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The abstract nature of grammar makes metalinguistic thinking a challenge for both teachers and students. However, it is suggested writing conferences in which students are encouraged to reflect on grammatical choices and their impact on meaning may be an effective means to develop metalinguistic awareness. This paper draws on cognitive linguistics and mentor texts to investigate what impact a concept-led, dialogic approach to grammar teaching has in the context of student-teacher discussions. By means of writing conferences between a teacher and three Year Five students, the paper explores how students made effective grammatical choices, as a result of metalinguistic dialogue with their teacher. Six concepts, scope, action chains, deixis, attentional windowing, fictive motion, and figure and ground, provided the explicit foci for imagining narrative scenes and appropriate grammatical choices. The findings suggest these concepts may have an enduring effect on students' ability to make independent and creative choices in their writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on findings of comparative international research on students’ poetic writing about the natural environment in the context of the classroom and a naturalistic setting. The study involved 97, nine- to 10-year-olds in four classes: two classes were in an English primary school with their counterparts in a Western Australian primary school. One class in each school had vicarious contact with nature as a stimulus for writing, using a previously taught technique for writing poetry; the other class in each school used the same technique but had direct contact with nature. The study has implications for students’ literacy development, creativity and agency and suggests that students’ poetic writing is enhanced through direct contact with nature. Teachers in both England and Australia, countries where ‘high stakes’ testing dominates the literacy curriculum, may find that standards of writing improve when students are given direct contact with natural spaces and are scaffolded to elicit their poetic voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the extent to which Year One B.Ed student teachers arrived at university already possessing self-confidence as writers. Both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection were used to identify students' self perceptions and confidence as writers and their understanding of processes of written composition. The article argues that to consciously engage student teachers in the writing process and to require them to reflect on that process can lead to their self efficacy as writers. Evidence from this study suggests one's self-confidence, as a writer, is enhanced by explicitly engaging in self reflection of one's own approaches to writing. The findings have implications for course design of literacy components in teacher education internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on research funded by the Bedford Charity (Harpur Trust) in which the narrative writing of reluctant writers in 10 Lower Schools (pupils aged 5-9) was levelled using, firstly, the Assessment of Pupil Progress (APP) criteria used in English primary and secondary schools and, secondly, criteria devised by the researcher. The latter were specifically designed for the assessment of narrative writing, whereas the APP criteria are generic. Findings resonate with the contrasting paradigms critiqued in D'Arcy's paper on the teaching and assessment of writing (D'Arcy 1999). Evidence suggests that levels assigned to individual texts can vary between one assessment criteria and another. In many cases, pupils achieved higher levels against criteria designed to evaluate creativity and the ability to tell a story. Appropriate assessment criteria are critical not only to summative evaluations but also to the planning of future teaching and learning. However, it is suggested that the dominant assessment paradigm and concomitant approaches to the pedagogy of writing in England have been influenced by discourses over which teachers have had little control. However, the future for the teaching and assessment of writing necessitates a paradigmatic shift. A retrospective of D'Arcy's paper may provide teachers and academics with the impetus for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]