This activity offers students a way to engage in cover letter writing, familiarizing themselves with the style and content of these documents in a creative, fictional scenario. Students will both prepare letters and evaluate them, with options to vary the gamification of the activity included. During the debrief, students assess their experience…

Noting that computer instruction for teaching composition is generally limited to the component skills of spelling, punctuation, and grammar, this paper proposes a program that can help elementary school students use computers to generate ideas for descriptive writing. The first section of the paper provides orientation procedures designed to…

Created as one part of a comprehensive curriculum for teaching writing from kindergarten through twelfth grade, this guide focuses on expressive writing. Following an introduction describing the goals of the writing project, the preface points out that the guide is based on the comprehensive model of James Kinneavy's "A Theory of Discourse,…

An activity unit for teaching students to identify and use imagery in writing is presented. Instructions to the teacher for introducing the unit are given along with a list of student objectives and definitions of imagery terms. The activities, some of which involve using locally available audiovisual media, include four introductory activities,…

Social studies and language arts teachers can use these self-contained activities to teach writing skills to students in grades 6-12. Some of the activities have a global approach requiring students to write about topics such as human rights and cultural differences. Information provided for each activity includes an introduction, objectives, time…

This report, designed especially for use by researchers, evaluators, and teachers, explores the practical implications of the composing process for writing instruction and assessment. An understanding of the actual process of text composition is presented as insights into how the acquisition of aspects of writing might be facilitated are explored.…

The Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills (TEAMS) was developed by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), in response to Texas House Bill 72 (1984), which mandated a new basic skills assessment program for mathematics, reading, and writing at grades 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11. This document is one in a series of Instructional Strategies Guides…