This study examined the writing development of English language learners (ELLs) in a fourth-grade bilingual classroom in Northern California. The purpose of this study was to explore the linguistic and cultural resources the students used to inform their writing and determine to what extent, if any, these resources influenced their writing. The…

Shows how being part of a group of children interacting in a literate environment for one school year empowered a fourth grade Japanese student not only to improve dramatically his command of the English language but also to feel good about himself as he worked hard to do so. (MG)

Shares the experiences of one teacher who changed her way of teaching high school at-risk students by creating an environment that encouraged students to explore writing and reading topics of their choice. Finds that students changed and learned using the writing-reading workshop approach. (MG)

This paper examines the teacher's role in elementary and secondary school writing workshops--the teacher as Dostoevskian novelist creates a classroom novel and takes up relations with student-characters. The paper focuses on: the rejection of traditional relations among novelist and character, teacher and student, and the embrace of new ones; how…

Providing personal yet professional guidelines for introducing students to the life of a writer, this book provides a rationale, a set of principles, and some possible methods for using small groups in writing workshops. The book discusses how small groups can provide growing writers with the four essentials which all writers need: time for…

This paper explores the importance of peer relations for the experiences and texts of children in a third-grade writing workshop. Peers, as an audience for children's writing, bring with them friendship, trust, and a "social energy" that empowers authors and their writing in the classroom. Simultaneously, peers also bring with them…