Critical thinking is being promoted as a vital element in secondary education. Home economics teachers can help students develop critical thinking skills through structured writing assignments beginning with free writing and proceeding to more formal papers. (SK)

Argues that writing instruction should lead student writers to find their voice in their writing and that this will only happen if they write often for personal purposes and personal expression. (SR)

Describes a free writing exercise designed to help first-year college students confront perceptions they have of themselves as learners. (RS)

Describes two word games useful in secondary writing classrooms: "illot-mollo," in which freewriters announce words they just wrote which the other members must use in their subsequent freewriting; and "secret" in which students each write a secret (usually made-up) and then put them into a hat--students then pull out a secret and write about it.…

This digest discusses expressive writing and the expressive mode, which is seen as a recurring stage in a writer's process of writing. The digest suggests that by structuring expressive writing activities and correlating them with particular stages of the writing process, a teacher can draw the natural linguistic activity out of a student. The…

Describes a journal writing activity designed to engage students in the exchange between text and reader. Argues that informal writing in a journal is a means of letting students find out that, if they engage themselves with a text, they will find it interesting. (RS)

Combining freshman composition and introduction to literature courses can make students active participants in what they read. In one course, students were instructed to read a literary work for a class. When the class met, the students were to write the name of the assigned story, the author, and anything they wanted to write about the story.…

In outdoor education, reflection transforms experience into knowledge. Writing activities facilitate reflection. In designing writing activities, instructors should ask themselves why they are asking their students to write, what type of writing is appropriate for their purpose, when and in what context the activity should take place, how they…

Examines whether writing activities promote learning and thinking in elementary and secondary social studies students. Describes writing activities that teachers have used to draw on existing student knowledge, consolidate and review new information, and reformulate and extend knowledge. Concludes that writing activities benefit student learning…

In a freshman composition course, the teacher attempted to motivate student interest in writing by assigning biographical readings and fiction that felt like real life. In reading the books, students found topics for writing about their own lives. During the first class session, students were given the topic "The Story of My Life: A…

Discusses the value of writing assignments in mathematics instruction. Advocates informal, lengthy, nongraded writing as the best form of learning. Encourages the use of a learning log by students which is reviewed by both teachers and fellow students. Provides examples of short in-class mathematics writing assignments. (PAA)

As part of a larger ethnographic project addressing the construction of gender through literacy, this study focused on understanding how the children in one writing process classroom expressed their social selves in their written compositions, as well as how those compositions were engineered within the social dynamics of the classroom. The study…