Clustering is a nonlinear brainstorming technique that can encourage children's natural writing ability by helping them draw on their need to make patterns out of their experience. Tips for introducing cluster writing into the classroom are offered. (MT)

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)

Guidelines are given for teachers or parents to develop creative writing skills in gifted children. It is suggested that children learn to be observant, to record their perceptions, and that they be exposed to literary models. (CL)

Health concepts are taught through the creation of a fictional story. (LH)

Discusses the use of exercises that help students learn to write poetry. (HOD)

A novelist, poet, and painter describes her method of teaching creative writing. (AEA)

Describes a creative writing class in which students were encouraged to journey backwards into themselves and their own creativity. (FL)

Discusses approaches to writing poetry in high school English classes, giving students many successful writing experiences in which classmates can commend each other's word choices. Offers three patterns for generating in-class poems. (RL)

The problem of when to leave symbolism alone and when to plunge into interpretation is examined through an elderly woman's relationship to a doll. (FL)

Suggests ways to motivate students to write poetry, and illustrates them with samples of student poems. (DD)

Suggests ways to guide students in the skills of plot development so that they produce interesting fiction. (DD)

Describes a course in creative writing in which the experience of birth was the theme and includes several of the stories written by the students. (RB)

A teacher details a method, the Creative Concrete Operational Writing (Creative C.O.W.) program to provide an individualized structured approach to creative writing in the primary grades. Sample story plans and worksheets are included. (DB)

Recounts the experiences of a writer-in-residence at a small liberal arts college as she helped her students through the composing process. (RL)

Many students and teachers find creative writing to be too complex to manage. Teachers are unable to identify ways to help students develop necessary skills through creative writing. Teachers can make writing manageable by giving children opportunities that isolate, compartmentalize, and focus on specific aspects of the writer's craft. (Author/NQ)