Increasingly, children who start school have already acquired basic reading and writing skills provided by their parents or preschool teachers. However, even if we choose to accept the fact that by teaching preschool children how to read and write parents wish to help them integrate successfully into the school environment and methods of work, we…

In writing instruction, teachers often struggle with developing engaging and interactive activities given constraints such as large classes and packed teaching schedules. A purposeful and appealing pre-task can energize the writing process and set the context for the subsequent writing task. With this purpose in mind, the author designed the…

Describes five prewriting activities for courses that emphasize writing and deemphasize discussion of literature. The activities focus on organization and theme statement so that students think about every possible subject, theme, and approach. (HTH)

Professional speakers often use simple mental recipes to organize impromptu talks. The author taught these recipes to his high school composition students and used a timed trial format to give them practice in rapidly outlining their thoughts on a given topic. Thirteen of these recipes are provided. (SJL)

A prewriting activity requires elementary and middle school students to compose a political cartoon interpretation by asking questions and helps develop their writing ability. An example shows how the prewriting strategy translates into a specific classroom application. (AM)

Describes different types of prewriting activities such as "brainwriting," visual synectics, and relational algorithms. (JL)

Intended for writing teachers, the activities in this issue blend right/left brain lessons--kinesthetic, spatial, and playful--to provide students with prewriting experience. The activities include the following: (1) creativity olympics, such as finding criteria by which large groups of students may subdivide themselves into successively smaller…

There is considerable concern that the majority of adolescents do not develop the competence in writing they need to be successful in school, the workplace, or their personal lives. A common explanation for why youngsters do not write well is that schools do not do a good job of teaching this complex skill. In an effort to identify effective…

The process of interrupting the reading of a text in order to predict what is to come is a well-established reading instructional technique known as Directed Reading/Thinking Activities (DRTA). Predictive intervention, a classroom structure based on this technique, is more frequently productive of creative revision than either teacher advice or…

Contributed by high school English teachers across the United States, the activities contained in this booklet are intended to promote the effective teaching of English and the language arts. Activities described in the first section of the booklet focus on language exploration--specifically examining variations in pronunciation, definition, and…

Contributed by high school English teachers from across the United States, the activities contained in this booklet are intended to promote the effective teaching of English and the language arts. Activities described in the first section of the booklet focus on language exploration and include familiarizing students with dictionary information,…

Contributed by English teachers across the United States, the activities contained in this booklet are intended to promote the effective teaching of English and the language arts. Teaching strategies offered in the first section of the booklet are designed to stimulate language exploration and include activities where students become acquainted…

Contributed by high school English teachers across the United States, the activities contained in this booklet are intended to promote the effective teaching of English and the language arts. Teaching strategies offered in the first section of the booklet are designed to stimulate language exploration with such activities as examining the…

Consisting of material designed for practical application in the English classroom and representing all educational levels, this collection of articles contains a selection of the best presentations given at the fall 1986 meeting of the Southeastern Ohio Council of Teachers of English. Following an introduction by guest editor James L. Creighton,…