Describes how a fourth-grade teacher made poetry part of the daily ritual of her class. Describes how students began to read poems, write poems, and love poems enough to work persistently at reading and writing them. Describes a poetry festival that the class prepared. Describes the many effects, both cognitive and affective, of daily poetry. (SR)

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)

A carefully coordinated literacy assessment and instruction framework implemented school-wide can support school teams in making sense of various types of data for instructional planning. Instruction that is data based and goal driven sets the stage for continuous reading and writing improvement. (Contains 2 figures.)

Describes a novel type of interactive writing called "interest journals" that motivates students and promotes persuasive writing. Discusses getting started, and the benefits of interest journals. (SR)

Highlights the teacher's critical role in spelling instruction and provides examples of how to support spelling development in classrooms. Argues that educators need to look closely at children's emerging capacities as writers, focusing especially on the issue of invented spelling, and its use and misuse in classroom practices. (SG)

Describes a six-month project in a second grade classroom in which students wrote descriptive sentences to accompany the pictures in wordless picture books. Describes how this was done first as a whole class, then with partners, and finally individually. Notes that each story created in this fashion was read to someone. (SR)

Describes a successful writing activity to help students become confident reporters for a classroom newspaper. Notes that this assignment incorporates several writing styles and literary devices. (MG)

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 a shared writing program which emphasizes the connection between reading and writing in a natural setting, in which first graders and fifth graders get together to write books. (SR)

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

Describes a sentence expansion technique found to be an effective and motivating way to teach sentence structure and vocabulary to elementary school students. (SR)

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)

Argues that literacy professionals, in schools as well as colleges and universities, need to write for the general public, and that if they do not, they are contributing to an educational crisis of unprecedented proportions. Provides suggestions on and examples of how to write for the general public. (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)

Offers a procedure to help students develop effective strategies for using labeled diagrams in their research projects. (MG)