With tips on punctuation, style, grammar and essay structure, this handy guide provides succinct and practical guidance on students most common areas of concern in their written work. Each tip is supplemented by authentic examples of student writing, suggested re-writes, and appropriate self-help exercises. This book contains four parts. Part I:…

Award-winning author Carolyn Coman has made a career out of writing stories for children and young adults as well as teaching writing to people of all ages. She believes that the essence of good writing, no matter the genre, is the ability to craft a solid story. In this innovative book, Carolyn provides advice, strategies, and inspiration…

With a central theme of how people create a means to communicate reliably, and based on language-making exercises that touch students' imaginations, this book aims to interest students in language and how language is made. Since students like codes and ciphers, the book begins with secret writing, which is then used to reveal the foundation of…

Intended for teachers, students, and for anyone who is dissatisfied with his or her understanding of writing, this book is focused on practical exercises and experiments. The first section of the book, "What Writing Is," consists of two chapters of primary interest to teachers, and provides a general orientation to the document's approach. The…

This book is aimed at those who want to record personal stories, or for family and friends, or for fulfillment of higher literary standards. It is a book to open up conversations about memoir and a practical guide to the craft, the personal challenges, and the ethical dilemmas of writing true stories. The chapters deal with getting started,…

Using this workbook, elementary students can learn to write sentences like their favorite authors. Using sentences from more than 100 popular stories and novels as models, the workbook offers extensive practice in four sentence-manipulating techniques: sentence unscrambling, sentence imitating, sentence combining, and sentence expanding. It shows…

Encouraging exploration and practice, this book offers hundreds of exercises and numerous tips covering every step involved in creating poetry. Each chapter is a self-contained unit offering an overview of material in the chapter, a definition of terms, and poetry examples from well-known authors designed to supplement the numerous exercises.…

This book presents the essentials of good writing in an easy-to-follow 4-part process. The first step discussed in the book, "Using Your Noodle," guides the student through the preparatory thinking process (audience awareness, brainstorming, grouping thoughts). The second step, "Following a Format," presents the challenge of…

Designed to involve students directly and immediately in the process of intellectual inquiry by showing them that writing is a discovery process and by helping them in developing writing as a form of social dialogue, this book is organized to accentuate the dynamic, interactive character of the writing process. Chapter titles are: (1)…

Divided into four sections, this workbook offers assistance to teachers in preparing writing lessons and then in presenting these lessons in their own classrooms. Part 1, "The Writing Lessons," consists of 22 prewriting preparation and instruction lessons followed by 10-minute writing exercises covering various aspects of freewriting,…

This book presents 113 writing "workouts" (exercises) to help students, and especially teachers, think about the small steps writers take as they learn their craft. The workouts in Part I, Writers Speak Up, are intended to help novice writers develop confidence in the value of their experience. Part II, Writers Pay Attention, presents challenges…

Designed to reveal the art and craft of composition and the principles that underlie good writing, this textbook focuses on how to improve students' writing and how to give students a sense of the contribution writing makes to any kind of learning. The 20 chapters of the textbook are divided into 5 parts: (1) "The Writing Experience";…

Written by a Los Angeles history teacher frustrated by the lack of culturally relevant materials, this book covers some of the most interesting events in the history of Mexico and the heritage of Mexican Americans. Chapters are: (1) Indian Mexico (Teotihuacan, the Maya, the Toltecs, and the Aztecs); (2) La Conquista (Cortes and Moctezuma, conquest…

Based on the authors' classroom work and observations since the 1930s, this book is intended to help teach children to write correctly and, at the same time, help them learn to enjoy writing so much that they will want to continue writing throughout their lives. The book offers classroom teachers, school library media specialists, curriculum…

This book, designed for students in grades 4 to 6, provides advice to help them do homework independently and successfully. Part 1, "Developing Good Habits," presents exercises and tips on organization and time management, including a self-inventory of homework habits, assistance in goal setting, and designing a personal schedule. Part 2, "Getting…