Language Arts - Rewriting Writing, May 2001

In this article, Rowe, Fitch, and Bass explore how issues of power and identity are embedded within the cultures of a first-grade writing classroom.

In this article, Blake suggests that, in order to re-invigorate writing in schools, educators need to remind themselves of the importance of the tools of the writing process to help them explore the distinct and multiple voices and texts, and hence, the multiple literacies of our students.

In this article, Waldschmidt discusses one fourth-grade student’s attempt to write a bilingual script, based upon a story told to her by her father, within the context of a bilingual playwriting project.

In this article, Peterson examines the ways in which the boys and girls in three fourth-grade classrooms used writing to perform gender roles.

Terry Burns draws on research in a fourth-grade classroom to show that teachers can teach composing strategies that encourage a variety of ways of interacting socially while writing.

In this article, Brock uses two vignettes to illustrate issues important for teachers working with English language learners in their classrooms.

In this issue’s Talking about Books, Pataray-Ching and Ching take up issues of representation, identity, and authenticity as they share a list of Asian, Asian American, and Polynesian children’s books.

Spoken language as a kind of written embodiment, a text that is created, or written, in the mind and on the soul of the listener, is explored in Reder’s poetic text.

Like tracing the movement of dancers in a dance, Atkins follows writers and readers as they engage in working through and exploring the depths, boundaries, and sheer imaginative force of written texts.

This issue’s Roundtable on Books review team presents a list of books whose subjects range from elementary school pen-pal programs to a discussion of literacy in African American communities to the study of family histories and family trees.