The Common Core State Standards for the English Language Arts, together with the new tests being developed to assess them, are placing a greater emphasis on writing in elementary schools than in the recent past. This article explores similarities and differences of the standards with past state standards, explaining the reason both for why things…

During the past several years, middle schools and high schools have been shifting their attention to disciplinary literacy. The Common Core State Standards are explicit in requiring teachers to teach the literacy of science, literature, and history, and even states that are not part of Common Core (such as Texas) are making this shift as well.…

A study examined the relationship of multiple measures of reading and writing at the second and fifth grade levels. Multiple reading tests (measuring vocabulary, word recognition, sentence comprehension, and passage comprehension) and writing tests (evaluating vocabulary diversity and syntactic complexity, and providing qualitative and…

A study was designed to measure the relationship between learning to read and learning to write at the elementary school level. Measures of phonics knowledge, reading vocabulary, spelling, reading comprehension, and grammatical and organizational complexity of writing were administered to 256 second grade and 253 fifth grade students. The findings…

Noting that recommendations for integrating elementary reading and writing often fail to provide adequate specific suggestions, proposes seven instructional principles based upon research on the reading-writing relationship and suggests specific techniques for each principle. (NH)

Reports on a survey to determine teachers' attitudes and practices toward the teaching of creative writing in elementary classrooms. Suggests three reasons for writing deficiencies and argues that more time must be spent on reading and that reading instruction needs to be consistent within classes and among schools. (Author/IRT)

Discusses the benefits of having elementary school students do nonstop writing for a few minutes. (DD)

Teaching language-minority students to read and write well in English is an urgent challenge in the nation's K-12 schools. Literacy in English is essential to achievement in every academic subject-and to educational and economic opportunities beyond schooling. Compounding this challenge are increasing numbers and diversity of language-minority…

The eight articles in this compilation provide various approaches and techniques for use by classroom teachers in the informal evaluation of student reading performance. The first article outlines the many purposes for which informal measures may be used and briefly describes the various forms such measures may take, while the second focuses on…