This text models for teachers how to help children learn and write by establishing comfort with writing, building confidence, and developing competence. Several themes run through the learning-to-write-process presented in this text:
* Writing is communication;
* Writing is a powerful tool for learning;
* How children feel about their writing and themselves as writers affects how they learn to write;
* Teachers are coworkers with students; children from many backgrounds can learn to write together.
The text sythesizes what we know about how children learn, how we write, and what we write into a process of teaching children to write. It is intended to serve as a starting place for developing theories of how to best teach writing.