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…

Recent English Language Arts standards emphasize teaching students to use text evidence to support their claims and opinions; yet, students often struggle to do so effectively in their writing. To help students develop this skill, clearer understanding of what effective evidence use entails and targeted feedback to guide students' writing…

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…

Preschoolers may be novices in the area of writing but, as this article highlights, they are indeed writers. In a year-long ethnography of preschoolers during structured writing time the teacher/researcher explored how students adapted to a writing workshop format. Students participated in daily journal writing and sharing, and weekly conference…

Provides a paragraph frame as an organizational guide for developing reports from nonfiction children's magazines. (MG)

Argues that children's literature is a great tool for teaching writing in the elementary grades. Offers a list of fine children's literature the authors use to teach specific writing and "writerly" skills. (SR)

Describes two writing activities for primary grade students to complete at home with the help of their parents. (MG)

Suggests how a teacher of writing can cover curriculum and organize content to provide an environment in which children can create personal meaning through writing by using two common methods: webbing, which integrates content by theme, and the separation of content into time blocks. (EL)

Reviews a project in which first-grade children learned to write and became confident, fluent, and enthusiastic writers. Contains examples of their writing. (FL)

Describes a writing project for middle school students in which they learn about the writing process by creating "choose your own adventure" stories. (MG)