School programs featuring teachers writing along with students have reported success. Teachers demonstrate their own composing processes by using an overhead projector or flipchart pad, and verbalizing their thinking as they choose a topic, plan an approach, generate a draft, and make revisions. Students whose innate verbal styles are communal and cooperative may benefit particularly well from classroom activities which emphasize teamwork. In writing workshops and peer editing or response groups, students assist each other in various stages of the writing process. Student-teacher conferences have long been viewed as a very effective means of providing writing instruction.
Research indicates that there is also a place for active instruction.
In schools that enroll a high proportion of nonstandard English speaking students, direct instruction can focus on the special issues that nonmainstream writers face. The key to successful instruction is to avoid stripping away student writers' sense of autonomy and responsibility. Many researchers maintain that grammar instruction does not improve writing. Some have even shown that grammar instruction may be harmful because it takes time away from writing practice. Nonstandard English speaking students need only to learn which features of their own dialects are stigmatized and how to replace them in their writing with the comparable standard form.