And so a middle school language arts teacher begins her Saturday. Before coffee, Facebook. In this themed issue on professional development in an era of nick.com, the authors propose that teachers' new literacy learning is as close as their own screens. Teachers, too, live literate lives online in this new age of composition, with impulses to…

This article is an historical study of the understanding of children's writing through "Language Arts". The author and her research team did a content analysis of articles about writing that appeared in "Language Arts" beginning in 1924 through January, 2010. Analysis shows that a major area of tension throughout the history of the journal has…

An integrated language arts and technology program engaged students in reading and writing activities that funded an experience in moviemaking. With video cameras in hand, students, often working collaboratively, developed expanded views of the writing and revision processes as they created movies that mattered to them and found an audience beyond…

Don Graves died Tuesday, September 28, 2010. In the early 1980s, Don blew open the door to teaching children to write. His qualitative research and subsequent 26 books transformed the teaching of writing in elementary schools. He showed how much could be learned by the simple, powerful strategy of sitting beside children and asking them about…

Donald Graves's early professional books inspired Koshewa to look more deeply into student writing during the 1980s, and to value all phases of the writing process. Graves's perspective on uncovering and celebrating voice elevated Koshewa's writing instruction to a new plane. In this article, he writes about the impact that Donald Graves's work…

Writing assessment is a contested site where competing discourses overlap and invoke conflicting expectations, creating dilemmas for teachers who want to do what they believe is best for children and fulfill their school's writing targets. A critical look at assessment quandaries reveals surface dilemmas as clashes between overlapping discourses,…

This article presents a review of the author's long-term research in urban classrooms. The authors explore six illustrated information books created by children as culminating activities of integrated science-literacy units, Forest and Matter, that they developed, implemented, and studied in several 1st-3rd grade classrooms in Chicago Public…

Most new English language learners spend their school days in monolingual teachers' classrooms. This study examines the writing practices taken on and negotiated by multilingual class members within two multiage elementary classrooms. This article details the writing practices enacted and constructed in the daily writing lives of elementary…

Welcome to the Pine Cone Wars, as enacted by Mrs. Kay's children in her urban first grade. The children brought these wars from the playground to the classroom, reformulating them within the possibilities and constraints of the daily writing time. The Pine Cone Wars thus illustrate the inevitable interplay between the official world we shape as…

Letras y Arte: Literacy and Art, is a summer course that pairs college students and children from a Latino neighborhood for literacy and art learning. Started five years ago, Letras y Arte provides opportunities in four areas: (1) literacy opportunities that foster distinctive identities and voice; (2) immersion in a broad view of literacy that…

This article illustrates not only how students with special needs grew as writers in an inclusive writing community, but also how a fourth-grade teacher systematically structured the learning environment and tailored her instruction to guide her students to develop as writers as well as to improve their language skills. (Contains 4 figures and a…

Writing is difficult for students who are learning English, as they often struggle to express what they really want to say. Writing is difficult for their teachers, too, who often struggle to respond in ways that are helpful. In this article, the authors offer an approach that looks at students' writing from a functional linguistics perspective,…

This paper describes a collaborative relationship between a community member and an eighth grade English teacher that was documented through an ethnographic study during an entire school year. The community member taught a weekly poetry workshop where students are encouraged to take risks in their writing and also take a critical stance towards…

This article describes ways that conversations constituted ethnographic research for students and teachers in Kazakhstan. Through dialogues with local community members, students worked as researchers to develop knowledge about cultural patterns and social life. Ethnographic research and writing provided valuable language and research experiences…

This article begins with a "snapshot" of a fifth grade writing workshop and its study of op-ed writing to show an inquiry in action. The framework for this inquiry involves immersing students in reading multiple examples of the kind of text the teacher would like them to write, studying closely how the texts are crafted, and writing their own…