Argues that faculty writing groups are the single most effective way to change faculty attitudes about writing and to build support for writing across the curriculum. Discusses challenges facing colleges or universities that decide to develop a writing program across the disciplines. (RS)

Bakhtin's notion of "carnival," which includes participation of all; free contact; playful, familiar relation to the world; and profanation, was applied to a third-grade writing workshop. The analysis highlighted three themes: student voice and self-expression, teacher's role and responsibility, and workshops as communities for writing…

Reviews 9 books that reflect the ideas of teachers and researchers who have been successful in developing classroom practices based on holistic theory and have moved beyond process to explore new frontiers in writing. (RS)

Describes the New Jersey Writing Project, a total immersion in writing, theory, and practices offered as two three-credit summer courses at Rutgers University. Suggests that the power and authority people gain from writing workshops is so dramatic that once teachers have experienced it they have no choice but to learn to use workshops in their own…

Presents six teachers' responses to the "Private Eye" workshop (which encourages thinking by analogy and incorporating writing in many forms into content area teaching). Notes that the workshop was described in two articles in the November/December 1993 issue of this journal. Notes the energy that flows out of the teachers' writing about…

Details some of the activities undertaken by members of a high school English department who began exchanging their own writing with each other. Argues that this is a stimulating and learning experience that improves both writing and instruction. (HB)

Describes a "dialogic" (Bakhtin, 1981) writing workshop that is responsive to the social priorities of children and that reconsiders dilemmas within an alternative framework. Notes that the experiences and tests of two writers in third grade highlight the way identity and sense of self can be developed and explored in a writing community that…

Writing is a complex task. Its development depends in large part on changes that occur in children's strategic behavior, knowledge, and motivation. In the present study, the effectiveness of an instructional model, Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD), designed to foster development in each of these areas, was examined. Adding a peer support…

In this article, the author discusses several approaches in facilitating teachers, faculty, and staff members in giving birth to publishable writing that will allow them to share their ideas with other professionals. One effective approach is to find the strongest angle for a story and then narrowing it down.

Most arguments in support of teacher research have been epistemological and political. They have focused on its potential benefits for improving instruction and for reforming the culture of schooling. Advocates of the teacher-research movement have claimed that it can empower the teacher as a maker of knowledge, encourage collaborative inquiry…

Between 1999 and 2003, the Western Massachusetts Writing Project experienced a series of changes that made it question whether it could survive as a writing project site. The convergence of retirement, unexpected death, and withdrawal of long-term financial support forced the existing leadership to develop a process to look deeply into the work of…

College students learning about language and using this knowledge to learn how to teach reading and writing should participate in strategies that simulate systems in the language and strategies that they in turn will use in their own classrooms. Cognitive and constructivist strategies are interactive and thus more powerful than the traditional…

Students who engage in the writing process learn to write. Period. And yet many teachers, including Lain when she was a beginning teacher, don't know how to make the time for it, how to structure it, and how to evaluate it. Here, Lain offers us the help we need by focusing on the teaching tools for introducing students to this format, the…

This article describes the implementation of one element of an adapted language arts curriculum for Deaf students in a bilingual (American Sign Language and English) educational setting. It examines the implementation of writing workshops in three elementary classrooms in a school for Deaf students. The typical steps of preparing/planning,…

Through reading and reflecting on the words of Atwell, Rief, Moffett, and Graves, Maltese began to think like a teacher-researcher, and questioned her writing workshop practices. Once she began to consider audience as a motivating factor, writing became more meaningful for her students, encompassing a wide range of possibilities. Working from a…