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By the time they reach preschool or kindergarten, young children are already writers. They don't have much experience, but they're filled with stories to tell and ideas to express--they want to show the world what they know and see. All they need is a nurturing teacher to recognize the writer at work within them. Taking an exciting, new approach to working with our youngest students, this book shows how, by respecting children as writers, engaged in bookmaking, teachers can gently nudge them toward a lifetime of joyful writing. The authors guide the reader through fundamental concepts of early writing. Providing numerous, helpful examples of early writing--complete with transcriptions--they demonstrate how to: make sense of children's writing and interpret how they represent sounds, ideas, and images; see important developmental signs in writers that teachers can use to help them grow further; and recognize the thinking young children engage in and discover that it's the same thinking more experienced writers use to craft purposeful, thoughtful pieces. Then the authors show you how little ones can develop powerful understandings about: texts and their characteristics; the writing process; and what it means to be a writer. The reader will learn how to support their writers' quest to make meaning, as they grow their abilities and refine their thinking about writing through teaching strategies such as: reading aloud; working side by side with writers; and sharing children's writing. This book divides into two sections and ten chapters. Section I: Building Understandings About Young Writers, contains: (1) What It Means to Be a Writer; (2) Composition and the Importance of Making of Picture Books; (3) Rethinking the Meaning of Writing Development; (4) Understanding Dimensions of Composition Development; and (5) The Child's Image of Self as Writer: Managing the Balance of Initiation and Demonstration. Section II: Teaching Practices That Nurture Young Writers, contains (6) Understanding the Teaching Context; (7) Supporting Young Writers Through Read-Aloud; (8) Understanding Side-by-Side Teaching; (9) Building a Repertoire of Responsive Actions for Side-by-Side Teaching; and (10) Supporting Young Writers with Share Time.

Designed to be a practical, comprehensive, and illuminating guide for both new and experienced teachers, this book confronts the challenges of the writing workshop head-on, with chapters on all aspects of the writing workshop, including: day-to-day instruction, classroom management, the development of writing identities, and the tone of workshop teaching. It is a book about being articulate--about a person's ability to think through what he or she is doing when he or she is doing it, so that practice can be improved. Woven between the chapters on teaching are the voices of published writers and commentaries, reminding readers how writers do what they do. The book's early chapters explore why writing workshops exist; the next several chapters (5 through 8) help readers think through the workshop as a predictable event in the life of a classroom; Chapters 9 through 12 deal with curriculum knowledge for workshop teaching; and Chapters 13 through 16 examine the parts of the workshop where students and teachers talk about writing. The book's ending chapters (17 through 19) are meant to help readers work through issues related to the ongoing work that students are engaged in during workshops. (Contains a list of 65 suggested readings.) (NKA)

Drawing on stories from classrooms, examples of student writing, and illustrations, this book explains in practical terms the theoretical underpinnings of how elementary school students learn to write from their reading. Beginning with the concepts that underlie how writing teachers teach students to write by studying other writers, it goes on to explore ways to help children read like writers. Elementary teachers will immediately be able to adapt these writing ideas to their own writing lessons. Full of practical ideas and personal recollections, the book weaves practice and theory together to provide an important knowledge base for teachers who want to use literature in their teaching of writing. After an introduction, chapters in the book are: (1) Reading Like Writers; (2) The Craft of Writing; (3) Envisioning Text Possibilities; (4) Reading Aloud: Filling the Room with the Sound of Wondrous Words; (5) Studying Writers' Office Work: Powerful Writing begins Long before the Draft; (6) Organized Inquiry: Teaching Students to Read Like Writers; (7) An Invitation to My Library: The Craft of Text Structure; (8) Another Invitation to My Library: Ways with Words; (9) Selecting Books for Craft Study; (10) Growing Taller in Our Teaching; (11) Planning for the Workshop: Writers Learn from Writers; (12) Focus Lessons: Filling the Writing Workshop with Craft Possibilities; (13) Brave, Bold Teaching: The Power of Suggestive Writing Conferences; (14) Assessment That Focuses Our Eyes on Craft; and (15) Never to Teach Alone Again. Contains an approximately 200-item bibliography. (RS)