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…

Outlines the overall framework of the Michigan English Arts Framework project. Describes the mechanisms and strategies that are being used to build the project with participation at all levels. Discusses the tradition of curriculum separation, the role of whole language, and integration and standards. (SR)

Describes what teachers at four demonstration sites throughout Michigan do in their classrooms as they appropriate and incorporate the Michigan English Language Arts Framework standards into their daily classroom instruction. (SR)

Offers an overall perspective on how standards demonstration sites--places teachers come together to study standards and to grow in their teaching--have functioned in Michigan to help State Department of Education personnel, school district personnel, and university personnel collaborate to make the Michigan English Language Arts Framework…

Presents a conversation with eminent educator Dorothy Strickland, designated 1998 Outstanding Educator in the Language Arts. Discusses her books, being a "career mom," her role in writing the report "Becoming a Nation of Readers," the cycles that reading education seems to go through, professional development, "Reading…

Describes using an outstanding portfolio created by an average fifth grader to study and reflect on the author's teaching and to consider connections between her teaching, the Michigan Language Arts Content Standards, and her District's new standards-based curriculum. Discusses the portfolio process, preparing for portfolio presentations, and the…