To gain a deeper understanding of young adolescent motivation and developmental needs as the nation plunges ahead with the national Common Core Standards and their implications for writing instruction, the authors of this article pondered five questions as they studied their own middle school writing team: (1) What intrinsic motivators drive these…

Presents a sample of short writing assignments flowing from carefully prepared lessons that isolate specific learnings, guide processes closely, and appeal to student interests. (RB)

The author uses a hypothetical contest situation to generate student interest in collecting, evaluating, and organizing information. (RL)

Describes some of the poems and methods from a Writers in the School program as part of a primary education poetry program that intends to stimulate students to read and write poetry. (Author/RK)

This article presents 15 activities designed to motivate students to engage in creative writing. Also given are ideas on how to reinforce and maintain student interest in writing. (IAH)

Outlines how teachers can motivate students and narrow the gap between school and home by using students' anecdotes about their families for reading or writing activities. Notes that this exercise also helps bridge the gap between spoken and written language. (MM)

One of the best ways to enrich students' social studies experience is to include assignments in which students interact with social studies content and skills. In this article, the author explains how teachers can use writing exercises to encourage such interaction. She describes the following writing activities: (1) acrostics; (2) haiku; (3)…

Discusses a writing exercise in which students are asked to describe a painting and analyze their response to it. (TJ)

The article discusses and describes a program for English teachers that will enable them to give more interesting and creative assignments to their students. (Author/LF)

Describes how "speedwriting" requires that all learners become actively engaged in their own learning because, rather than generating ideas orally, students are instructed to write down all their ideas as quickly as they can. Considers how the social engagement of discussion and the sharing of ideas during the writing phase drew even the…

Perhaps because of their familiarity with joke telling, students often do their best writing when using humor. In both telling jokes and creating humorous works, students need to develop a strong sense of audience, an awareness of the importance of vivid description, a strong sense of purpose, and the ability to use punctuation for effect. The…

To aid in the understanding of "cases" for writing (defined as highly focused situations in which students assume a role that demands writing to specific audiences and for utilitarian purposes), this paper begins by outlining the problem case faced by the author: to present a convincing argument for the use of the case approach to composition. It…

Discusses the benefits of having regular sessions in student journal writing. (RL)

Offers several strategies that can be used by social studies teachers to incorporate more writing into their classrooms. (FL)

Techniques for stirring students' interest in writing include: (1) exposing them to eloquent language use; (2) group poetry-writing (each student writes one line of a class poem); and (3) adapting why-and-because outlines intended for teaching college writing for use by younger students. Suggestions for obtaining writing quantity and quality are…