In a high school writing workshop, students frequently would go through multiple essay drafts and conferences with the teacher and fellow students before realizing that their theses were incorrect. A teacher devised the "lexivision" to address this problem. Students used Venn diagrams, graphs, or flow charts to represent concepts in the…

A community college composition instructor with 32 years of teaching experience designed a semester-long writing assignment (developed at De Anza College (California) and also used at University of California, Berkeley) in which students compose a personal intellectual history. The assignment is based on several assumptions, including: (1) writing…

Writing proficiency is an important skill that can help teachers communicate what they know to colleagues, teacher educators, and researchers. The effectiveness of the writing across the curriculum movement supports development and implementation of a writing program in undergraduate teacher education. The Advanced Writing Proficiency (AWP)…

This document describes a form of curriculum infusion for college instruction in which information about alcohol and other drug problems relevant to the content of a course is provided and related assignments are made. Specifically, the paper focuses on an English writing assignment that involved student self-reflection on his or her use or…

A system of different types of tasks can be used to help language learners achieve their learning goals, which may include learning of: discrete language items (sounds, vocabulary, grammatical constructions); content or ideas of the subject studied (geography, literature, mathematics, cultural understanding); language skills (listening, writing,…

The Dewey Center Community Writing Project is a community-based, summer writing program collaboratively designed by students, teachers, and community members in Detroit's inner-city. During the first summer of the project, fifth- through seventh-grade students, primarily from the Jeffries Homes (or "Projects") worked with seven teachers…

A two-phase study was conducted of home economics teachers' use of writing in secondary programs. In the first phase of the study, quantitative data were collected to compare three populations: (1) 125 home economics teachers who had not participated in university workshops on incorporating writing in the classroom; (2) 129 agriculture teachers…

Columbus (Georgia) College's Challenge Squared program consists of three 2-week enrichment day camps for gifted students in grades 5 through 10. In past years, students have worked with an artist to create local history murals and have written and produced video plays in cooperation with a media specialist. Most recently, students were involved in…

In 1989 the Portland (Oregon) Public Schools conducted a Direct Writing Assessment of approximately 6,000 students. A voluntary portion included 103 ninth graders who wrote essays on the same topic. The papers were scored twice: once in each student's handwriting and once in word-processed form. Papers were separated into short and long categories…

This document consists of six issues of a newsletter that provides a forum for the sharing of research findings and instructional strategies by faculty of Western Michigan University. Issue Number 1 addresses writing in the Writing Across the Curriculum Program with notification of a faculty workshop, hints on how to encourage good writing, and a…

This casebook is part of a set of materials written by the members of the Making Thinking Visible Project. It offers high school, college, and community college teachers' multiple perspectives on the teaching and learning of collaborative planning, and on classroom inquiry and practice. The casebook explains collaborative planning (a writing…

Five college writing teachers who consider themselves critically and politically progressive were interviewed to see how much their political views influenced what they did in their composition classes. The comments of the teachers suggest that although they are very sensitive to the students' needs and go out of their way to accept diverse views…

Strange as it may seem, the classroom is not, by and large, accepted within the composition discipline as a scene for genuine knowledge-making and theory-building. Teachers should go back to the "concrete materials" from which knowledge and theory are made. An example of what can be learned in the classroom comes from an effort to…

Even the most intelligent children can have low rates of achievement if their natural abilities are not supported by effective study practices at home. The development of good study habits requires the guidance and firm supervision of a caring adult. The following suggestions should help parents guide their children in the development of good…

Designed to tap the rich collection of instructional techniques in the ERIC database, this compilation of lesson plans offers practical suggestions for developing high school students' writing skills. The 37 lesson plans in this book are divided into four sections: (1) descriptive; (2) audience/voice; (3) expository; and (4) creative. A user's…