Provides a series of suggestions to help students in poetry writing classes move past those periods when ideas for poems seem to have stopped flowing. (TJ)

Stresses the importance of showing students a reason for learning writing skills, not just a "because." Argues that credibility is everything and that proving this is crucial to successfully producing writers who can not only write, but care about their writing. (RAE)

Suggests that transactional analysis is a useful tool in providing insight into literary works and in offering a precise vocabulary with which to share observations, and gives a sample analysis of Shakespeare's tragedy "Othello." (JM)

Provides a guide for teaching Edwin Morgan's poem, "O Pioneers!" (TJ)

Describes using the beginning of a Western story in a story completion exercise to stimulate writing. (TJ)

Presents an eight-point plan, with illustrations, for assigning student grades. (JM)

Describes a final writing assignment in which students themselves must propose a writing assignment and rationale for future use in the classroom. The assignment forces students to examine what they have learned in the course and gives the teacher some insight into what has not been taught successfully. (HTH)

Suggests teaching Bernard Malamud's novel, "The Natural," because it is a work of a powerful imagination; can be used to stimulate searches into history, literature, and myth; and can be a catalyst for student writing. Describes several approaches to studying the book. (TJ)

Recommends helping poor spellers improve by having them copy 100-word paragraphs, gradually decreasing the amount of time permitted for perfect copying. (TJ)

Suggests the use of parody to deepen students' understanding of how and why poems work. (TJ)

Recommends a series of six exercises designed to help students become familiar with a number of different resources in a school library. (TJ)

Recommends a process by which students learn to revise their own papers using a series of guidelines and questions. (TJ)

Describes a method for teaching composition which develops students' intellectual and literary skills. (RB)

Details the components of a two-part, two-week assignment in the writing of description which gives the students a chance to work on both observation and order. (JM)