Illustrates how art provides a medium through which a group of young, pregnant, middle school women connected their reading and writing to their lives. Finds that they were reluctant to engage in the self-revealing writing activities typical of a whole language classroom; however, the opportunity to draw in response to literature enabled students…

Discusses characteristics of lifetime writers: seeing writing's purpose, initiating writing, expressing their own voice, and working well alone. Teachers can encourage this behavior by demonstrating writing, allowing time and choice, using writing skills frequently, demonstrating writing conventions, expecting more, and responding to writing. (SM)

Observes four sixth graders composing nonfiction projects for an integrated unit on Canadian studies, using hypermedia. Ponders issues raised when students compose in hypermedia including evaluating nontraditional projects, developing a sense of audience, conventions of the medium, use of visuals to convey information, engaged students, and…

Describes a writing workshop for preservice teachers that demystifies writing and looks at students' (all future teachers) assumptions about what a writer is and what writing is. Notes how this helps students understand and visualize a new set of roles and possibilities for themselves as writers, about who can be a writer, and about what purposes…

Indicates that the teachers viewed the Internet's influence on reading as an extension of traditional literacy skills. Notes that the elementary teachers noticed an increase in their students' motivation to write when their work was published on the Internet for a greater audience, but the secondary teachers did not find that was the case. (SG)

Background: This study evaluated the impact on student's writing ability of a structured writing program, called "Writing Wings," for 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders developed by the Success For All Foundation (SFAF). Writing is a critical skill for success in school. Purpose: The study was intended to answer one confirmatory question,…

A series of five studies examined factors that influence how students respond to questions on a writing apprehension test. In the first study, the Daly-Miller Writing Apprehension Test was administered 4 times to 34 students in 2 freshman composition classes. Conventional scoring of test results were inconclusive--the total score for all students…

A practicum used computers to improve the use of standard English and the attitude towards writing of a group of middle school students in a predominantly Nicaraguan neighborhood in a large metropolitan area. The project was directed towards 32 sixth- to eighth-graders of average ability who were enrolled in an introductory computer…

A study investigated whether some level of writing apprehension or some expressed attitude toward writing might result in better essay scores. Subjects, 255 freshmen composition students at two campuses of the California State University system, were administered instruments designed to comparatively measure the quality of students' writing, gauge…

The data gathered for this study supported the hypothesis that first grade students can revise and edit original writing projects without experiencing any significant loss in motivation. This hypothesis was confirmed after the students had finished writing and revising three original stories while utilizing three separate revision strategies. The…

The research reported in this paper is a case study of one student's learning in a writers' workshop where two teacher-researchers were developing new curriculum and instructional practices. The case study was developed out of a larger qualitative study in which 47 fifth-grade students' growth as writers was studied over a 1-year period as they…

A first-grade teacher's classroom investigations support earlier research findings that when dramatic play is presented in a thematic context and related literacy props are provided, the children will use literacy behavior as part of their play. The teacher's research also indicated that adult intervention, guidance, and modeling of literacy…

Although Mina Shaughnessy remains influential in the basic writing field, her answers to the vital questions of who basic writers are and why they underachieve as writers are changing. Whether she intended to or not, Shaughnessy's book "Errors and Expectations" (published in 1977) was a major force in forming an image of basic writers as…

In response to criticisms from an accrediting agency, the director of the Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) program at the State University of New York, Farmingdale, designed a one-day marathon session and a series of biweekly seminars to bridge the gap between WAC truths and the assumptions of the engineering faculty concerning writing…

The University of North Dakota possesses an archive containing the schoolwork, writings, and artworks of 32 children. In a study, all of the fiction and poetry of three of the children were gathered, as were teachers' descriptive records and examples of the children's drawings. It can be concluded from a study of the randomly selected children…