Describes a writing exercise in which students are asked to write questions to be submitted to a hypothetical computer. Suggestions for subsequent activities are provided. (TO)

Describes a lesson designed to help children explore their fears and to discuss and write about them. (TO)

Discusses handwriting drills, student reluctance to rewrite or recopy, and practical writing activities. (GB)

Level 2 of the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) Composition Skills Program is designed to help children achieve writing fluency and elementary punctuation skills. This report describes the results of the 1971-1972 developmental tryouts of the program in a wide range of school locations. Data obtained from the tryout corroborated data obtained…

Describes an in-class exercise in which students listen to a piece of music (without lyrics), and then write about their responses. Notes that students learn that responding to literature is as natural as responding to music, and that they all have valid and unique reactions and connections to literature. (SR)

Presents an assignment in which students are instructed to produce a complete, accurate, and readable collection of rules and sentences that illustrates the multiple uses of each mark of punctuation, in other words, to write their own workbooks. (EL)

Describes the development of an assignment designed to take the place of the standard research paper. The new assignment is of particular relevance to teacher education, especially in English and language arts. (AEW)

Describes how a 10th-grade English teacher brings a historical event such as World War I to life with words and visuals of the time. Discusses World War I poems as products of that era, and helps students realize they have the stream of language inside themselves by journaling, making a "word bank," and writing poems. (SR)

This handbook, intended for English language arts teachers, principals, curriculum and testing specialists, superintendents, and all educators interested in preparing students for the grade 8 California Assessment Program (CAP) writing assessment, provides the practitioner with information about the content of the test, the rationale underlying…

BELIEVING FORMAL WRITTEN ENGLISH TO BE A "FOREIGN LANGUAGE" TO MOST AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS, RESEARCHERS USED THE AUDIO-LINGUAL METHOD OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION TO PROMOTE WRITING IMPROVEMENT IN FOURTH-GRADERS. TWO RANDOMLY-SELECTED CLASSES OF STUDENTS OF AVERAGE ABILITY COMPOSED THE STUDY POPULATION--ONE CLASS FOR THE EXPERIMENT,…

Three installments of "Ideas from the Classroom," a regular feature of the National Council of Teachers of English publication, "Notes Plus," are presented in this compilation. "Ideas from the Classroom" offers a variety of teacher-submitted activities for English and language arts instruction. The three articles in…

This article proposes to teach writing from the hypothesis that true writing and good prose are only end products rather than the primary objectives. The author suggests that producing an effect in a reader and revealing the self in words are prior achievements in the process of learning to write well. Criteria for judging writing are based…

Designed to be immediately useful and practical for language arts teachers in the secondary schools, the six articles in this monograph are illustrative not only of methods but of pedagogical processes that are the components of successful teaching. The first article offers more than 20 ways of motivating and involving the nonreader and describes…

There are a number of reasons for using creative writing in elementary and secondary English curricula. When students practice using figurative and literal language, they improve their speaking abilities, and their language becomes more concrete, more explicit, more descriptive, and more interesting. Writing poems and short stories forces students…

Collected from classroom teachers across the United States, this idea exchange presents teaching activities that enliven the secondary school language arts classroom, engage student interest, and help teachers reflect on their teaching as part of their continued professional growth. The activities are divided into four sections: (1) literature,…