We think with several theoretical concepts from Jacques Derrida (defer, différance, deconstruction, and trace), in order to better understand how the processes of children, materials, and a teacher (re)defined and (re)imagined writing when they began to compose with a range of tools as writers in a second grade (7- to 8-year-olds) Writers' Studio.…

Effective feedback is an essential tool for making learning explicit and an essential feature of classroom practice that promotes learner autonomy. Yet, it remains a pressing challenge for teachers to scaffold the active involvement of students as critical, reflective and autonomous learners who use feedback constructively. This paper seeks to…

Research suggests that experts and beginners use qualitatively different writing processes when given the same text to write. Throughout their writing, experts tend to create a network of executive, structural, and content problems that they continually refine and coordinate as they bring the text to fruition. Novices, in contrast, tend to focus…

This study examined the composing process and communication of students aged 5-8 identified with intellectual disabilities. An open-ended writing activity called Big Paper was implemented at least once every 2 weeks for a 6-month period. Qualitative methods were utilized to analyze writing samples, videotapes of writing sessions, and transcripts…

This article presents pupils' awareness of writing as elicited through a metawriting task, in other words a task in which pupils from the third, fourth and sixth forms (grades) were required to write about writing. The analysis of the texts revealed the pupils' increasing ability to write texts focusing on writing and on the subject's relationship…

The famed playwright Harold Pinter, having just been introduced as a very good writer, was once asked by a six-year-old boy if he could do a "w." The author suspects that "w" was a difficult letter for this young man, and he judged the writing capability of others accordingly. This student's assumption--that being a "good…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between measures of written vocabulary and writing quality. Participants included 92 second-grade students and 101 fourth-grade students. Students completed two writing samples: one an experimenter-developed writing task and the other, a standardized assessment of writing quality. Research…

The author cuts through the pressurized, strategy-overloaded, fluency-crazed atmosphere surrounding reading instruction to lay out the reading and writing workshop practices that are most effective in developing readers in the primary grades. She shares the daily how-tos needed to sustain a literacy block that engages children in authentic reading…

Teacher-librarians have implemented collaborations, becoming facilitators of literacy development throughout their schools as library research moves into multimodal forms. For instance, Wolf & Jordan (2006) studied teacher-librarian collaboration with third grade students researching and writing within a unit on severe weather preparedness. The…

This article presents a comprehensive model of daily, classroom informal writing assessment that is constantly linked to instruction and the characteristics of proficient writers. Methods for promoting teacher, student, and parent collaboration and their roles in dialoguing, conferencing, and reflection are discussed. Strategies for including…

In the many years the author has worked with students in the lower grades, she has heard plenty of myths about their capabilities as writers. She has also learned a few things about how they approach the writing process. Here are some things to keep in mind when working with younger writers: (1) Younger students are capable writers; (2) Younger…

Process approaches to writing instruction in primary-grade classrooms have become widespread due to the influence of Graves (1983), Calkins (1986), Avery (1993), and others. Their work emphasizes expressive writing, particularly personal narrative, more than expository or informational writing. As a consequence, expressive writing is what children…

This project investigated six 2nd-grade students' use of word study instruction to mediate spelling while writing in their journals. In particular, the researchers examined the students' use of the orthographic principles, sample words, and spelling strategies that had been taught during developmental word study lessons. Results of the project…

"Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition"[R] ("CIRC") is a comprehensive reading and writing program for students in grades 2 through 8. It includes story-related activities, direct instruction in reading comprehension, and integrated reading and language arts activities. Pairs of students (grouped either by or across…

This article describes a research study that implemented literacy methods for the purpose of promoting reading comprehension with links to student writing through the practice of integrating reader response before, during, and following teacher read-alouds, and then extending the reader response into the composing process of student-created…