Writing Time Is Our Time

Abstract

The topic of this chapter is to seek ways of increasing student self-efficacy for discipline-specific practices. The authors do so by examining the interrelationship between instructional practices that foster the disciplinary literacy of writing and writing fluency and the development of collective classroom efficacy in a third-grade classroom. Researchers acknowledge that to increase writing fluency, elementary students need to write often and require a supportive, motivating environment. The research question was: What teaching strategies and classroom approaches foster the interrelationship between writing fluency and the development of collective classroom efficacy? This chapter used a telling case design that included interviews with the teacher and three third-grade reluctant writers. The classroom collective moved from initial writing avoidance to writing ownership by March. All three case-study students began the school year disliking writing, but each came to appreciate their writing in different ways.