding of difficult, new material in their own words is an effective method to deepen their comprehension and learning. Summary Street[R] is a computer tutor that offers a supportive context for students to practice this activity by means of summary writing, guiding them through successive cycles of revising…

Students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) are required to pass the same competency exams as students enrolled in general education in order to graduate to new grade levels and to earn a high school diploma. In this study, the authors taught students with SLD a self-directed organizational strategy designed to assist them in passing the…

This study uses systemic functional linguistics and the related critical discourse analysis to examine intertextual links between four eighth-grade students' talk in informal conversations as they generated ideas for the characters of their narrative writing. Data sources included classroom observations, students' drafts and polished writing,…

The status of the current standard African languages has been seriously undermined by factors such as the association of the standardisation process with colonial and neo-colonial structures, the lack of function of the standards and the rise of high status non-standard urban varieties. This paper describes the process leading to and some…