Offers a conceptual framework for building language awareness through the reading of poetry, encouraging children to reflect on language in interesting and powerful ways. Provides an instructional model for constructing literature-based experiences in the classroom. (SR)

Describes working with multiage elementary school students on demand writing--writing to meet deadlines. Discusses why to teach it, practical applications, what teachers need to know before beginning instruction, getting started, introducing demand writing, modeling it, teaching beginnings and endings, and revising and editing/proofreading. (SR)

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 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)

Describes how, in a second-/third-grade classroom, and in the context of writing workshop, another kind of community developed--an informal but long-lasting "writing club" with eight core members who worked collaboratively and developed a story topic that became the dominant story topic pattern throughout the remainder of the school year. (SR)

Describes the setbacks and remarkable progress in one student's writing and attitudes as the result of focusing on the writing process in a one-to-one tutorial relationship. (HTH)

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

Discusses one teacher's gradual acceptance of poetry as a useful means for teaching many areas of the language arts. Includes a case study of one student's growth as a poet. (HTH)

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)

Uses examples of children's poetry to illustrate both the power of metaphor and the possibilities of poetry in the development of metaphor. Traces children's development in creation of metaphor from kindergarten through eighth grade. Looks at early demonstration of metaphor use and the expanded use of metaphor to describe complex concepts and…

Reports on successfully using letter writing and dialogue journals in a classroom where the children's writing tended to be remarkable similar because they did not insert their personalities into their writing. Their writing grew individualistic, and their vocabularies improved through invented spelling. (SKC)

Demonstrates a method for teaching writing to emotionally handicapped children which treats writing as a "fun" activity, using a process writing approach. Shows through two examples that writing is a perfect vehicle for these children to air their emotions nonviolently. (SKC)

Describes an exploration the author and his seventh-grade students undertook as they wrote essays about objects of personal significance. Describes how they examined a piece of literature (an essay) as a model for their own writing, how they spent some time talking and listening to one another about their personal objects, and how they then wrote…

Discusses the importance of dialogue in learning, notes that it is lacking in many educational situations, and recommends the use of written dialogue journals as a means of communication between teachers and individual students. Points out the advantages of dialogue journals for improving writing for different social purposes. (SKC)