A study investigated the organizational processes accessed during the composing process by elementary student writers whose teachers had been instructed by the Project READ/Inquiring School Initiative at the University of Pittsburgh in helping children develop organizational structures. Subjects were 28 fourth-grade students in the experimental classroom and 27 students in a control classroom from an elementary school in an economically depressed area. Students in the experimental classroom wrote regularly and were accustomed to having their teacher use graphic structures that emphasized organization during prewriting activities to help them organize their thoughts prior to writing. Students in the control classroom were exposed to the use of visual organizers but with far less regularity than students in the experimental classroom. The teacher from the experimental classroom taught writing to both classes for two 90-minute periods on consecutive days. Writing samples form students and transcripts of interviews were analyzed. Results indicated that: (1) the number of students using higher levels of organization was greater in the experimental group than in the control group for all levels of student achievement; and (2) students in the experimental group had greater awareness of their writing processes and had an easier time verbalizing about their writing behaviors. Findings suggest that the instructional activities had an impact upon the organizational strategies and resultant complexity of compositions produced by writers in the experimental group at all ability levels, but particularly those in the low to average levels. (RS)