This book offers detailed and complex guidance, and the necessary techniques, for grading college students' writing. It examines why it is important to integrate grading into the writing process; the need for effective writing assignments; ensuring fair professorial judgments; promoting student learning; helping students learn how to respond…

Offering a fresh perspective on making writing meaningful in every classroom, this guide seeks to help the teacher and the parent encourage the student writer as a thinker, not merely as a producer of a paragraph. The guide offers guidance as well as many practical activities that will help students to: organize the mind; play with ideas; find…

In this four-part lesson, students examine the concept of geographic region by exploring the history of the United States Great Plains. In Part I, students gather information about the location and environment of the Great Plains in order to produce a map outlining the region in formal terms. In Part II, students examine how the region has been…

In this lesson, students work with primary documents and latter-day photographs to recapture the experience of traveling on the Oregon Trail. The learning objectives of the lesson are: (1) to learn about the pioneer experience on the Oregon Trail; (2) to evaluate a historical re-enactment in light of documentary evidence; and (3) to synthesize…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the attitudes, perceptions, and knowledge of males and females in regard to the researched paper. To answer this question, a primary survey was used to gather data as the primary method. A survey was distributed to secondary school students in northeast Indiana as well as undergraduate level writing classes…

Encouraging interactive learning and motivating K-5 students, this book presents step-by-step directions, drawings, black line masters, and photographs for 48 thematic classroom projects that use everyday items. The first chapter discusses the history of the "bag ladies." The second chapter describes how to gather, make, and store classroom…

Aiming to bring a new sense of adventure to teaching and learning by focusing on the lives of historical figures, artists, and scientists, this book is a "how-to" for teaching the most important lesson of all: becoming human. Each chapter includes several "Actions" designed to bring the human aspect of various disciplines center stage while…

Argues in favor of teaching thesis and the forms of exposition by means of assignments such as personal narrative, autobiography, and observation out of direct experience. Describes one such assignment. (RL)

Proposes that technical writing teachers ask their students to analyze the ethos--the revelation of a writer's character through the rhetorical choices a writer makes--of the profession they are preparing to enter. Provides examples of such analysis. (RL)

Presents a set of writing assignments and class activities for helping students to define their own writing problems, set their own goals, and evaluate their own progress. (RL)

Describes a physical geology assignment in which students are required to keep a journal of their daily observations, impressions, and questions which come to mind about the Earth. Presents the role of the journal, outlines the criteria for evaluation, and provides samples of student reaction to the assignment. (GS)

Notes that English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers have been carefully nurturing student ability to produce language, while neglecting the receptive side of learning. Proposes that increased amounts of reading should be assigned at all levels of ESL programs. Suggests ways to restructure programs and to teach reading and vocabulary…

Discusses the use of assignments that require students to write about works of literature as a substitute for taking literature examinations; reports results of a study of the types of literature-related writing tasks assigned in four schools in England. (GT)

Describes a summer reading program that requires each high school student to read one carefully chosen background work, not a textbook, for each course to be taken in the fall. Sample titles in mathematics, science, and art are provided. (SJL)