Standards can aid educators as they work to produce strong student writers who can create meaningful and skillfully crafted authentic pieces of writing. This once-a-month, yearlong professional development program, conducted during the school day, shifted a district's kindergarten writing program to a writing workshop model that enabled the…

Writing is difficult for students who are learning English, as they often struggle to express what they really want to say. Writing is difficult for their teachers, too, who often struggle to respond in ways that are helpful. In this article, the authors offer an approach that looks at students' writing from a functional linguistics perspective,…

Examines some of the assumptions behind the imitation of writing models and questions the power of using this model for improving writing performance. (HTH)

Discusses the differences between inauthentic and authentic writing, arguing that most writing in school is inauthentic, because it is written for someone else's intentions. Examples are cited from a classroom with an essentially whole language orientation, but which occasionally reverts to inauthentic writing assignments. (HTH)

Describes the mentor program of the Teachers College Writing Project of New York City. (HTH)

Describes working with multiage elementary school students on demand writing--writing to meet deadlines. Discusses why to teach it, practical applications, what teachers need to know before beginning instruction, getting started, introducing demand writing, modeling it, teaching beginnings and endings, and revising and editing/proofreading. (SR)

Explores how dialog writing, in which two participants "converse in writing," incorporates the interactive aspects of oral communication and the self-directed aspects of essay writing. Includes passages written over a year's time by a sixth grade student in a "dialogue journal" showing the development of his writing. (HTH)

Describes how the writing of a favorite author helped a child accomplish what she wanted in her own writing. Discusses the classroom environment that encouraged the child's writing. (HTH)

Describes how art became a central part of a South Texas teacher's language arts curriculum and how such an approach improved children's reading and writing test scores despite (actually because of) the fact that she refused to drill children for the test. (RS)

Examines progressively more competent writing samples from a third grader's journal to illustrate the possibilities for using journals "across the curriculum." (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)

Examines the early writing of a young child over the course of several months to illustrate the struggle with the writing process. Draws parallels between the child's writing progress and that of the author as she learned to be comfortable as a writer and suggests implications for the teaching of writing. (HTH)

Shares the experiences of one teacher as she implements process writing in her classroom. (MG)

Discusses one teacher's gradual acceptance of poetry as a useful means for teaching many areas of the language arts. Includes a case study of one student's growth as a poet. (HTH)

Demonstrates a method for teaching writing to emotionally handicapped children which treats writing as a "fun" activity, using a process writing approach. Shows through two examples that writing is a perfect vehicle for these children to air their emotions nonviolently. (SKC)