An imaginary character helps your children cast aside inhibitions and write more freely. (Editor)

Help kids create poems, stories and plays orally and they'll be readier to write. (Editor)

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)

The author, who teaches a multischool writing seminar for K-8 students and their teachers, explains some of the activities of this interschool literary group and presents two writing exercises he has used, one on writing the introductory paragraphs for a novel, and the other on characterization. (SJL)

The four mini-centers described here give a sampling of themes and activities for small classroom learning centers on writing. Short descriptions are also included of 20 other possible themes to interest students in writing activities. (SJL)

After discussing J.R.R. Tolkien's "Father Christmas Letters," fifth- and sixth-graders undertook a class project to answer second-graders' letters to Santa Claus. (SJL)

Mind and mood pictures help students "see" reason in their writing. (Editor)

The author explains her practice of requiring each of her students to write her a weekly letter, which she answers. These private correspondences help her to understand the individuals in her class and give the students practice in letter writing. (SJL)

Finger-snapping, toe-tapping music is a prelude to penmanship practice. (Editor)

This article presents 16 language arts and writing activities based on secret codes and mystery stories designed to intrigue and motivate students. (SJL)

The author explains how she taught third- and fourth-graders the skills needed to produce a class newspaper: note-taking, layout, news writing, and proofreading. She found that learning research skills and disciplined newswriting improved students' writing in general. (SJL)

"Scratch,""Scribe," and "Scribble" are three strategies for teaching writing at any grade level. They are short, ongoing activities that do not require grading. "Scratch" concerns spelling, "Scribe" dictation, and "Scribble" the writing process. (SJL)

Continuing with his suggestion from previous issues that themes of interest to most children can tie together reading, writing and language arts, the author presents classroom activities and reading suggestions based on four more themes: fairness and unfairness; cultural identity; overcoming weaknesses or handicaps; requited and unrequited love.…

Day-by-day lesson ideas are given for an eight-day writing unit in which students study literary conventions and write their own short stories. Evaluation of the stories is continuous throughout the unit and partly done by other students. (SJL)