Similar concerns about the development of children's creative writing abilities in Kenya and South Africa prompted two Mother Tongue (MT) education practitioners in Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) and Molteno Institute for Language and Literacy of Linguistics (MILL) to undertake parallel intervention studies to increase teachers' competence…

The purpose of this case study is to document the ways in which fifth-grade students in a historically, low-performing school learned to write from a teacher who did not emphasize test-taking processes. The study demonstrates how these instructional practices in a writing workshop context positively affected the student performance on a statewide…

The study investigated a coach's use of a theoretical framework called the Model of Mastery to assist three teachers in becoming self-regulated in the teaching of writing workshop by moving them through three settings: acquisition, consolidation, and consultation. The goal of the coach was to assist teachers in developing expertise in procedural,…

During the fourth year of Amy Phillips' teaching assistantship in the spring semester of 2008, she was asked to teach a 300-level advanced writing course in which she was given the creative freedom to design the syllabus, choose the textbooks, craft all assignments, and organize the course content. However, there was one stipulation: the course,…

The United States involvement in the Middle East has been prominent in our recent national history, sometimes clouded by myths and misrepresentations of the people of that region of the world. This article details the experiences of teacher-researchers working with teachers and students in Amman, Jordan, to develop powerful English writing…

Transforming Writing is a two-year action research project which aims to develop a model for the teaching and learning of writing that more fully incorporates a focus on embedded formative assessment. In the first year of the project, the 12 participating schools developed a model of writing underpinned by Talk for Writing, an approach developed…

This is a qualitative study addressing the question: In what ways does a sixth grade middle school teacher show evidence of behaviors that fit the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework in the classroom? The researcher observed in this class, interviewed the teacher, and looked for evidence of the interplay between…

This article presents a pedagogical experience that addresses the use of an instructional strategy called screenwriting aimed at improving the teaching of writing in an educational context. This pedagogical intervention took place in a private English language school, where three adult students willingly participated to create their own short…

Composing text is an essential skill for students. Assignments, tests, and emailing are a few examples of the many tasks which require students to generate thoughts and put them into prose. For many students, choosing a topic, creating an outline, generating an initial draft, and making edits to produce a final copy is a fluid process which poses…

When asked to discuss their middle school language arts classes, talented eighth graders identified concerns and made suggestions for their teachers. Students voiced desire for choices in selecting reading materials, writing topics and genre. They preferred having extended periods of time to engage in reading and writing activities, rather than…

Writing is an essential component of young children's early literacy development, and active participation in writing instruction contributes to their growth as writers. Providing engaging writing instruction to meet the academically diverse needs of young learners, however, can challenge early childhood teachers. The purpose of this study was to…

Debate regarding appropriate instructional practices for linguistically and culturally diverse students led to a study of a bilingual Latina teacher's third-grade writing workshop. Qualitative research methods were used to provide a rich description of context, instruction, and participation. This was combined with the teacher's personal narrative…

The problem is that 5th-grade students are not achieving sufficient writing scores on Georgia state-mandated writing assessments, which the researcher hypothesized was due to the teacher-directed instructional approach utilized at the school. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to determine whether discovery learning, a method based on the…

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the intersection of three facets of the Community Writing Project's (CWP) small writing workshops that are at the core of its democratic practice: (1) legitimating the experiences and stories of ordinary people as expressions of their cultural work in the world; (2) fostering a mutual relationship of the…

This article describes how one such teacher, Shirley Thacker, developed and implemented a successful writing program in her first grade classroom, which is known as Thackerville. Shirley describes how she motivated a classroom of first-graders to use the writing process in a workshop format and how this approach affected the children's perceptions…