This collection of 26 brief essays by college and high school faculty represents a variety of practical approaches that can be used in composition classes. After a foreword by the editor, the essays and their authors are as follows: "Writing as a Moral Activity" (Judith Anderson); "Specific Details (Orangen't You Wise to Use…

This curriculum guide is designed to aid in the planning and execution of a writing course for verbally gifted elementary school students. The course is designed for students ranging in age from 8-11 years whose verbal reasoning skills are at least 3 years above grade level. The course instructs students in the fundamentals of communication…

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…

To teach creative writing effectively, teachers must be writers themselves and be willing to pass on their tricks of the trade to students. Conducted to determine what structures existed to help teachers pass on their skills, a survey of creative writing in high schools in the Chicago suburban area revealed a continuum, with only one school having…

A computer program entitled "Story Time" encourages preschool children to use the important language skills that develop during the first 3 or 4 years of life to create and print original stories. Although the computer does not write the stories, it aids the children in the creation of stories by prompting them with questions. In order to use the…

Intended for teachers who would like to correlate creative writing with creative ideas and activities, this publication presents ideas that will serve as springboards to other creative ideas and activities. Consisting of six main sections, each containing an introduction, the first section of the book presents: a statement of purpose; a discussion…

The Teachers & Writers Collaborative, organized in 1967, places professional writers in New York City classrooms to work on a regular basis with teachers and children. A study was made of the collaborative's creative arts program for children in grades four, five, and six in one elementary school, in order to examine three aspects of the program:…

Composed by English teachers at the elementary, secondary, and college levels, this book describes practical methods for teaching writing. Part one contains essays on issues related to teaching writing, such as motivation, evaluation, and teaching sequence. Part two describes more than 100 practical lessons for classroom use, each of which…

The teaching of writing skills is such a complex and timely process that it militates its introduction and reinforcement from the outset of English as a second language instruction. This paper presents and describes writing activities for beginning, intermediate, advanced, and transitional levels. Among the beginning level activities suggested are…

While the chapters of this book present a variety of perspectives, they share the common goal of redirecting and revitalizing research on written composition. The authors review research on written discourse and the composing process and raise questions regarding information and skills that teachers and researchers need to consider. The chapters…

Teaching poetry and fiction writing is most effective in classes where the student population is heterogeneous. The experienced writers help the beginners improve and the beginners provide a critical audience for the more advanced writers. Diversity in age and worldliness challenges the creative writing instructor to provide the opportunity for…

Intended for professional personnel involved in the education of artistically talented students, the document presents a rationale; a selection of the most appropriate identification practices and options that involve professional resource people and school personnel; appropriate curriculum and instructional strategies for talented students at all…

This article discusses the potential for creative language production through poetry writing in the foreign language class. Specific techniques and activities which stimulate creative thinking, speaking, and writing in the foreign language are presented. The techniques are (1) collaboration poem-wishes; (2) comparison poems; (3) metaphor poems;…

In a study of differences and similarities between children's oral and written stories, 23 third grade pupils wrote stories about a given topic and then, two weeks later, told stories about the same topic. Analysis of the stories revealed five types of narrative structures, of which the most commonly used was a "situation-problem-solution"…

A personal account of an English instructor's experiences with poetry therapy--the use of poetry to help people get in touch with, and begin dealing with, their problems and feelings--is provided in this paper. Among the topics dealt with are the following: the scope of poetry therapy, the instructor's early dissatisfactions with traditional…