The authors explored the impact of a novel, interactive performing arts-based program on students' writing skills. The program featured the Story Pirates, a group that teaches children how to write stories and then turns their stories into a musical sketch comedy show. Written stories from the third-grade students in an elementary school were…

This article focuses on disciplinary literacy and how a struggling writer in a Norwegian classroom positions herself as a disciplinary writer when given model texts. The study explores how model texts can scaffold students' disciplinary writing and give them the opportunity to position themselves as disciplinary writers in lab reports and factual…

Supporting upper elementary students' higher level (i.e., analytic) thinking about texts in writing is a challenge for many teachers, in large part because what it means to analyze text is not well defined and because this skill is a relatively new expectation in elementary grades. In this article, the authors clarify the goal of three common…

Describes an author's storyboard technique which elementary school students used as a prewriting strategy to roughly sketch out stories on the storyboard frames. Suggests that the technique helps students to plan and organize their stories and helps reluctant writers find the motivation to write. (SR)

Describes how, at the Alice Carleson School in Fort Worth, Texas, elementary school students have ongoing sources for meaningful writing tasks as they participate in the business of school. Offers examples written by students of in-house memos, letters organizing a conference, and solutions to school problems. (SR)