Learning to Write

This text models for teachers how to help children learn and write by establishing comfort with writing, building confidence, and developing competence. Several themes run through the learning-to-write-process presented in this text:

• Writing is communication;
• Writing is a powerful tool for learning;
• How children feel about their writing and themselves as writers affects how they learn to write;
• Teachers are coworkers with students; children from many backgrounds can learn to write together.

The text synthesizes what we know about how children learn, how we write, and what we write into a process of teaching children to write. It is intended to serve as a starting place for developing theories of how to best teach writing.