In today's digitally interconnected world, one's ability to collaboratively create with others and compose multimodal texts is essential. Yet, high-stakes standardized assessments that value individualistic print centric conceptions influence instruction, leading schools to often undervalue the multimodal and collaborative composing processes and…

The paper shows the importance of Storybird, an online platform, for developing writing and storytelling among young learners of a foreign language. Storybird is an extremely engaging collaborative storywriting website that embodies three ideas--creating, reading, and sharing. It is also a collaborative storytelling tool that allows students to…

This volume offers a comprehensive, up-to-date, empirical and methodological view over the new scenarios and environments for language teaching and learning recently emerged (e.g. blended learning, e-learning, ubiquitous learning, social learning, autonomous learning or lifelong learning), and also over some of the new approaches to language…

The paper offers a case study of two bilingual girls aged 10, born in London, of Albanian-speaking families who arrived in the UK as refugees. An earlier study, when the girls were aged six, explored the strategies they used as they learned to read with their mothers in Albanian using dual language books. Four years on, supported by a primary…

Interviews children's authors Lee Hadley and Annabelle Irwin, coauthors publishing under the pseudonym of Hadley Irwin. (MM)

Focuses on oral language and writing. Describes typical roles that children take on as they work together to create a piece of text (co-author). Offers suggestions for moving learners to more productive and fulfilling co-authoring relationships. (SR)

Describes playwright Suzan Zeder's collaboration with playwright David Saar and director Carol Evans on the development of a script for young audiences which deals with the AIDS virus. (SR)

Addresses issues that arise when children collaborate in writing. Suggests ways in which an understanding of the social nature of writing can help teachers create a more effective classroom learning environment in the language arts. Discusses the collaboration involved in producing an illustrated children's book and observations of children…

Examines the dynamics of reading, writing and telling stories. Argues that working collaboratively can motivate writers in ways which encourage them to redraft their work purposefully and explicitly in pursuit of particular creative effects. Exemplifies ways in which knowledge about language at word, sentence and whole text level can effectively…

Outlines the Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) program, a sequenced and structured reading/language arts program used by elementary level students at Bracher School in Santa Clara, California. Describes several cooperative reading and writing activities used in this program. (MM)

Discusses writing as a social activity and how collaborative writing enables risk taking and promotes a change in writing attitudes. Provides examples of collaborative writing in the following areas of expository text structure: enumeration, sequence, comparison/contrast, and cause/effect. (MG)

Illustrates, through a description and examples, the collaboration between a university class and an elementary class. Describes pen pals and collaborative book writing as two approaches that provide student writers with the opportunity to receive rehearsal of strategies such as invented spelling, writing as a process, and integrating the language…

Describes the arrangements for collaborative writing in an urban elementary classroom. Suggests a more complex view in contrast to typical descriptions of collaboration. Discusses a view that includes a range of ways for students to participate in writing together. Describes the ways students responded to opportunities for collaboration. (SG)

Shows how a teacher used student curiosity and imagination in helping students to develop lifelike characters and to collaborate on writing short stories. Provides samples of the sketches and stories. (RL)

Examines the learning benefits which may accrue from using desk-top publishing techniques with children, especially in terms of the development of literacy skills. Analyzes desk-top publishing as an extension of word processing and describes some ways of using desk-top publishing in the classroom. (RS)