This paper describes a pen pal letter exchange between thirty professional year education students in a language arts methodology course and a class of sixth graders. Both groups were involved in a writers' workshop approach to story writing and this set the context for the focus of the letter exchanges.
Findings support the tenets of constructivist learning theory.
Yet often authors, regardless of age, have only a vague sense of who they are writing for and their writing lacks the impetus for meaningful communicative intent. Both classes of students, university and sixth graders, had built models in small groups as part of a social studies project. The education students had constructed their models as an assignment in their social studies methodology class, the elementary pupils as a project in their study of France. The common assignment for both groups was to write a story based on some aspect of a model created in their classes. Both classes were taught about the recursive stages in the writing process.