Views the stage as effective in teaching critical thinking, writing, research, computer and verbal communication skills. Uses historically accurate testimony from the court martial of Lt. William Calley to demonstrate the nature of warfare and United States involvement in Vietnam. Classes dramatize the moral and ethical judgments that are made.…

Recounts one teacher's use of art in the poetry-writing classroom, and suggests that its success stems from the following elements: schemata for seeing, experience with poetry, individual choice of art and poetic form, an encouraging environment, time to look and think and feel, and a powerful subject. (SR)

Describes how, in an American literature survey class, the characteristics of literary periods are underscored by seeing them reflected in contemporary visual arts, via a creative writing assignment, and by cooperating with the local museum. (SR)

Describes a unique exchange program between Mexico and California in which poets go to the foreign country to teach poetry writing, with local poets, to elementary school children. Provides samples of exercises in poetry writing and excerpts of children's poetry, translated from Spanish into English. (KEH)

A dramatic, eye-opening way for language teachers to improve their teaching skills is by studying another language. Useful and beneficial outcomes of further language study are that teachers can relieve frustrations of beginning language students, reconsider their own teaching principles, and experience another instructor's methods first hand.…

This article presents several recommendations for helping elementary and secondary school students with learning problems to apply story writing strategies. Recommendations include create an environment for writing that nurtures developing writers; encourage teacher and peer interaction through a variety of collaborative activities; and monitor…

Designed for teachers, this collection of essays describes successful, practical, classroom-tested ideas for use with students of all ages. The collection presents contributions from 18 teaching creative writers who describe their single best writing assignment that never fails to inspire their students to tell stories, write autobiographical…

A sixth-grade student teacher developed and implemented a unit on creative writing, and one lesson in the unit on writing legends was particularly successful. A discussion of Davy Crockett and the legends surrounding his life, began the lesson. The student teacher then introduced trade books from the library station for the pupils to read.…

The importance ascribed to creative activities varies cyclically, as currents of thought swing from progressive to conservative and back.

Designed to tap the rich collection of instructional techniques in the ERIC database, this compilation of lesson plans offers practical suggestions for developing high school students' writing skills. The 37 lesson plans in this book are divided into four sections: (1) descriptive; (2) audience/voice; (3) expository; and (4) creative. A user's…

After a brief review of the history of college writing instruction, this book examines the undergraduate creative writing workshop. The book attempts to reweave the currently separate strands of college-level creative writing instruction and composition instruction in the belief that developments in these perhaps artificially separated areas can…

Proving the efficacy of Hawaii's Poets-in-the-Schools program, this collection of descriptive statements by some of Hawaii's leading poets and teachers of poetry, and accompanied by illustrative poems produced by classroom pupils, describes the theories that were generally accepted as a working basis and the related methods each writer used in the…

Sixth grade students can use cinquain poems to explore language, learn grammar, and write creatively. Before learning about cinquains, students should be introduced to simpler poetic forms. To introduce cinquains, the teacher writes a simple example on the board and has the students informally figure out the parts of speech and grammatical…

The first of a planned series of papers, this document describes in detail a context for writing created by a teacher and her second grade class. Section one includes the teacher's diary of plans for using an imaginary doll, "Mr. Togs the Tailor" as a context for learning during most of a term and selected children's writing on such topics as Mr.…

Most of the 24 books reviewed in this annotated bibliography concern writing and are recent publications (1980-1985). Titles and authors are as follows: "Teacher" (Sylvia Ashton-Warner); "What Did I Write? Beginning Writing Behavior" (Marie M. Clay); "Composing: Writing as a Self-Creating Process" (William E. Coles);…