In fall 2010, the University of Massachusetts Amherst instituted a new upper-division General Education requirement, the Integrative Experience (IE), designed to help students integrate the various components of their undergraduate experience and reflect upon their learning and development as a result of those experiences, both key dimensions of…

This essay explores what the development of writing might look like and how it might take shape in a secondary English classroom. The study problematises current definitions of progress. In direct opposition to standards-driven models, I propose an alternative way of thinking about the development of writers through a series of narrative accounts…

Literature that provokes readers to engage in activism is the author's favorite type of writing. For years she has celebrated the tradition of counterculture authors who advocated for a cause, using narratives to educate the world and elicit change. As a culminating project after a year of embracing dialogue and promoting writing for power, she…

This paper focuses on a pedagogical and instructional approach to engaging students in the classroom with the specific activity of a writing prompt, which utilizes a short video about current events and trends coupled with writing and discussion. This strategy allows active student learning in which the students engage, develop critical thinking…

The purpose of the conference presentation upon which this paper is inspired was to present an innovative approach to motivate students to write in a second language during a first-year Spanish class. Usually, students comply with writing exercises that convey basic thoughts, due to constrained vocabulary and limited knowledge of grammatical…

Describes how a class of 13 academically average high school students, inspired by an earlier article in this journal, collaboratively wrote a story. Notes that the students continued to revise their story even after it came back from the printers. (RS)

In this article, the author advocates the use of literacy narratives--assignments in which students are asked to describe and reflect upon their experiences with reading and writing. Among their other uses, she believes that they provide a sense of students' prior literacy experiences and of their general feelings toward reading and writing, and…

Explains certain writing projects oriented toward real life situations (in this case a proposal to establish a museum display) can help college students bridge the perceived gap between academic writing and the kind of writing that will be asked of them in the professional world. Suggests that students' attitudes and writing improved as a result…

There are several variables at work in any piece of writing and some combinations of these variables can cause serious problems for some students. The first area where two of these variables occur is in the notion of what a college education is. The subject matter to be learned is one variable in what education means, and the second variable is…

Argues that writing teachers must create an organic curriculum with the language of home and community at its core. Suggests that writing teachers help students examine language features, dialects, and language attitudes in their communities. Notes that such student inquiry influences class discussions and can reshape attitudes toward students'…

Describes a method the author has used successfully with elementary school classes that enables students to enjoy the process of revision in their prose-writing. Notes that the exercises can be used in any time frame or circumstance. (SR)

Describes writing assignments in which students in Pennsylvania, Montana, and South Dakota exchanged writing on BreadNet, an electronic network. Notes that as students wrote within a meaningful and purposeful communication context, they learned to test their stereotypes, to expand their writing skills, and to perceive the computer as an instrument…

Describes a method for integrating writing into history classes. Suggests keeping writing assignments short and simple, rather than assigning a long paper that will be a burden to the instructor during grading. Discusses journal writing, pretest writing exercises, and microthemes written on a single index card. (DK)

A basic writing course instructor attempted to facilitate her students' survival in the academy by demystifying writing conventions while teaching them how to analyze discourses about literacy, especially in relation to cultural and economic forces. Students were asked to design an ideal basic writing course as a final journal assignment.…

Although faculty response to an introductory writing across the curriculum workshop at La Salle University (Pennsylvania) was almost uniformly positive, responses to an advanced workshop were mixed. La Salle's basic workshop is framed by the two dimensions which remain the major theoretical concerns of writing across the curriculum: the function…