Downloads & Free Reading Options - Results

This report presents first year (1984-85) findings of The Writing Project, a 2-year school-based study of the use of word processing to improve learning-disabled children's writing skills. Emphasis is on how remedial teachers can integrate computers into their writing activities in resource rooms and classrooms. Based in three Massachusetts school districts, the project focused in the first year on intensive observation of 14 fourth-grade children as they wrote with word processors. The study found that the computer aided the child's sense of ownership, of being in control and "authoring" the writing, and of his/her involvement in writing. Teachers brought three different approaches to teaching writing with a computer: skill building; guided writing; and strategic. The strategic approach, which provided students with strategies for managing the writing process, appeared to result in the highest level of student involvement and independent work. The skill building approach resulted in the least positive impact on students' involvement and sense of ownership. A model environment for teaching writing with computers is proposed, guided by such principles as the basic capability of learning-disabled children as "authors" and the use of writing strategies that keep the child in control. Includes 21 references. (DB)

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert