Ray, Katie Wood

Offers preschool and kindergarten teachers activities and strategies to nurture students' writing skills and help them become lifetime writers.

About the Authors is about the littlest authors -- those in kindergarten through second grade. Based on a profound understanding of the ways in which young children learn, it shows teachers how to launch a writing workshop by inviting children to do what they do naturally -- make stuff.

Offers advice to teachers on how to conduct writing workshops, providing a rationale for writing workshops, looking at what they have in common across grade levels, and discussing the tone of workshop teaching, getting started with independent writing time, curriculum, focus lessons, assessment and evaluation, and other topics.

Examines the theoretical underpinnings of how students learn to write from reading other writers; describes various kinds of inquiry designed to help teachers and students learn how to learn from writers; and includes thoughts from the author on writing and teaching, as well as a selection of resource materials.

Offers advice and insights to writing instructors on how to teach and develop curriculum based on their own experiences of reading and writing, and the resulting knowledge of how finished writing comes to be.