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Drawing from principles of ethical research derived from our review of national and international policy documents, in this paper we reflect on our research experiences working in partnership with Indigenous educators in a project to support young Indigenous children's oral and written language development through collaborative action research. Then, acting on lessons learned from this first partnership project, we describe our efforts to attend to these ethical research principles in a second partnership project to support Indigenous children's writing and Indigenous language and cultural learning through teacher-initiated, culturally specific, play-based activities. We offer our reflections as a starting point for conversations that will inspire and call for the necessary ethical and relational responsibilities of doing partnership research with and for Indigenous communities.

Two Anishnabek kindergarten teachers discuss four principles of Indigenous pedagogies in a project with a university researcher that created a context for children to engage in activities to learn their Anishnabek language and culture, and create positive identities. The university researcher sent a rabbit puppet named Niichii (Friend), who was assigned the role of an Anishnaabek child whose family was from their Indigenous community but had moved away. Taking the role of Niichii's Kokum (Grandmother), the university researcher asked the child to teach Niichii the community's language and traditional ways. The teachers describe and interpret the learning activities of the Niichii project in terms of four elements of Indigenous pedagogies: intergenerational learning; experiential learning; spiritual learning involving interconnections with the land; and learning about relationality. Implications for other bilingual and multilingual contexts include creating role play contexts where children are positioned as teachers and helpers to support an imaginary character's language and cultural learning, building on children's funds of knowledge and highlighting cultural connections to the local community.

This paper summarizes themes of rural teaching and rural students' experiences of initial teacher education programs based on focus group data of 25 Canadian northern rural and Indigenous teachers and early childhood educators. Inductive analyses of focus group data identified themes related to living and teaching in northern rural communities. A strong sense of togetherness and support, coupled with inconsistent/limited access to material and human resources, were highlighted in participants' experiences as teachers and as members of their Indigenous and rural communities. Additionally, participants talked about the expectation that their role extended beyond the classroom to reciprocate with support for their community. Themes arising from participants' initial teacher education experiences suggest a need for greater attention to the significant lifestyle adjustments and identity transformations that rural students must make when moving from their communities to urban centres to complete their teacher/early childhood educator preparation.

International Perspectives on Writing Curricula and Development: A Cross-Case Comparison By Jeffery, J.V., & Parr, J.M. London, UK: Routledge, 2021, 244 pages ISBN: 978-0-367-50816-6 Paperback $44.95 Introduction Jeffrey and Parr, [...]

A systematic review of research on oral language assessments for four-to-eight-year- old children was undertaken to support a six-year action research project aimed toward co-creating classroom oral language assessment tools with teachers in northern rural and Indigenous Canadian communities. Through an extensive screening process, 10 studies were assessed as highly rated and identified for inclusion in the final review. Narrative, vocabulary, and syntax assessments were the most common assessment types found in the final review. Assessment practices in all studies in the final review involved gathering language samples in one-on-one adult-directed contexts. The systematic review also revealed that a preponderance of the research on young children's oral language assessment has been published in speech-language pathology and language testing journals. Although educational researchers recognize the importance of oral language to children's literacy and learning, there is a paucity of research on oral language assessment conducted by educational researchers and published in educational research journals. Implications to policy and classroom practice include recommendations for increased research collaboration between speech-language pathology researchers and literacy researchers along with input from early childhood educators to develop oral language assessment instruments that support children's oral language in classroom settings.

A speech-language pathologist and former primary teacher who is now a researcher conducting action research with kindergarten teachers in northern rural Canadian classrooms collaborate in an analysis of one teacher's interactions with her students in a dramatic play center. We use three principles to show how the teacher supports children's language, literacy, and conceptual learning, and to propose additional ways to extend children's learning. The principles are observing what the children are interested in and following the children's lead, building on children's funds of knowledge to keep the conversation going, and posing a problem to invite deeper thinking about the problem and propose possible solutions. We conclude with suggestions for teachers in grades one and five to address social studies and health curriculum objectives from the Texas curriculum, while at the same time supporting and extending children's language.

In this paper we conduct a deductive analysis, using Sutton-Smith's "rhetorics of play," of the published kindergarten programs that have guided Ontario kindergarten teaching since 1944. Our analysis is used to gain an understanding of how we in Ontario have arrived at a point where play-based learning has been taken up by developers of the provincial kindergarten program and approved as a pedagogical focus by politicians. The predominant discourses appear to have changed from a romantic view of play as a natural, child-centered activity, to a discourse of play as progress, with an emphasis on the developmental benefits of play and learning outcomes of play. We believe that the use of the rhetoric of play as progress has been key to the continued prominence of play in Ontario kindergarten programs. It represents ideologies of schooling to which policy-makers seem to be attuned in this era of accountability.

In this paper, an Anishnaabe educator and university researcher/former primary teacher make a case for viewing children's dramatic play as multimodal identity texts. Indigenous children in our research study take up an agentic role and construct positive identities in dramatic play, creating narratives that reflect Indigenous cultural practices, as well as some practices of mainstream Canadian society that may be imbued with colonising perspectives. We argue that the Indigenous Cultural classes and follow-up dramatic play counter the marginalisation of Indigenous knowledge, culture and languages that has occurred with devastating effects on generations of Indigenous families. Our paper is based on video recordings of 4- and 5-year-old children's dramatic play that were analysed collectively by 12 Indigenous educators in terms of the Indigenous cultural meanings that children created in their play. We conclude with implications for non-Indigenous teachers, arguing that a case can be made for including child-led dramatic play in the literacy curriculum when dramatic play narratives are viewed as multimodal identity texts. These texts, which can involve multiple modes including print, draw from children's own cultural and linguistic knowledge and experience.

With the goal of supporting students' writing and content area learning using play as a pedagogical model, teachers' action research projects involved kindergarten and grade 1 students collaborating to create texts for a range of purposes. The authors analyzed the project activities for their starting points or motivators, student and teacher roles, and artifacts. The activities took the form of small initiatives, a range of themes connecting curricular areas, and imaginative scenarios. Within each, teachers took on various roles to support student interactions and scaffold literacy learning, and students responded through collaboration, creative expression, and writing. Each activity addressed curricular objectives related to literacy while presenting students with opportunities to engage in collaborative, play(ful) learning with peers and the teacher and express their learning through creative means. These projects show that there does not have to be a disconnect between the achievement of curricular objectives and the implementation of play(ful) learning activities.

This article reports on collaborative action research in twelve northern rural and Indigenous communities in four Canadian provinces. Pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, grade one, and Aboriginal Head Start teachers worked with university researchers in three universities to create action research projects with the aim of supporting children's oral language and writing through play in their classrooms. Inductive analysis of focus group data shows that teachers gained understandings about play as a context both for supporting and for authentic assessment of young children's oral language. The building of trusting relationships, built through ongoing collaboration with colleagues within their schools and across four provinces, in addition to collaboration with university researchers over a number of years, was viewed as particularly influential to teachers' professional learning. Additionally, teachers talked about the value of opportunities to contribute to the development of teaching and assessment tools. Participating teachers came to see themselves as making valuable contributions to professional knowledge beyond their northern communities. The 4R's for conducting research in Indigenous contexts (reciprocity, respect, relevance, and responsibility) provide a framework for deriving implications from this collaborative research. It is important that the results of collaborative action research conducted in rural and Indigenous schools be widely disseminated to provide alternative perspectives to curriculum, research and practice that tend to be urban-oriented.

Five Aboriginal Head Start early childhood educators from a northern Canadian community participated in interviews for the purpose of informing non-Indigenous teachers' classroom teaching. Their observations and experiences highlight the importance of learning from and on the land alongside family members, and of family stability and showing acceptance of all children. Additionally, participants talked of the impact of residential schools on their families in terms of loss of their Indigenous language, and their attempts to learn and to teach the children in their classrooms the Indigenous languages and teachings.

Ten teachers in kindergarten and grade one classrooms in remote northern Canadian Ojibway communities, and two consultants from a First Nations Student Success Program participated in focus group discussions about the place of rough and tumble and superhero play, and teachers' roles in preventing relational and physically aggressive play in school. This paper reports on issues related to sociocultural influences on perceptions of play involving objects to which Indigenous children assign implicit roles as guns, and teachers' concerns about external perceptions of teachers' roles vis-à-vis rough and tumble play in school. Implications for teacher practice and for teacher education include establishing boundaries and negotiating rules and consequences with students, and teaching problem-solving approaches. Teachers' expressed need for exposure to research on rough and tumble play in teacher education and professional development initiatives is consistent with the findings of previous research. This study provides perspectives from teachers in a non-mainstream teaching context on a controversial topic with mixed views coming from researchers and media reports.

Throughout the decades, writing has been recognized as a process that helps learners to think more deeply about ideas and information they encounter through reading, listening, viewing, and physically experiencing the world around them. "Discovery writing," the type of writing over which students have some control of the format, topic, purpose, and audience, leads to greater understanding of concepts across the middle school curriculum. "Staccato writing," the quick, short writing required when filling in blanks, copying notes from a blackboard, or providing short answers to questions, does not generate the same deep levels of understanding. Discovery writing requires greater concentrated attention to sorting through and making sense of ideas than staccato writing does. In this article, the author adds to the longstanding literature on writing across the curriculum by showing that content area classrooms are ideal places for helping students to develop as writers, as well as content learners. Writing is a natural and easy fit in content classes. As teachers teach writing, they help students to reinforce and build on their content understandings. As content concepts are taught, students will be creating pools of knowledge that they can draw upon when they write. Here, the author makes a case for teaching writing alongside content across the curriculum and then shows what planning and organizing the classroom to teach content concepts and writing might look like. (Contains 6 figures.)

This research, using questionnaire and interview data, examined practices and challenges of educators in areas of southern Ontario in fostering immigrant parents' support for their children's literacy. Results showed that teachers learn about the language and culture of their students, modify homework assigned to their ESL students, and encourage parents to read to their children in their mother tongue. Teachers need to increase their awareness of parents' perceptions of authority and the role of their first language for success in their children's English literacy. Teachers also need to understand parents' role as co-teachers at home. (Contains 2 tables. Questionnaires and interview questions are appended. )

This collaborative action research, carried out by early childhood education interns, with the support of their instructor and two university researchers, shows the empowerment of postsecondary students that occurs when they are responsible for designing and implementing research projects tailored to their placement contexts. The early childhood educator interns took up a stance as reflective practitioners who developed professional skills and knowledge in an area that was meaningful to them--teaching young children their Indigenous language. The interns shared responsibility for their learning with their instructor, who was also conducting research into her practice, gathering data to identify the impact of her new teaching approach on interns' learning. The simultaneous use of collaborative action research methods at the instructor and intern levels provides researchbased information for the larger professional field. Additionally, the college instructor and the student interns are positioned as research-practitioners who use action research to support their professional growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on research examining the social purposes of Indigenous kindergarten children's language and their construction of Indigenous cultural knowledge within and through interactions with peers during dramatic play and play with construction materials. The participants are three teachers and 29 children from two rural northern Canadian Indigenous communities that are accessible only by plane and winter roads. Data sources are video-recordings of the children's play interactions taken over 4 months and their teachers' perceptions of the Indigenous knowledge that the children construct in their play. Unlike results of many standardized oral language assessments indicating deficits in Indigenous children's language, our results showed that children used language for a wide range of purposes; a range that corresponds with results of previous studies of nonindigenous children's play interactions. Participating Indigenous children most often used "language for learning" and "language for imagining" in their play. Their teachers were heartened to see that their students, most frequently the girls, also used "language for disagreeing" and asserting themselves. Teachers felt that children were constructing powerful cultural identities that would contribute to positive change, if they could use language in these ways outside their Indigenous communities, as well. Participating children took up Indigenous cultural meanings in their play, such as relationships with the land and among family members. In some cases, they created hybrid narratives, bringing together elements of popular culture as well as traditional Indigenous land-based activities, such as fishing and hunting, into their play interactions.

Une revue systematique des evaluations de la langue orale chez les enfants de quatre a huit ans a ete entreprise en vue d'etayer un projet de recherche-action visant a co-creer des outils d'evaluation du langage parle en classe avec des enseignants dans des communautes autochtones et dans des communautes rurales dans le nord du Canada. A la suite d'un processus de depistage exhaustif, dix etudes ont recu une excellente cote et ete retenues pour la synthese finale. Les types d'evaluations les plus courantes, telles que repertoriees dans la synthese finale, portaient sur les competences narratives, le vocabulaire et la syntaxe. Les pratiques d'evaluation dans toutes les etudes retenues dans la synthese finale reposaient sur la collecte d'echantillons de langage dans des echanges interpersonnels diriges par un adulte. Il est ressorti de la revue systematique que les recherches sur l'evaluation de la langue orale chez les jeunes enfants sont surtout publiees dans des revues axees sur l'orthophonie et l'evaluation des connaissances linguistiques. Bien que les chercheurs en education reconnaissent l'importance du langage parle pour la litteratie et l'apprentissage durant l'enfance, il y a peu de recherches sur l'evaluation de la langue orale menees par des chercheurs en education et publiees dans des revues centrees sur la recherche en education. Sur le plan des politiques et des pratiques pedagogiques, il y aurait donc lieu que se multiplient des recherches concertees entre les chercheurs en orthophonie et les chercheurs en litteratie et qu'on fasse appel aux educateurs de la petite enfance pour mettre au point des outils d'evaluation du langage parle afin de favoriser le developpement de la langue orale chez les enfants en classe. Mots-cles : langue orale, revue systematique, education de la petite enfance, jeunes enfants, evaluation en classe A systematic review of research on oral language assessments for four-to-eight- year-old children was undertaken to support a six-year action research project aimed toward co-creating classroom oral language assessment tools with teachers in northern rural and Indigenous Canadian communities. Through an extensive screening process, 10 studies were assessed as highly rated and identified for inclusion in the final review. Narrative, vocabulary, and syntax assessments were the most common assessment types found in the final review. Assessment practices in all studies in the final review involved gathering language samples in one-on-one adult-directed contexts. The systematic review also revealed that a preponderance of the research on young children's oral language assessment has been published in speech-language pathology and language testing journals. Although educational researchers recognize the importance of oral language to children's literacy and learning, there is a paucity of research on oral language assessment conducted by educational researchers and published in educational research journals. Implications to policy and classroom practice include recommendations for increased research collaboration between speech-language pathology researchers and literacy researchers along with input from early childhood educators to develop oral language assessment instruments that support children's oral language in classroom settings. Keywords: oral language, systematic review, early childhood education, young children, classroom assessment, Assessing Young Children's Oral Language: Recommendations for Classroom Practice and Policy Introduction In this article we draw on the results of a systematic review of research evaluating young children's oral [...]

This article examines a grade one teacher's support for her students' writing development through formal peer and teacher feedback. The teacher modelled and provided examples of effective feedback and good writing in whole-class and small-group lessons and in her own one-on-one verbal feedback on student writing. She allocated time for the students to participate in formal peer-feedback sessions, in turn giving feedback to the students on the suggestions to one another during these sessions. Students gave more content-oriented than conventions-oriented feedback to each other. They revised the content and writing conventions of their writing in response to 90% of the feedback they received from their peers and teacher.

This article reports comprehensive findings from a national study of the teaching and assessment of writing in classrooms across ten Canadian provinces and two of three territories. Through interviews with 216 grade 4-8 teachers and observations and interviews in 22 classrooms (1 to 3 classrooms in each province), we gathered information about participating middle-grade teachers' goals, and the practices and resources (including computers and multi-media, parents and community resources) that they use to teach and assess writing. The strengths and challenges that they identify in teaching writing and assessing writing, and the people who have most greatly influenced their writing instruction provide additional information on which we base implications for teacher education and professional development initiatives.

This paper examined grades 5 and 6 students' participation in wikis while writing reports on social studies topics. An analysis of eight wikis showed that students represented meanings they had constructed about their topics by engaging in knowledge telling practices (e.g., introducing, stating, or repeating information or an idea and developing previous ideas with examples, statistics or other information) more frequently than they engaged in knowledge transforming processes, such as drawing conclusions, identifying cause-effect relationships, or making inferences or judgements. Our research shows that Bereiter and Scardamalia's model (1987) is useful to inform the development of tools for assessing students' demonstration of their understanding of concepts in content area writing.

Homework is an important way for teachers to develop relationships with their students' parents and other caregivers. The learning activities teachers assign for homework provide parents a window into the content and skills their children are learning at school. Parents have a chance to participate in their children's schooling by monitoring and assisting them with their homework. As such, homework helps to keep schools accountable to parents. A number of researchers have found that when parents are involved in their children's homework, the learning value of the homework increases (Baker, 2003; Margolis, 2005). The research reported in this article contributes something new to the conversation on parental involvement and homework by presenting parents' perspectives and recommendations related to online homework involving Web 2.0 technologies (O'Reilly, 2007). Two of the authors of this paper are researchers who gathered data about the teachers' writing instruction over the course of a year, carried out the survey research, and wrote the description of the parent survey results. The other two authors are grades five and six teachers who provided an authentic perspective for considering how teachers might use the survey results in their classrooms. (Contains 4 figures.)

Interviews with 216 Grades 4-8 teachers and observations in 21 classrooms show that computers are widely used to teach writing across Canada. Restricted access to computers plays a role in the frequency and types of interactions that students and teachers have with computers in writing classes. Equally influential are assumptions about writing development and effective teaching practice. Many participating teachers believe that spell checkers hamper students' spelling development. They view computers as tools to extend and support their teaching of mini-lessons.

Educators have long recognized that parental and community supports are important underpinnings for children's success in school. With respect to the teaching of writing, however, little research has been conducted to provide evidence of effective practices teachers use to involve parents and communities. As part of a national Canadian study of the teaching of writing at the middle level of schooling (grades 4-8), teachers discussed their practices and perspectives on how they involve parents and communities in their writing programs. Teachers reported that they encouraged parental involvement by fostering home-school literacy links, communication, and engagement and response to student writing. Teachers also made productive use of community resources, such as author visits, competitions, and young author conferences; while a smaller number of teachers bring the larger community into their writing programs in integral ways.

This article presents a deductive content analysis of the grade 6 specific and general objectives in the writing curricula across Canada's 10 provinces and two of its three territories. The analysis uses Ivanic's six discourses of writing and learning to write: skills discourse, creativity discourse, process discourse, genre discourse, social practices discourse, and sociopolitical discourse. Phrases within each of the curriculum objectives that had some relevance to writing were coded to determine the relative emphases of the discourses within each province's and territory's curriculum. The analysis showed that the process discourse predominates in all writing curricula. Elements of the skills, creativity and genre discourses are present with varying emphases across the provincial and territorial curricula. However, there is minimal to no evidence of the social practices and sociopolitical discourses. Implications for curriculum developers endeavouring to create more comprehensive writing curricula include taking up more socially and politically oriented approaches to the teaching of skills and genres, and to fostering creativity in students' writing, thus creating hybrid discourses that are based in a view of writing as a sociopolitical practice.

Interview, document, and observational data were used to examine grade K-2 teachers' and literacy coaches' perceptions of the benefits and challenges of collaborative action research as a professional development initiative in rural schools. Eleven teachers and five literacy coaches in five northern Ontario school districts participated in collaborative action research supported by a university facilitator/researcher. Their goal was to enhance their teaching practices to support K-2 students' oral language development. The collaborative action research approach proved to be a relatively inexpensive and effective professional learning forum for the rural teachers, who had limited opportunities for formal professional development because of geographical distances between individual schools and major urban centers. The time commitment, often a challenge in action research, represented a particular constraint to rural teachers because of their heavy curricular responsibilities. (Contains 2 tables and 1 footnote.)

This paper reports on an analysis of large-scale assessments of Grades 5-8 students' writing across 10 provinces and 2 territories in Canada. Theory, classroom practice, and the contributions and constraints of large-scale writing assessment are brought together with a focus on Grades 5-8 writing in order to provide both a broad view of Canada-wide assessments and specific recommendations for enhancing the validity of provincial and territorial writing assessment in Canada. We deductively analyzed the primary assessment administration documents found on the provincial and territorial education websites using the categories of (a) design (e.g., grades at which the tests are written, the goals of the tests, the number and types of written compositions that are gathered, (b) administration (e.g., time of year, length of time provided to students to write, and pre-writing activities), and (c) the scoring of the assessments. We also used tenets of effective writing assessment from a process writing approach and from a multiliteracies approach to analyze the assessment procedures. Our analysis shows that process writing approaches have influenced the administration procedures in terms of the provision of time to talk with peers before writing and the recognition of various composition and thinking processes. However, composing processes are directed to be less idiosyncratic and recursive than composition theorists and noted teachers of writing would recommend. The assessments do not yet reflect an awareness of multiliteracies theory, as there is little use of digital technology to write and portfolio assessments and the collaborative writing of Web 2.0 practices are non-existent.

This paper reports on the feedback and assessment practices of Canadian grades 4-8 teachers; the data are drawn from a national study of the teaching of writing at the middle grades in all ten Canadian provinces and two (of three) territories. Respondents were 216 grades 4-8 teachers from rural and urban schools. Data sources were audio-recorded telephone interviews analyzed using a constant comparative method. Participating teachers were mindful that feedback is important for student self-esteem; they valued peer editing and viewed feedback as essential for fostering students' writing development; they strove to be what they considered "objective" while adhering to criteria for standardized exams. (Contains 1 table.)

This paper focuses on one teacher team and the university facilitators who supported their collaborative action research within a province-wide professional development initiative designed by the provincial elementary teacher union to bring together teachers and university faculty in teacher-directed action research. The paper is collaboratively written by three teachers, their principal, two university facilitators, and the teacher union's director of the project. We identify the principal's and university facilitators' involvement as important contributors to the success of the initiative, but underline the significance of the research as being teacher-led and collaborative with funding for release days as features that follow the democratic principles of teacher autonomy and equality to support teachers' professional learning for change. The success of the initiative, "Teachers Learning Together", is exemplified by a report of one team's research methods and findings. (Contains 1 table.)

This research reports on collaborative research projects supported by a teachers' federation. We compare research teams involved in the first year of the project, where they had free choice of research purposes with those in the second year who had the subject area defined for them. University faculty, teachers' colleagues, and the teachers' federation served as mentors for participating teachers. The action research resulted in change in teachers' practice and in the development of leadership skills. ["University Faculty, Colleagues, and Teachers' Federation as Mentors in Collaborative Action Research" was written with Jane Bennett.]

A literacy education professor teams up with a colleague whose specialization is technology and education to analyze students' contributions to a graduate course taught online for the first time. This article explains the modifications that the instructor made to a face-to-face course to adapt it to an online learning environment. The online format provided an effective forum for in-depth discussion of the topics and issues and for students to develop relationships with their peers and their instructor. Over 60% of students' notes went beyond descriptions of classroom practices and observations to reflecting on practice using the article ideas and evaluating the ideas in the article. On average, students received 3-5 comments from their peers each week and one or two from their instructor. The instructor found a pedagogical advantage in online teaching as a result of the increased accessibility to all students' thinking about the topics and the greater opportunity for all students to participate fully. (Contains 3 tables.)

This article brings together the perspectives of 21 immigrant parents who speak eight different languages and have been in Canada less than six years with those of 61 teachers and 32 principals who work in schools with English as a second language (ESL) populations of 20% or greater who have been recognized for successfully involving immigrant parents in their children's schooling. We highlight successful school practices for formal and informal immigrant parent involvement in their children's school learning, for communicating with immigrant parents, and for learning more about the language and culture of their students and their families. The gap between the language of home and school remains the greatest barrier to successful communication partnerships; parents, teachers, and principals should continue to find ways to utilize mother tongues in ways that support student learning in English.

The voices of 21 immigrant parents, 12 teachers, and 10 principals are heard in this discussion of assumptions regarding minority-language parents' linguistic, social, and cultural capital in supporting their children's literacy development. Interview data show that parents and educators recognize the contributions of children's first language (L1) and their culture to their English literacy learning. Participating minority-language parents provided reading materials in their L1 for their children to read and enrolled their children in heritage language schools. Participating teachers and principals used dual-language books and encouraged minority-language parents to read and write to their children in their L1. They showed interest in linguistic diversity and changed practices and school structures to accommodate the cultures, languages, customs, and values of immigrant families. (Contains 2 tables.)

Anne Burke and Shelley Stagg Peterson argue that "picture books offer a medium for teaching visual and critical literacy across the curriculum." To support this idea, they describe a multidisciplinary unit on World War II that pushes high school students to utilize visual and print literacies to analyze, comprehend, and relate to public events and private struggles from history. (Contains 1 figure.)

This article presents the results of the initial stage of research on grades 4-8 teachers' writing instruction within rural and urban contexts across Canada. Teachers' goals and their use of digital technologies and multimedia are examined within rural and urban schools in five eastern provinces. Through half-hour telephone interviews with 54 teachers, the authors found that perceptions of the value of writing within their communities and the kinds of support for writing that students were given outside school divided along teachers' perceptions of students' social class lines. Language spoken in students' homes also influenced teachers' goals for their students. Only 5 of the 54 teachers interviewed provide opportunities for students to compose on computers. In most teachers' classrooms, computers were used for retyping drafts, and often used at home, to create "good copies" that students handed in for grades. (Contains 2 tables.)

Teacher educator and researcher Peterson works with eighth-grade science teacher, Rochwerger, who believes that writing is a learning tool that will enable her students to become scientifically literate. Here, we see this belief played out through an action research project that found students using a genre of their choice to write about what they had learned during hands-on activities in the classroom, and analyzing a science fiction story for scientific principles. The authors conclude with a list of recommendations for teachers who would like to teach writing using content area topics or who would like to collaborate with science teachers in their schools. (Contains 2 figures.)

The development of communication skills is a key component in any science program. However, students do not see the connections between writing and science. In particular, students lack the enthusiasm when the time comes to write lab reports. Students say that they do not see why they should have to write dry, boring lab reports following an enjoyable hands-on activity or lab. This deepens the perceived disconnection between writing and science. This article describes the action research project conducted by the authors that provided students with alternatives to traditional lab report writing. Students used whatever genre they thought would best communicate what they had learned in a science unit. Basing their project on the work of Grierson, Anson, and Baird (2002), the authors called this project "multigenre writing" because students chose many different formats, such as comic strips and stories, to show what they had learned in a catapult unit. In this project, students had opportunities for physical activity, creative expression, and positive social interaction with peers while working in their small groups on both the hands-on activity and the multigenre writing activity. (Contains 1 figure and 5 online resources.)

This article examines the influence of genre and gender on comments written by 108 sixth-grade teachers in response to two narrative and two persuasive papers. There were significant genre differences. Process, conventions, artistic style, and format were the focus of significantly greater numbers of comments directed to narrative writing. In contrast, meaning, organization, effort, and ideology were emphasized to a greater degree when teachers responded to persuasive writing. Teachers tended to indicate and make greater numbers of corrections and to provide more criticisms and lessons, explanations, and suggestions when the work was attributed to a male writer. Female teachers generally wrote greater numbers of comments and tended to indicate and make more corrections. Generally, teachers were reluctant to engage with the ideologies in students' writing. There was a correlation between convention errors and the number and types of comments.