Examines professional concerns related to improving children's knowledge of language, determining what knowledge children bring to a learning environment, and promoting children's joy of learning. (RL)

Offers a five-step support technique for transferring speaking to writing and offers observations on helping children with the conventions of writing. (HTH)

Recounts a teacher's involvement with students in the spontaneous process of learning to write. Presents the benefits of such an approach as preferable to conventional structured methods of writing instruction. (HTH)

Presents examples of young children using written language. Shows teachers and parents what they can learn from children's developing sense of written language. Suggests activities by which parents and teachers can spur child language development. (RL)

Presents evidence that children have their own culture; argues that teachers need to pay close attention to child culture, periodically approaching students as ethnographers approach culturally knowledgeable informants. Examines reasons why teachers may be insensitive to children's culture and explains the benefits of an ethnographic approach. (ET)

Presents examples of messages to a reading teacher from kindergarten students that combine drawing and elementary writing skills. Emphasizes the important role of teachers and other adults and of reading and writing tools in the development of children's reading and writing abilities. (HTH)

Argues that the specialized knowledge that writing demands can only be acquired through a particular kind of reading. Illustrates how this kind of reading occurs and considers ways teachers can facilitate such learning. (JL)

Among the techniques used by successful teacher-writers such as Herbert Kohl, Phillip Lopate, and James Herndon in teaching writing are the use of extensive speaking activities, the accommodation of different writing habits, the admission that writing is difficult, and the use of varied media. (ET)

Lists and discusses nine classroom practices designed to support writing as a process. (SRT)

Examines material in the ERIC system related to research in the area of effective teaching behaviors. Suggests that the nature of early studies to this effect is responsible for the minimal impact of this research on classroom practices. (HTH)

Considers the impact of teacher responses to student writing. Notes the need for a greater identification by the teacher of the overall work that students present for evaluation and feedback. Offers guidelines for responding in more qualitative ways to student writing. (RL)

Discusses materials in the ERIC system that deal with the concept of scaffolding, building on children's natural language, and ways teachers have translated the concept into instructional strategies. (HTH)