Trickster tales, with their teachings on how to behave in the world, are a powerful means for transmitting social knowledge and cultural mores to children. In this study we compared two approaches to teaching fourth-grade students to write trickster tales. Although both instructional methods incorporated aspects of the writing process approach,…

This paper outlines research which examined the relationship between drama and writing, detailing the method of enquiry, theoretical foundations and emergent findings. The study sought to understand the nature of the support that drama offers children as writers and to identify features of writing which regularly surfaced in drama-related writing.…

This paper presents practical classroom activities for teaching narrative/descriptive writing based on approaches to writing instruction that research indicates are powerfully effective, and discusses principles upon which effective and exciting instruction can be designed. The paper gives a brief overview of what research in the teaching of…

Intended to provide teachers of poetry with both inspiration and teaching advice, this paper explains how one teacher developed a method for teaching poetry successfully in high school. The first part of the paper consists of an autobiographical fragment describing how the teacher used free time to begin seriously writing poetry, as well as how…

A teacher education course on reading in the content areas had two goals: (1) to embody, rather than talk about, the reading-writing connection; and (2) to effect through a workshop setting a community of learners among the participants. Students were required to select, adapt, and apply instructional strategies from a variety of textbooks and…

A training program designed to teach high school students to be specific in their writing is described in this booklet. The first section of the booklet explains the three stages of the program: (1) daily practice in translating a "telling" sentence into a "showing" paragraph; (2) application of "showing" writing to…

Explores the connection between reading and writing implicit in children's creative writing and highlights the similarity between processes of reading and writing. (JC)

A study examined student-teacher writing conferences in a ninth grade English class to uncover what significance this form of instruction has both as a collaborative methodology and as a factor in individualizing the process of learning to write in the secondary school. Subjects included a successful ninth grade English teacher at a public high…

Intended to show teachers how their approaches to the teaching of writing reflect a particular area of research and to show researchers how the intuitions of teachers reflect research findings, the articles in this book are classified according to three approaches to writing: processing, distancing, and modeling. After an introductory essay that…

This field manual for composition teachers, written by community college and University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) writing instructors, examines practical and theoretical problems and strategies associated with teaching composition. Essays in chapter I, by Ruth Mitchell and Faye Peitzman, underscore the relevance and implications of…

Written in narrative form, a study examined the impact of using writing as a learning tool in an upper-division college course in Seventeenth Century literature. The study investigated: (1) student writing samples of both informal and transactional writing forms; (2) the impact of writing-to-learn on course objectives; (3) the impact of informal…

Discusses first grade students' writing experiences and processes. Demonstrates, using student writing samples, how simple expression can lead to greater complexity with appropriate teacher guidance. Asserts that teachers must observe and take cues from students to determine what learning context and hints to provide. (MM)

Prepared as part of a series applying recent research in oral and written communication instruction to classroom practice, this booklet discusses three visual models of teaching written composition. The first section of the booklet discusses the content area model, which begins with an abstraction presented to students (definitions of parts of…

Discusses the importance of dialogue in learning, notes that it is lacking in many educational situations, and recommends the use of written dialogue journals as a means of communication between teachers and individual students. Points out the advantages of dialogue journals for improving writing for different social purposes. (SKC)

Describes a writing program that addresses adult students' limited access to computers and the program's effect on a pilot group of students. Offers some preliminary conclusions about the effects of computer availability on teaching methodology. (MS)