Describes an exercise for grade school through high school students that focuses on describing abstract emotions through allegory. Notes that some examples include hate, depression, happiness, and patriotism. Provides examples of student writing from prior trials of this exercise. (PA)

Describes five poetry assignments and presents examples of students' poetry written in response to the assignments. (RS)

Relates a poet's experiences in graduate school, and the poetry he wrote in the 1970s. Discusses methods and techniques for poetry writing in the classroom. Suggests topics for a series of poetry exercises: moebius strip, poetry sights, shadow poems, poetry chair, chopstick quatrains, poetry shirt, poem wrapping the school, word beads, and a haiku…

Describes the approach used with high school advanced placement English classes to a nature-writing project based on the work of Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard. (SR)

Describes a successful unit of study on poetry in a fifth grade class that ended with students each writing a sonnet as a final project. (SR)

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 a successful program of "contemplation writing," in which, through a counting technique and a music technique, children learn how to contemplate their inner experience, write about it, and discuss it. (SR)

Provides an outline for teachers who wish to incorporate a Letter to the Editor project in their classroom assignments. Reprints some actual letters from ninth graders based on this assignment. (MG)

Discusses revision as a form of learning and as a response to all kinds of literature, whether imitating what went before, reacting against it, or making something genuinely new of it. Offers numerous writing activities based on this idea. (SR)

Calling for a radical reexamination of the traditional foundation of composition instruction--the thesis/support form, this book argues that the essay, with its informality, conversational tone, meditative mood, and integration of form and content, is better suited to developmental, epistemological, ideological, and feminist rhetorical…

Describes a nonfiction genre study in a first-grade class in which reading and writing minilessons focused on nonfiction, and the children were required to read nonfiction and write a piece in that genre. Notes that, by the end of the nonfiction study, the group exhibited confidence and comfort with nonfiction. (SR)

Describes a writing assignment in which students study and imitate the language of a minority author. Discusses how the assignment helps negotiate conflicts when students resist multicultural literature, as their creative responses mediate between themselves and works they might otherwise find foreign and antagonistic. (SR)

Discusses "Private Eye," an approach to teaching which focuses on developing students as artists, writers, and scientists. Describes how this approach uses the jewelers loupe to examine everyday objects 5 or 10 times bigger, thus altering students' way of viewing the world through the change of scale and through analogy-provoking questions. (SR)

Describes an exploration the author and his seventh-grade students undertook as they wrote essays about objects of personal significance. Describes how they examined a piece of literature (an essay) as a model for their own writing, how they spent some time talking and listening to one another about their personal objects, and how they then wrote…

Describes how teachers (of grades 4-12) can use computers to teach writing at a variety of levels, from the one-computer classroom to the most sophisticated, networked environments. Describes approaches for four electronic environments, how they might best be used, and what types of computer facility are needed. (SR)