This paper examines technical writing at the high school level and suggests methods of teaching technical writing to students. Such topics are discussed as demonstration, mechanism description, causal analysis, detail, spatial order, and chronological order. It is argued that writing about objects can sharpen a writer's powers of observation and…

Describes a writing assignment that uses the song "America the Beautiful" to point the following six reasons why America is beautiful: skies, mountains, grain, Pilgrims, heroes, and dreams. (NKA)

Designed to combine the science and the art of teaching composition, this series of assignments encourages junior high and high school writing students to explore tone, original visual images, point of view, and other literary techniques. One assignment asks students to write a number of paragraphs alternately using sarcasm, humor, melancholy, and…

A consideration of real world language use yields five questions that could prove helpful in assessing student writing achievements: (1) What is the writer's purpose or intention? (2) What audience does the writer have in mind? (3) What are the organizing principles of the piece? (4) What range of experience and knowledge might one reasonably…

This document outlines an approach to secondary school composition instruction, using wordless picture books. Specific published textless books are discussed as aids in stimulating imagination, tapping the need for sense impressions, developing sequences of events, teaching transition and the passage of time, demonstrating point of view, making…

Journal writing can motivate students to write frequently, thereby creating content which can later be properly structured. Students who keep journals tend to write better than those who do not. To help students explore certain ideas in journals further, teachers should ask questions or make statements that relate to the students' ideas. Sometimes…

Recommends a series of sense exploration exercises to help students develop more adequate descriptive writing. (TJ)

A twelve lesson descriptive writing unit for tenth graders is presented in this document. Each lesson lists one or more behavioral objectives, materials needed, the procedures to follow, the method of evaluation, comments about the lesson by the teacher who used the plan, and suggestions for future use. Copies of the pre-test, the worksheets,…

The poetry unit presented in this paper is designed to teach high school students how to write poetry through personal observation, journal writing, and small group discussion. Using the unit, students progress through the stages of writing according to the following steps: observing a familiar person and noting words and phrases about that…

A series of six related lessons is presented that covers the three stages of process writing in which secondary students work in pairs and groups. Covering 11 35-minute periods, the lessons include prewriting, writing, and postwriting. Sample questions are appended. (Contains five references.) (LB)

When students write in response to literature, they make reading a creative act. Recording their personal reaction to a poem or an excerpt from a larger work, students become aware of the complex web of past experiences, associations and ideas triggering their responses; they learn to interact more fully, more consciously, with the text. Besides…

Reflecting the view that a single formula for revolutionizing the teaching of writing is unavailable, this publication of the New York State English Council presents a series of articles dealing with various topics in the teaching of composition in high school and college settings. Subjects discussed include the following: the use of fables in the…

Suggests the importance of George Orwell's "1984" for today's students and recommends specific analytic and descriptive writing activities to develop critical reading skills. (MM)

An activity unit for teaching students to identify and use imagery in writing is presented. Instructions to the teacher for introducing the unit are given along with a list of student objectives and definitions of imagery terms. The activities, some of which involve using locally available audiovisual media, include four introductory activities,…

Group activities in the classroom can be a useful way to explore various standard rhetorical patterns. For descriptive writing, students can select and write about unsigned collages made by classmates. The writer can try to find a unifying theme that characterizes the artist's personality. A narrative component can be added to descriptive writing…