ABSTRACT
This chapter offers suggestions as to how the teachers can utilize conferencing time and teach skills to the students so that they can truly be a help to one another. Many of the Activating Prior Knowledge and Action Research activities and sample reading guides involved writing. The chapter focuses on writing in the content areas—but not in total isolation; the teachers see that reading, talking, listening, viewing, and thinking are involved. Children who are at the emergent stage of literacy already have important thoughts that are connected to learning in content areas. The chapter explains a number of ways that students in teachers’ content areas can write in order to learn, to better understand material they read, to think critically and reflectively about content, to improve their writing skills, and to show what they have learned. Research projects have the potential to enhance content learning, while combining exploratory and explanatory writing.
