A popular author of young-adult fiction offers suggestions for teachers and students who want to write to authors and receive replies. Discusses how to organize letters from entire classes and student motivations for writing, and includes humorous examples of student correspondence. (LRW)

Describes a range of classroom writing activities to go along with three books for children or adolescents: "On My Honor" (Marion Dane Bauer), "Knots on a Counting Rope" (Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault), and "Piggybook" (Anthony Browne). (SR)

Uses examples from the author's experiences writing books for young adults to show the power of literature to see through someone else's eyes and feel through their skin. Offers suggestions for teachers for ways students can take part in the life of the language, shape it, and discover the vitality of the printed page. (SR)

This paper describes "The Huck Finn Experience," a high motivation interdisciplinary unit that takes students on a 6-week journey back to the life and times of Mark Twain through the fictional character of Huckleberry Finn. The unit described in the paper was designed for eighth-grade students but could be easily adapted to be successful…

This handbook provides the secondary language arts teacher with a series of meaningful activity options which use the newspaper as the learning resource. The handbook discusses the purposes of language arts education, the advantages of using the newspaper as a resource, and the relationship between the two. Taken from numerous books, kits, guides,…

Suggesting that literature dealing with the Vietnam War can have a dramatic impact on students, this paper assists teachers in selecting young adult literature on the war, discusses a variety of assignments, and presents student responses to the literature. The paper begins with a discussion of the three main types of young adult literature:…

Noting that the literature of the Vietnam War can have a powerful impact on students, this paper discusses why such literature should be taught, what types of literature should be taught, and how teachers might go about teaching some of the literature. The paper begins by presenting numerous student responses to various novels on the Vietnam War,…

Based on James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier's novel "My Brother Sam Is Dead," this lesson plan presents activities designed to help students understand that one way to learn about the past is to read historical novels; and that some people take one side or another in a war or other conflict, and some find themselves caught in the…