Offers an author's thoughts on winning the Newbery Medal. Reveals the writer's background and his tentative beginnings as a children's author. (NKA)

Examines the life and works of Cynthia Rylant, an author of children's books. Rylant tells about her personal life, discusses her writing habits, how she chooses illustrators for her books, and her relationship with her editor. (NKA)

An author traces the development of a survival story, "The Sign of the Beaver," and examines the elements basic to the genre in some other well-known stories. (SD)

Presents comments by authors of children's and adolescent literature about qualities of good writers, which include being a good reader, caring about language, being well educated, being an alert observer, being a good story teller, and being a compulsive writer. (EL)

This book is designed for teachers who are looking for approaches to make the teaching of writing fresh. The book offers suggestions for writing that are appropriate across the curriculum and for students in Grades K-12. It contains ideas for enlivening students' writing experiences, including an innovative use of the "helping circle." It advises…

Designed for teachers, this collection of essays describes successful, practical, classroom-tested ideas for use with students of all ages. The collection presents contributions from 18 teaching creative writers who describe their single best writing assignment that never fails to inspire their students to tell stories, write autobiographical…

This essay considers the many benefits of journal writing. It explains how one person learned, during a 26-mile commute, to talk into a tape recorder slowly, leaving sizable pauses between phrases to facilitate transcription later on; how journal writing is a way to catch moments in the day, to describe a scene or to make connections that one…

A study investigated whether computers would enable students to develop individual working writing environments. The programs that the fourth-grade students used were Hypercard, Clip Art, and MacWrite. Students worked with each of the programs and talked about what they were thinking while using the computer. A constant flow of teachers, staff,…

After a brief review of the history of college writing instruction, this book examines the undergraduate creative writing workshop. The book attempts to reweave the currently separate strands of college-level creative writing instruction and composition instruction in the belief that developments in these perhaps artificially separated areas can…

Sixth grade students can use cinquain poems to explore language, learn grammar, and write creatively. Before learning about cinquains, students should be introduced to simpler poetic forms. To introduce cinquains, the teacher writes a simple example on the board and has the students informally figure out the parts of speech and grammatical…

As an extension of a two-year longitudinal study involving various aspects of children's writing, a study examined the function of children's oral language during creative writing sessions in typical classroom settings. Using ethnographic style techniques, researchers conducted 46 writing episode observations of seven fifth graders in the spring…

The first of a planned series of papers, this document describes in detail a context for writing created by a teacher and her second grade class. Section one includes the teacher's diary of plans for using an imaginary doll, "Mr. Togs the Tailor" as a context for learning during most of a term and selected children's writing on such topics as Mr.…

Most of the 24 books reviewed in this annotated bibliography concern writing and are recent publications (1980-1985). Titles and authors are as follows: "Teacher" (Sylvia Ashton-Warner); "What Did I Write? Beginning Writing Behavior" (Marie M. Clay); "Composing: Writing as a Self-Creating Process" (William E. Coles);…

Intended for both elementary and secondary school teachers who have little or no experience in teaching creative fiction writing, this booklet presents sample lesson plans for writing short stories, fables, myths, mysteries, science fiction, and historical fiction. The lesson plans discuss such elements as plot, setting, characterization, mood,…

Based on a study dealing with problem-finding behavior of artists as the first step in the creative process (Getzels and Czikszentmihalyi), this study on the empirical nature of problem-finding included middle school students from a suburban-rural area in Western Pennsylvania. Eight students identified through three measures as creative were…