Students at Westchester Community College (WCC) are a diverse and often disenfranchised group. To help these students find their own voices, lyric poems are read now and then in a freshman writing course. Initially, lyric poems are read and discussed during the first week of class. Without the fear of reading something incomprehensible, students…

An instructor who teaches composition, poetry, and creative nonfiction at Delta Community College in central Michigan language makes connections and helps people imagine their way fully into subjects. People have a deep, if unconscious and unfocused, need to discover and tell the truth. For one semester his students act like writers. They keep…

Designed to supplement the actual reading of children's books, this book provides an introduction to children's literature. It focuses on general trends and patterns rather than plot summaries. The two-part organization of the third edition explores first the foundations and contexts, then the various genres of children's literature. Discussion…

This project developed two units for secondary students, one dealing with the modern poetry of Bulgaria and one with the legend of Dracula. The first unit includes poems, discussion questions, and a background essay. The second unit includes discussion materials largely based on Brian Stoker's novel "Dracula," and an historical essay on…

This paper describes the way in which the author moved from what might have been a textual explanation of a narrative analysis of qualitative data to a poetic rendition. The focus is on the work of a female graduate student working collaboratively with another graduate student. The story emerged as a teacher-as-researcher study on graduate…

The "Pashto Reader Originals" is one component of the "Pashto Reader," a set of materials designed to enable the student of Pashto to read modern written Pashto. These originals are computer scans of most of the passages in the Pashto Reader, authentic written Pashto passages. They are presented in their original published or…

The passages in transcription comprise one component of the "Pashto Reader" materials. They accompany "Pashto Reader," which is the basic text, and the "Pashto Reader Originals," the passages in their original published forms. They are passages in Pashto presented in broad phonetic transcription, for use by linguists…

This paper demonstrates the adaptability of a poet's words to a variety of themes and techniques, and primarily illustrates how the poetic treasures of the African world can be used to create awareness that words are biracial, cross-cultural, and transsexual. The key thesis of the paper is that once an African poet has published a work, the words…

It is widely believed that poetry in the Soviet Union has lost its place to newspapers and periodicals that have robbed literature of its readers. Prior to glasnost, non-official literature in the Soviet Union was more than a literary event; it was often the only mode of political discourse available to the literate public. This paper suggests…

A practicum was designed to help 40 students enrolled in creative writing classes at a suburban high school develop criteria with which to evaluate the aesthetic qualities of what they read. They were able to discern the differences between good and bad literature. Students were active participants in the process, performing skits, writing prose…

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the greatest of the Romantic-era poets, has much to say to the students of today. Throughout his life he struggled with physical and emotional illness, drug and sometimes alcohol abuse. Despite his problems, he managed to write meaningful works. Coleridge is best known for his epic poem, "The Rime of the…

American education has long equated reading with the narrower notion of literacy. Such an approach bypasses the concept of "difficulty," or the placing of ideas into question. The educational system has resisted adoption of a broader view of reading, because: (1) anything difficult is viewed as elitist and undemocratic; and (2) the…

Although both poetry and music have been used as therapeutic tools in individual and group counseling, few counselors use the techniques in combination. Poetry therapists tend to follow either the strucutred approach of Leedy, in which poems are used as treatment, or the less structured approach of Lerner, in which poems are used as medium. Music,…

Inventive activities in the creative writing classroom can generate a great deal of excitement for the writing of poetry. Such activities might begin with improvising ways in which poetry can be written in alternative media, such as haiku on clay tablets that can be glazed and fired, then macramed together into wind chimes. Another activity,…

One of a series of activity guides designed to aid teachers in developing the thinking skills of intermediate grade students, this publication offers a variety of learning activities and resource materials. The activities and resources include: a calendar which lists important days and birthdays in December, January, and February; poems; word…