Discusses in cost/benefit terms an approach to teaching the sociology of religion which involves students in writing their religious autobiographies. Considers the nature of the assignment, level of methodological sophistication, difficulties in grading, and justification of the exercise. Concludes that the biographical approach has wide…

A fifth grader wanted to know what he had to do to get all his ideas the way he wanted them in his story writing "and" have the spelling, punctuation and quotation marks correctly styled. His teacher encouraged him to think about writing as a process and provided the student with three steps as guidelines for effective writing. (Author/RK)

Suggests grammatical problem solving, grammatical worksheets, and grammatical poetry as ways of helping students acquire grammatical fluency. (DD)

Just as spoken language is intended to be heard by an audience, written language aims to be read by an audience. In helping kids learn to write, teachers have ignored this crucial fact. The article discusses how a high school English teacher on the Navajo Indian Reservation got the students to do poetry and other creative writing. (Author/NQ)

Several of the most common approaches to the preparation of more reflective teachers during pre-service teacher education are described. Specific strategies include: action research, ethnographic studies, writing exercises, and the Ohio State reflective teaching exercises. Empirical evidence concerning inquiry-oriented strategies is also…

Offers a nonverbal prewriting strategy, writer-based sketches, intended to help students turn their thoughts into words. (MS)

Presents an instructional unit, "Literary Lifeboat," a purposeful writing exercise in which students write character justifications for familiar stories. Describes the unit's implementation in a Year 5 class, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the exercise. (MM)

Presents ideas for having freshman composition students keep journals and write responses to class writing exercises, which are then published in a class newsletter. Discusses the benefits students receive from this practice. (SRT)

Claims that self-evaluation instruments strengthen students' ability to evaluate their own writing and improve writing instruction. Argues that self-evaluation exercises should (1) help students evaluate their writing, (2) demystify teachers' grades, (3) encourage students' awareness as writers, (4) require written responses from student, and (5)…

Argues that teachers can address the problem of how to integrate free and structured inquiry in the classical "progymnasmata," exercises designed to train the classical student in the art of "invention." Describes such exercises. (FL)

Describes a three and one half hour class in which students must rewrite stories for four editions of a daily newspaper, with updates on a fire in progress, press releases, and obituaries added during the class period. (HTH)

Describes a writing exercise useful for students who have already shown some facility in writing about personal experiences and that emphasizes the narrowing of scope and time in a reminiscence and developing it with detail in order to make it more interesting for others. (HTH)

Describes an approach to composition instruction in which the students are given a body of real or fictional evidence about a particular case and asked to interpret or explain it by means of a closely-reasoned argument. (HTH)

Describes a technique used in an English composition course to encourage student experimentation with different language choices. The students are given a Chinese poem, along with a romanized pronunciation and dictionary translation of each character. They are then instructed to write a few sentences in English conveying the poem's message. (SED)

Suggests using poetry's short short forms for a methodical and rapid series of writing assignments that emphasize both careful writing at the sentence level and overall planning and respect for form. (HTH)