Framed within the fields of applied linguistics and language play, the writing of three attainment groups of 9-11-year-old children was used to investigate their use of ludic (playful) punctuation in the composition of an imaginative narrative. The scripts were from a larger repeat-design study of writing development that addressed a range of…

The writing of 38 9-10-year-old children was used to investigate their use of ludic (playful) punctuation in the composition of two kinds of writing, imaginative narrative and persuasive description. Framed within a consideration of language play in general, and children's use of punctuation in particular, the investigation revealed the ways in…

Writing is a critical foundational literacy skill for preschool and kindergarten and has received increased attention in research and policy as a result. Further, the nature of literacy more broadly is shifting towards more digital forms and formats. Research suggests that children approach tasks with and without technology differently and…

Emotion is closely associated with language, but we know very little about how children express emotion in their own writing. We used a large-scale, cross-sectional, and data-driven approach to investigate emotional expression via writing in children of different ages, and whether it varies for boys and girls. We first used a lexicon-based…

Writing is necessary for workplaces, and schools should equip students with basic proficiencies. The problem was primary students were not acquiring foundational writing skills. Foundational skills such as handwriting, spelling, punctuation, sentence construction, and typing should be effortless as students leave primary grades as the focus turns…

Young children engage in multimodal written expression. The research in this study explores the spaces that were created, and the stories created by children in an after-school comic club. The club utilized the Writer's Workshop model to support the Being a Writer program that is used in the Ocean View School District (Ocean View School District…

This study aims to examine preschool literacy practices during observations in Swedish preschools with a focus on environment, read-alouds and emergent writing. The study reported on in this article is based on empirical data from 433 observations in preschools in 80 Swedish municipalities that has been analysed qualitatively and quantitatively.…

Background: It has been suggested that children's writing is dependent on transcription and executive functions. However, there is a need for more research examining the relationships among those variables in primary school children, given that most existing studies are cross-sectional and assess transcription and executive functions separately,…

Writing gives children a way to share their voices and ideas with the world. Even in early childhood, the purpose of writing is to communicate. All young children have messages to share, and writing is one tool they can use to communicate those messages. For young children, it is quite challenging to form and remember messages while also figuring…

This mixed methods study sought to extend what is known about preservice teachers' [PSTs'] enactment of the core practice of reading and responding to students' writing by examining their reading of elementary students' writing at the start and end of writing-focused methods coursework. PSTs' reading of students' writing involves analysis of…

This article explores child-authored texts, both real and fictional, and the adult discourse surrounding or commenting on such texts. It focuses on the example of young Marcel's writing in Proust's "In Search of Lost Time," and on the critical commentary on the juvenilia of child authors of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I…

Much has been written about the importance of giving personal attention to children's written work. The focus has been on the effect of this feedback on the writing and on the child. Drawing on the philosophical discourse of the care of the self, I argue that the ways in which a teacher gives feedback informs the development of the teacher.…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how young people imagine civic futures through speculative fiction writing about artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The authors argue that young people's speculative fiction writing about AI not only helps make visible the ways they imagine the impacts of emerging technologies and the modes…

In elementary schools, writing instruction often includes a heavy emphasis on penmanship, cleanliness, and mechanics. While the importance of crafting a story and creating meaning are taught, these elements may not be stressed enough to young budding writers. In this article, Auguste suggests that elementary school teachers--especially…

This ethnographically-oriented, multi-year study examined an epistolary writing relationship between third grade students and the teacher's uncle, known to them as Uncle Billy, who, at the time of the study, was corresponding from prison. Taking place within a Reformed Christian school, this study encapsulates the pedagogy of Ms. Thompson, the…