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…

This case study reports the results of a genre-based approach, which was used to explicitly teach the touristic landmark description to fourth-grade students of Spanish as a foreign language. The instructional model and unit of instruction were informed by the pedagogies of the Sydney School of Linguistics and an instructional model for…

In this mixed methods study, qualitative, quantitative, and single-case methods were combined to provide a comprehensive investigation of teacher and student outcomes following practice-based professional development (PBPD) for self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) in writing. Qualitative observations were used to determine outcomes among the…

Scores on a state comprehensive assessment test showed that writing skills of 4th grade students enrolled in a K-8 magnet school in the southeastern part of the United States were below target. The assistant principal of the K-8 magnet school explained that a review of 3-year longitudinal data revealed that the number of students who met…

The authors present the experiences of Wyatt, a nine-year-old whose mother described him as a struggling writer, in a summer digital writing camp. The authors consider how Wyatt was positioned as a writer at camp and how this may have differed from his experiences at school. They found that for Wyatt, being able to compose with digital tools along…

Rural schools in high-poverty areas are often understaffed. This descriptive phenomenological study examined fourth-grade state research projects in high-poverty rural Iowa schools to reveal the influence of school librarians' staffing levels on student learning of research skills. To determine evidence of students' critical literacy, ethical use…

Describes the author's experience teaching poetry to a fourth-grade class, and how an inspired moment from one student (improvising a poem about an imagined hairstyle of poet Federico Garcia Lorca) led the entire class on a journey of inspiration. Looks at the route to that place of "inspired rightness." (SR)

Illustrates how riddles can be used to teach poetry. Provides analysis of several riddles and resources for riddles. (MS)

Describes the process of teaching fourth graders to combine facts and narrative in writing a research report on animals. Asserts that this type of report writing increases students' understanding of their subject, and illustrates that research is an ongoing activity. (MM)

The writing samples presented in this paper were selected from the portfolios of fourth-grade Vermont students as examples of the various points in Vermont's newly revised analytic writing assessment guide. The benchmark writing pieces in the paper, when used with the analytic assessment guide that begins the paper, are guideposts for assessing…

This document includes both a booklet and a presentation guide. The booklet contains the anchor papers used to score the 2001 Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) in writing, grade 4. Anchor papers are concrete examples that illustrate the intent of the scoring guides. The papers in the booklet exemplify the full range of score points…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1998 Writing Assessment measured student writing performance at the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades. Scoring guides for each grade allowed scorers to objectively evaluate students' work. This issue of NAEPfacts includes a 4th-grade narrative scoring guide, along with samples of student work at each…

Describes teaching history to fourth graders using novels and reference books. Notes that students also publish a newspaper and complete an oral history project. (SR)

In July 1992, American College Testing convened a 5-day meeting to set achievement levels in writing for grades 4, 8, and 12 to be recommended for use in reporting the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Sixty-six panelists (teachers, non-teacher educators, and non-educators) attended the meeting and participated in the…

A study compared two approaches to teaching 38 grade 4 students in Canada to write trickster tales. By integrating understandings from cognitive and neo-Piagetian theory into instructional method, a novel approach to writing instruction was created. The compositions of children taught via this method were compared to those of students who…