This article explores the ways three young students expressed their perceptions about literacy and investigates how their classroom identity shapes and is shaped by those perceptions. The ways in which positioning within a writing event and the classroom culture contributed to the development of writing voice and identity are examined. In…

Suggests that one of the greatest outlets for the middle school voices in one particular classroom is the students' immersion into poetry during writing workshops. Describes a classroom environment that encourages children to express themselves in writing, speech, and action each day. Presents numerous examples of students' poetry. (RS)

Explores how issues of power and identity are embedded within the cultures of a first-grade writing classroom. Explores the ways in which children's instructional stances--their responses to the ways they are positioned as writers in the classroom--affect their literacy learning. Presents the theoretical and research contexts in which educator's…

Shows how being part of a group of children interacting in a literate environment for one school year empowered a fourth grade Japanese student not only to improve dramatically his command of the English language but also to feel good about himself as he worked hard to do so. (MG)