Students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) are required to pass the same competency exams as students enrolled in general education in order to graduate to new grade levels and to earn a high school diploma. In this study, the authors taught students with SLD a self-directed organizational strategy designed to assist them in passing the…

The approach of parody writing dates back to ancient Greece. Unlike traditional parody that usually develops satire of an author's work, a form of primary parody writing can be used in the classroom to help children develop connections with text as they express their own ideas. Parody writing is useful with children in grade 3 and has potential…

This book focuses on how to teach, analyze, and assess arguments. The book merges current thinking on argumentation from the fields of composition, rhetoric, speech, logic, and critical thinking. Noting that teaching students how to argue is largely the responsibility of writing and speech teachers, this book builds the case for teachers' learning…

A practicum was designed to increase second-grade teachers' expertise and knowledge in integration of literature themes with writing and oral presentations. The problem addressed was that many students did not receive adequate support and opportunities to interconnect reading and original writing. There was nothing in the language arts series, nor…

A study examined the influence of coauthoring on the writing process in the classroom. Subjects were 24 students in a ninth-grade English class at a racially and socioeconomically diverse high school located in a medium-sized Midwestern city. Data was collected over the first 9-week quarter of the year. Eight collaborative writing triads,…

An instructional study examined whether teaching strategies related to planning and reviewing behaviors would affect planning, reviewing, revising, and producing texts. Training texts were examined using a multiple baseline across participants design with multiple probes in baseline. During baseline and in intervention phases, two highly capable…

Developed for a workplace literacy program by educators from the Emily Griffith Opportunity School, this teacher's guide presents a 4-hour memo-writing workshop to introduce participants to the writing process. The guide is organized in two sections. The first section covers prewriting, freewriting, brainstorming, and clustering; the second…

This study adapted the Cognitive Strategy in Writing (CSIW) program, which had been effectively used with elementary students with learning disabilities (LD), to an older population of students. CSIW embodies three guiding principles: (1) effective writing is seen as a holistic enterprise involving the processes of planning, organizing, writing,…

Contemporary findings of brain research and language function can be analyzed and related to the teaching of creative and critical thinking and active learning through writing. A great deal of work has been carried out concerning the integration of the cerebral hemispheres for heuristic procedures in writing invention. In the integrated brain, the…

Often students have the option to choose topics to write about during creative writing sessions. Increasingly, however, state mandated tests do not give students options of writing topics. The state mandated test specifies the topic. "Three B's and a C" is an integrated creative writing/social studies program that teaches students…

This book provides a theoretical underpinning for the strategy of freewriting through a collection of 16 essays that are very diverse in focus, methodology, and point of view. The essays are as follows: "Recording and Transforming: The Mystery of the Ten-Minute Freewrite" (Sheryl I. Fontaine); "Freewriting: An Aid to Rereading…

A practicum addressed the failure of 85% of tenth-graders in an urban school to complete the research paper required by the Palm Beach County (Florida) curriculum. The target population consisted of 28 students from each of two classes. The practicum's three main objectives were to: (1) encourage students to work in teams and utilize peer…

Originally developed as part of a project for the Department of Defense Schools (DoDDS) system, this learning package on writing apprehension and the writing process is designed for teachers who wish to upgrade or expand their teaching skills on their own. The package includes an overview of the project; a comprehensive search of the ERIC…

A program was developed and implemented to improve and motivate students' writing in the elementary grades. Research data suggests probable causes for lack of student motivation and progress in writing. These causes include: overloaded and product driven curriculum, lack of appropriate teacher training, time-consuming and subjective grading…

Conducted in a kindergarten and first-grade combination classroom, a study examined two differing introductions to proposed journal entries, written after students listened to two stories of narrative fiction. Both stories were written by Margaret and H.A. Rey and focus upon Curious George as the main character. During the first phase of the data…