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)

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 the positive effects of peer interaction during the writing process. Illustrates by describing integration of this method in a seventh-grade classroom and how it improved the students' writing quality and attitudes. (HTH)

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)

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 a study of a writing exchange between a classroom of teenagers (mostly African American, mostly male) in the United States and another classroom of students in England. Notes that even reluctant writers produced responses in a variety of styles. (SR)

Describes how the author participated in her son Carl's writing process at home when she realized his growing resistance to writing in school in the second grade. Examines the in-class composing process and Carl's frustrations. Describes how she became Carl's scribe at home as he gradually discovered that writing could be a symbolic representation…