Teachers of young writers often feel pressure to focus on narrow, tested conventions, forms and processes of writing. These pressures can contribute to instruction that does not consider students' interests, experiences, language or cultures, but rather can further deficit views of students whose backgrounds do not closely align with those making…

The author examines guided play among students in a South African classroom using a play-and-write workshop constructed by her and her students. She determines that the workshop displays the characteristics of playful learning, lies on the playful learning spectrum, and fits the criteria for guided play. She concludes that, given the benefits of…

The authors detail how one fourth-grade teacher implemented a comics writers' workshop in the weeks that concluded the academic school year. Each phase of the comics writers' workshop is described. Students interpreted and analyzed the words, images, and design features that compose published comics before constructing and publishing their own…

This article examines students' identities in teacher-student interactions during an eight-week comic unit within a fourth-grade literacy classroom. Though researchers have increasingly studied how teachers incorporated graphic novels and comics into the school literacy curriculum, few have documented the social interactions that students'…

The Writer's Workshop is an approach to writing instruction using a workshop model. It is being implemented in kindergarten to fourth-grade in the Houston Independent School District. The Writer's Workshop sought to improve students' writing through teacher preparation by accommodating weaker students in research-based approaches that treat…

Conferencing gives teachers and students opportunities to discuss student writing and provide feedback in individual settings. Practitioner guides offer suggestions on how conferences can be conducted, but little is known about what types of interactions occur. Two case studies, including a cross-case analysis, were conducted to describe key…

The purposes of this study are to (1) understand how elementary school students use writing to reflect their learning and problem solving in mathematics; and (2) to explore how teachers adapt their instructional approaches based upon reflection on students' writing. This qualitative exploratory study spanned six weeks and included 18…