Travel provides students with multiple opportunities to learn about people, places, and the world around them. At times, students are given opportunities to travel causing them to be absent from the classroom. This manuscript provides a practical suggestion for engaging students in learning while on the journey. Students are asked to share and…

The authors suggest using scripting as a strategy to mentor and enhance author's voice in writing. Through gradual release, students use authentic literature as a model for writing with voice. The authors also propose possible extensions for independent practice, integration across content areas, and tips for evaluation.

A literacy coach's work is about far more than a knowledge base in how teaching and learning works in literacy classrooms. It is also about deep understandings of situational enactments and how one's position will impact what happens in a particular context. This article has significant implications for the preparation and ongoing professional…

Describes how freeform poetry can be created out of newspaper or magazine articles. Provides a sample student poem. (MM)

Describes how, at the Alice Carleson School in Fort Worth, Texas, elementary school students have ongoing sources for meaningful writing tasks as they participate in the business of school. Offers examples written by students of in-house memos, letters organizing a conference, and solutions to school problems. (SR)

Describes the buddy journal (a diary that two students keep together, in which they "converse" in writing) and suggests ways to use such journals to build children's literacy. Proposes that buddy journals can highlight the reading-writing connection for children by involving purposeful, personal communication to enhance students'…

Examines the creation of process drama and writing experiences in a second/third-grade classroom. Describes how the classroom teacher used process drama (involving students in imaginary, unscripted, and spontaneous scenes) as a context for learning. Notes how process drama provided a context for content area instruction along with writing…

Describes several types of "paragraph frames" to help teach beginning writing in the content areas. Notes that these frames, employing a modified cloze procedure, help bridge the gap between narrative and expository reading and writing. Provides several student writing samples. (MM)

Describes a process writing approach which encourages students to write about true events, rather than about their favorite television shows. (MM)

Reports the results of a six month qualitative study examining the reading and writing behavior in the natural pretend play of eight children four and five years old. Suggests that literacy is involved in two ways: (1) story making using setting, plot and resolution, and (2) displaying a literacy stance or orientation toward reading and…

Describes a pen pal project designed to meet the needs of a group of elementary special education students learning to become efficient users of language and of university education majors focusing on issues related to the literacy activities of nonconventional learners. (SR)

Describes how students in a sixth-grade class connected reading and writing in the context of a project on traditional stories and new transformations of those old tales. Includes a 20-item annotated bibliography of transformations of traditional stories. (SR)

Explores one kindergarten teacher's insights gained through the writing of her students. Shows that students were gaining a wealth of knowledge through meaningful engagement in literacy processes. Shows how, by recognizing the power of learning from young children, she gained greater insight into emergent literacy development and informed her…

Investigates the nature of e-mail correspondence (as a kind of literature-response journal) between nine- and ten-year olds and preservice teachers. Finds children's e-mail almost equally divided between socialization and book talk, with reading levels not affecting these percentages. Concludes that children thought critically about themselves and…

Discusses four recent writing books: "Teaching to Write: Theory Into Practice" (Jane B. Hughey and Charlotte Slack); "The Writing Teacher's Handbook" (Jo Phenix); "Scaffolding Young Writers: A Writers' Workshop Approach" (Linda J. Dorn and Carla Soffos); and "Directing the Writing Workshop: An Elementary Teacher's Handbook" (Jean Wallace Gillet…