If we listen to them, the words of our students can provide a road map for instructional responses that meet their diverse literacy needs. In this article, Cara Gutzmer, a middle school literacy coach, and Phil Wilder, a teacher collaborator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discuss how a responsive teaching framework guided their…

Talks about the "writing from the heart" practiced in one sixth-grade classroom by students and teacher, for many different purposes. Describes instructional approaches that encourage such writing. (SR)

Describes an action research project which began by asking how English teachers could improve the writing of their African American students, and gradually came to ask how the teachers' own cultural assumptions might be blocking their teaching relationships. Identifies and discusses eight principles of their approach, and discusses changes in…

Describes the Power and Literacy for Disadvantaged Youth (PAL) project which includes more than 45 teachers from 20 different middle schools who are committed to work with at-risk students in a workshop atmosphere in their English language arts classrooms. Describes how each PAL teacher developed an implementation plan. Discusses what these…

Describes how one teacher worked with a learning-disabled sixth grader, who benefited from the opportunity to write about what he knew and cared about. (SR)

Relates how one teacher restructured her classroom to use reading and writing workshops. Describes how three at-risk students in her classroom, in the course of the academic year, moved from being at risk of academic failure to being on the path to promise and success. (SR)

Describes how the author used writers' notebooks with her students (grades 6-8), all Chinese immigrants, to find and express their memories and dreams, to find meaning in their experiences of change and loss; develop voice and a sense of audience; develop fluency in English; and find a growing sense of control over their new language and their new…