ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that how, in one classroom, a community of writers was created by doing just that. It begins by telling about all the English teaching going on in this classroom and shows how the different elements work together to help the children become writers. The children's engagement with the text gave them both a model and a motivation for writing, and both were attainable by these very young children. The teacher was not sure how this class would respond, as it is a challenging class containing a high proportion of children with special needs, but the students absolutely loved it. They thought about thinking and what they would think if they were Henry Finch. The Story Machine by Tom McLaughlin was the next text used with the Year 1 class. It is a more complex text and was used to focus on writing stories.
