A daily dictation period provides continuous reinforcement of spelling and writing mechanics for elementary school students. (DD)

A comparative study of students' scores in mechanics and usage on standardized tests and ratings of actual writing samples. (DD)

Describes a longitudinal study of first-grade students' progress in learning punctuation. Examines the classroom as a writing environment, then presents a picture of the children's progress in learning to use apostrophes, quotation marks, and periods, drawing several implications for teaching. (HTH)

Finds that the proportion of sentence fragments remained fairly consistent across grade levels, with older students making more errors with more complex syntactic structures as they began to elaborate on ideas and use more subordinate elements. (RL)

Reports classroom observations and dialogues with children that show children's understandings and use of punctuation; reports data showing that children in a class in which punctuation was taught in the context of writing learned more about punctuation than children in a class in which it was taught in isolation. (ET)