Richard Hugo's thinking about teaching creative writing can enhance the composition classroom: he offered both practical pointers about writing and advice about self-discovery for all writers. His pedagogy was directed at the most common elements in all writers--their humanity and their relationships to language, ideas, and feelings. "The…

Often when teaching creative writing to grade school and middle school students, teachers encounter two problems: students state that they do not have anything to write about, or students keep their poetic voices quiet and imitate the examples that they are given. If students are encouraged to mentally create images of poetic forms and to write…

Based on the theory that learning takes place if the learner is able to relate new knowledge to something already known, the course of study described in this booklet consists of recording stories dictated by individual students and using these stories as a basis for teaching reading and creative writing to students from preschool through adult…

This paper outlines a complete junior high school language arts curriculum and presents in detail two of the suggested courses, creative writing (advanced students) and literary appreciation (remedial students). The rationale is given for each course, along with the objectives, scope, and sequence. Units contain several sample lesson plans, varied…

Basic writers can be taught to write effective expository prose if they are taught to revise, and they can make considerable progress if they are given opportunities to write narration before tackling the complexities of exposition. Narratives come easily to basic writers and allow them complete control over subject matter and language. The…

To get students started in story writing, teachers can divide them into groups and ask each group to create a story from a plot provided by one student, a character provided by another, and a setting provided by a third. In preparation for this activity, the teacher should instruct students in the development of the story elements of plot,…

The Story Maker is a teaching device that allows children to create stories by choosing options from a set of already-written story segments. This device (1) provides an active language experience that allows children to construct stories easily; (2) demonstrates the consequences of choosing different ways for a story to proceed; (3) avoids the…

An account of an "intensive writing" experiment to stimulate and teach secondary students to write freely and creatively is given in this book. The experimental teaching method which stresses emotion, brevity, simplicity, and honesty is described, as well as the stimulus used for each writing lesson, the results obtained, and the children's…

Intended as a guide for educators interested in initiating a poetry in the schools program, this book is organized into four parts. The first two parts narrate the poet-author's experiences in beginning such a program in North Carolina, outline techniques for presenting poetry in the classroom, and offer numerous samples of student writing. Part…

This issue of the "Indiana English Journal" discusses the teaching of writing and contains suggestions that will help improve students' writing. The essays contained in this monograph include "The Writer as Writer and Critic: How to Be a Schizophrenic and Still Not End Up in Bedlam,""A Teacher's Mini-Glossary of Writing Techniques,""Film--A Way to…

The primary purpose of this book is to offer suggestions and writing examples for use in teaching children to write poetry. Each of the 15 chapters deals with a particular subject that could be useful in introducing poetry writing to students. The chapters discuss such topics as developing word consciousness in children, writing cinquains and…

This issue of "The English Record," devoted largely to the teaching of composition, includes such articles as "Writing in the Reading Class"; "A Sequence of Writing Tasks for a Composition Elective for Juniors and Seniors"; "An Inquiry into the Composing Process"; "A Spin-off from Kenneth Koch's 'Wishes, Lies, and Dreams'"; "Interdisciplinary…

In an attempt to exorcise cliched, hollow, "voiceless prose," 11 diverse novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists, and critics who are serious teachers of writing share their insights and feelings about their roles as teachers and about writing. Some of the goals expressed in these essays about the relationship between processes of writing and the…

The eight articles in the first section of this publication on the teaching of writing in British schools concentrate on classroom practices--ways of motivating student creative writing, the encouragement of group expository writing, and criteria to be considered when marking student writing. In the second section, five articles critically analyze…

After an Open Admissions (OA) policy was established at Baruch college in New York City, heavy emphasis was placed on remedial English. This emphasis was unfortunate for creative students since it reduced all writing courses to a "utilitarian," pre-college level. OA students also need to develop their perceptions, imaginations, and…