Describes how writing with specifics can transform poetry, helping to create vivid pictures in the reader's mind. Offers three of the author's own poems that illustrate the judicious use of detail. (SR)

Claims that what matters in classroom writing instruction is an authentic, supportive audience. Shares results from a study of a combined grades 5-6 classroom. Finds that students felt successful as writers when peers evaluated their prose positively. States that the students' knowledge that their writing evoked emotional response from their peers…

Offers a brief look at a graduate student's on-line correspondence with three sixth-grade pen pals. Offers advice about adult-student pen pal relationships. (SR)

Explores how dialog writing, in which two participants "converse in writing," incorporates the interactive aspects of oral communication and the self-directed aspects of essay writing. Includes passages written over a year's time by a sixth grade student in a "dialogue journal" showing the development of his writing. (HTH)

Discusses student responses to and interactions with a professional children's writer who visited a fifth grade writing workshop. Describes the emerging confidence as writers of the children and the classroom teacher as a result of the author's visits. (HTH)

Describes how one teacher worked with a learning-disabled sixth grader, who benefited from the opportunity to write about what he knew and cared about. (SR)

Describes how one sixth-grade language arts class joined a computer network where students could exchange writing about topics they selected for themselves. Shows how students' excitement grew and how their writing skills improved naturally. (SR)

Observes that changes in the pattern of social interactions in classrooms as a result of computers may be even more significant than any simple technological effect. Illustrates the point with an example of sixth-grade writing on the QUILL software system, and the student's increased peer interaction and audience awareness. (HTH)