Motivation impacts student academic performance. A performance task to directly assess writing motivation in young children is needed. The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the validity of the Writing Challenge Task (WCT), a task-oriented assessment created to measure writing motivation with 106 kindergarten students in the rural…

Addressing academic integrity in the age of AI is essential to ensure honesty and student success. This Spotlight will help you learn about how educators nationwide are approaching AI in teaching and learning; review data investigating how many students are actually using AI to cheat; examine strategies teachers are using to fight AI cheating;…

Contemporary perspectives on emergent literacy in preschool emphasize the importance of providing developmentally appropriate, authentic, early writing experiences and supporting students' home language and culture. The current study analyzed kindergarten outcomes for 82 linguistically diverse, low-income children (60% Black, 40% Latino) who…

A substantial body of research has demonstrated the efficacy of early writing interventions that target skills and composing processes; however, much less is known about the effectiveness of classroom writing instruction outside of the context of an intervention. The goal of this study was to investigate if writing instruction and student practice…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to determine how the effects of kindergarten teachers' evidence-based literacy instructional practices impact the development of low-income kindergarten students' intrinsic reading motivation. The research questions are: (a) What are kindergarten teachers' perceptions of students' intrinsic reading…

This qualitative study explored reasons K-6 teachers did or did not engage students regularly in writing. Interviews with 14 teachers, classified as high, transitional, and low implementers of writing instruction, revealed three themes: hindrances and helps, beliefs concerning practice, and preparation and professional development. Both high and…

The objective of this exploratory investigation was to examine the nature of writing instruction in kindergarten classrooms and to describe student writing outcomes at the end of the school year. Participants for this study included 21 teachers and 238 kindergarten children from nine schools. Classroom teachers were videotaped once each in the…

This mixed-methods research study investigated the implementation of Drop Everything and Write (DEW) in early childhood/elementary classrooms. DEW is an activity in which students simply "drop everything and write." Teachers were interviewed at the completion of the school year about how they implemented the program, their perceived…

Informational texts include books as well as text in other formats such as magazines, newspapers, and online articles. The primary purpose of informational text is to provide information about the natural and social world. Literacy research cites many reasons why nonfiction/informational texts should be included in primary classrooms. The…

This qualitative study describes the experience of a cross-age tutoring intervention for three PreKindergarten/Kindergarten-aged students with autism and their fourth grade general education tutors. Data were collected in an inclusive environment; the school library. Three fourth grade general education cross-age tutors were trained to use a…

This article is a response to "Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS): A Tool for Evaluating Student Learning?" by Kamii and Manning (2005). The intent of their study was to evaluate how DIBELS and a writing test predict reading achievement, which was measured by scores on the Slosson Oral Reading Test (SORT) as well…

The current study is a qualitative case study that investigated the writing development of seven Chinese-speaking English language learners (ELLs) from kindergarten and 3rd-grade ESL classes in an elementary school in the Midwest and intended to discover the factors that affect students' English writing development in a one-year period. Guided by…

This article problematizes a hegemonic vision of children and writing, one undergirded by an individualistic ideology; this ideology informs a curricular emphasis both on mastering "basic" skills and on crafting for self expression. To this end, the article focuses on the slippery phenomenon of "copying." It begins with a consideration of two…

This article describes the Dim Sum and Chinese Restaurant Project undertaken by 6-year-old kindergarten children in Hong Kong. The article discusses the importance of listening, observing, and documenting children's actions to meet their needs and interests. The kindergarten program that participated in this project is a nonprofit kindergarten…

This qualitative study investigates the invented spellings of young EFL writers in terms of the relationship between phonological awareness and internalized grapheme-phoneme principles. Two kindergarteners and two first graders participated in weekly English writing tasks for 14 months. Results obtained from protocols of the students' free writing…