Standards can aid educators as they work to produce strong student writers who can create meaningful and skillfully crafted authentic pieces of writing. This once-a-month, yearlong professional development program, conducted during the school day, shifted a district's kindergarten writing program to a writing workshop model that enabled the…

Writing is difficult for students who are learning English, as they often struggle to express what they really want to say. Writing is difficult for their teachers, too, who often struggle to respond in ways that are helpful. In this article, the authors offer an approach that looks at students' writing from a functional linguistics perspective,…

Discusses how a teacher was challenged to outgrow previously held beliefs about children and broaden her verbocentric curricular assumptions and experiences by a student for whom art stabilized and gave shape to his thoughts. Notes that the student helped bring real meaning to the idea that learning is "multimodal" in nature. (RS)

Looks at the importance of valuing children's play for its contributions to writing skills. Shares the insights a teacher derives from observing children in situations where they seem to be "only playing." Reminds readers of the crucial connection between assessment and teaching that should be maintained. (MG)

Notes that a premium has been placed on written composition in American schools. Discusses classroom research that demonstrates the power of oral composition. Suggests that to help all children become better composers, educators must involve them in authentic oral, as well as written, composition. (SR)

Describes the mentor program of the Teachers College Writing Project of New York City. (HTH)

Describes a writing course developed at Rutgers University (New Jersey) for increasing enrollment of elementary school teachers. Participants spend the bulk of their time in each course writing, discussing the writing in small groups and the processes and problems of the writing. (HTH)

Describes how, when a working writer visited a sixth-grade classroom on an ongoing basis to interact with students, the language and activities of the writing community changed in interesting and positive ways. (SR)

Describes five specific tools that provide the author's seventh-grade students with a set of easily accessible options for revising their writing. (SR)

Describes how art became a central part of a South Texas teacher's language arts curriculum and how such an approach improved children's reading and writing test scores despite (actually because of) the fact that she refused to drill children for the test. (RS)

Examines writing conferences (between teacher and student, and between two students) in one fourth-grade classroom to see how the students engaged in sophisticated talk about writing, as they consistently assumed the roles of critical but curious readers capable of telling their peers when they were confused about a piece of writing or how they…

Discusses the experiences of a writing teacher as she conducts inservice teacher workshops and writing workshops for students. Notes that, when students are invited to write with passion about those things that they really understand and to which they have an emotional connection, teachers may be surprised at what students can do. (RS)

Shares the experiences of one teacher as she implements process writing in her classroom. (MG)

Shares how a fourth-grade teacher learned to use whole-class "Spelling Meetings" as a focus of her spelling instruction. Describes initiating spelling notebooks, the first spelling meeting, and subsequent ones as both teacher and students found their way, making adjustments and finding new directions, and having students catch themselves using a…

Describes one third grader's development as a writer as she participated in classroom writing workshops (peer and teacher feedback) and, in particular, her development as a reviser of her writing. (HTH)