Teachers at both college and pre-college levels have long realized that collaborative writing is an effective learning tool for beginning writers. Many have pointed out that collaboration in writing groups properly shifts the focus from the teacher to the student, and allows writers to take more responsibility for their own composing processes.…

Computer technology such as telecommunications software and electronic mail allowed students in advanced writing courses at Incarnate Word College and St. Mary's University in Texas to exchange comments about their papers. The intention of the writing teachers was to emphasize the role that invention and planning play in writing, to highlight the…

Incorporating creative play in the writing lab or classroom is a unique way to pique students' interest and boost their imagination. Exercises varying from describing Hershey's Kisses®, to using tape recorders for discussing voice, to using magnetic poetry to practice grammar are all ways that stimulate learning through the lens of play. Play…

Revision is the heart of the composing process--the means by which ideas emerge and evolve and meanings are clarified. Yet students often see revision not as an opportunity to develop and improve a piece of writing but as an indication that they have failed to do it right the first time. Revision, whether done with computers or with pen and paper,…

Composition instructors interested in fostering the development of their students' critical thinking skills can modify the thematic writing approach to that effect. Focusing an introductory composition course around one central theme, rather than on many, can offer students an explicit model of how knowledge, skills, and dispositions interact when…

Southside Elementary Writing Focus examines the process that fostered teacher leadership as a way of strengthening instruction and meeting some of the challenges typical in a school with a high minority student population, high student transiency, and low test scores. After five years, the key components of the initiative remain intact. The seeds…

This book is meant as a resource that can be used by experienced writing teachers as a practical reference when planning writing lessons. The book includes a sequence of instruction, lesson ideas, enrichment options, literature and poetry connections, student samples, and all the ready-to-use materials teachers need to implement the…

This handbook seeks to provide a practical, readable guide to teaching writing across a broad range of ages and grade levels (K-8). The handbook's seven chapters cover each stage of the writing process in detail, from setting a purpose for writing to drafting, revising, editing, and producing a "finished" product. Its goal is to provide…

A writing instructor's quest in a screenwriting course was to convince her students to get in touch with their inner voices. Her male students are mostly Tarantino clones who write scripts that could star Robert DeNiro or Harvey Keitel. The instructor wanted them to create characters that are believable and that the audience can attach to in a…

When students study the discipline of statistics, a domain that can be remote and abstract for them, it is critical that they understand what the numbers mean and how those numbers help people arrive at decisions. This paper presents different approaches that help students learn how researchers actually work with statistics and shows how students…

Research suggests that basic writers are willing to edit but reluctant to revise their writing. In other words, they make surface-level changes to grammar, spelling, and punctuation but tend not to re-conceive content, structure, style, and cohesion. This paper argues that we need more instructional strategies that will help students understand…

Teachers of first-year college composition, particularly instructors and graduate teaching assistants with little or no teaching experience, are caught up in a debate concerning the appropriateness of social action as a facet of their personal pedagogical strategies. On the one hand, they are encouraged to promote social activism by individuals…

This resource book contains over 300 exercises and games for individual and group work in creative writing. Though the book's exercises are intended for group work with adults, teachers of children will encounter many new ideas for the classroom, and individuals working alone will have no difficulty adapting the exercises to their needs. The…

The study of discourse genres as social action has steadily displaced more traditional views of genre, proposing the organic and ecological model that any consistent pattern of response to a recurrent rhetorical situation might constitute a genre. Observation of the life cycles of genres as transient social events can occur in a classroom using…

To teach writing well, teachers need three things: first, they have to understand writing itself, as well as writing pedagogy; second, they need to be writers themselves; and third, they need to know how to communicate their knowledge about writing effectively to their students. This book is based on the premise that writing ability--and teaching…