Describes how a teacher helps children understand that endings do not just magically pop into their heads as they write the final words of their stories. Hopes to provide students with authentic revising sessions and to encourage them to assume the dual role of critical reader and thoughtful writer whenever possible. (SG)

Discusses approaches for helping upper elementary-age children learn about words through integrated study of spelling, grammar, and meaning. Describes what word study is, discusses word study in an integrated language arts unit (providing several examples), and offers reasons for including word study in a language arts program. (SR)

Describes some activities from the authors' fourth/fifth-grade classroom exploring "identity." Offers brief descriptions of 26 children's books that invite critical conversations about identity around topics of: making a choice and changing your life; gaining control and overcoming obstacles; judging and being judged; and relationships…

Describes how a teacher researcher invited her students to be detectives on the lookout for language and to take a critical perspective on how it varies with each speaker, purpose, and context. Suggests that educators need to be careful about how they present language varieties so that their students appreciate them as more than "quaint artifacts…

Describes a fifth-grade classroom where student goal setting and self-evaluation were an integral part of the curriculum. Explores the growth and development of these students and their teacher. Discusses what brought about changes in instruction and learning. (RS)

Describes fourth graders' observations and hypotheses about the sun and moon and how the three-dimensional reality gradually replaced the inadequate two-dimensional models of textbooks. Discusses implications for instruction of this progression from concrete to abstract. (HTH)

Responds to William Bigelow's 1989 article which was being used in a fifth grade classroom. Questions the approach taken by the teacher and focuses on how children can be most productively involved in the kind of critical reading Bigelow advocates. Discusses the use of "I-Charts" (inquiry charts) to foster critical reading. (MG)

Explores aesthetic responses to literature by examining the responses of fifth graders to a variety of books and films. Finds three main characteristics of students' responses: picturing a story in their minds; extending a story or hypothesize about it while reading; and relating associations and feelings evoked while reading and responding.…

Describes a discussion format called Collaborative Reasoning, part of a literature-based reading program in which students discuss a central question about a story they have read. Discusses the background of Collaborative Reasoning, its discussion framework, and instructional moves that support the development of reasoning. Notes the high rate of…

Describes fourth-grade students' experiences during a concentrated research writing project. Shows through a case study how students learned to present objective information through a narrative vehicle. (HTH)

Describes a teaching method involving folk music for enriching language arts programs and developing children's library skills. (HTH)

Suggests that personal writing poses both opportunities and risks in writing classrooms. Discusses the experiences of two children in a fifth/sixth-grade writing process classroom. Notes that benefits of personal writing are opportunities for authenticity, finding voice, and a therapeutic value; whereas risks include coercion of students who are…

Discusses the efforts of a fifth-grade teacher and a visiting poet to rekindle students' sense of poetic passion and pleasure. Describes how the authors introduced students to poems for two voices (using P. Fleischman's "Joyful Noise"). The poetry unit culminated in a project in which students read and performed Fleischman's poems, then wrote and…

Describes how one sixth-grade writing instructor successfully introduced writing conferences into the classroom. Discusses some of the problems encountered, how they were resolved, and the final procedures used for peer and teacher conferences. (HTH)

Describes the writing experiences of a group of gifted fifth and sixth grade students in the Active Learning Experiences in Resourceful Thinking (ALERT) program in Abilene, Texas. (HTH)