Contemporary learning theory supports the use of writing as a cognitive tool to enhance retention and assist students to understand abstract mathematical concepts. Using writing activities in the intermediate grade and secondary classroom enhances the learning of mathematics and is a way of making mathematics more reachable to those students who…

A short story assignment incorporates creative writing into the syllabus of a freshman composition class, while erasing the misconception that creative writing is something a "regular" student cannot do. Students write a rough draft both of a personal experience essay and of a short story. Based on peer-reviews of both, students choose…

Combining the journal writing process with the concepts of collaboration can produce more focused writing and learning. Through the channel of collaborative situations, such as group journal writing, teachers can capitalize on the benefits achieved from the collaborative process and cultivate thinking and writing skills. A group journal writing…

Pupils should participate in numerous forms and kinds of writing activities involving poetry and should hear, read, and write different forms and kinds of prose. Types of poetry that pupils can write include couplets, triplets, quatrains, limericks, free verse, haiku, and diamante. The ingredients that all types of poetry might have include…

The degree to which process writing deconstructs traditional notions about a fixed final product came to the attention of a high school instructor and her students when they attempted to select their best "essays" for a contest the school was holding. The students in this class found that some of their best writing occurred not in their…

Educators at Georgia Southern University began using a whole language approach to developmental literacy instruction by adapting the model David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky provide in "Facts, Artifacts, and Counterfacts." Rather than a focus on information retrieval and transfer, whole language curricula encourage students to engage…

Suggesting combining poetry and science learning, this collection of materials maintains that the natural intersection of science and poetry can be used to stimulate thinking, create interest, and explore new possibilities. The collection includes: (1) the South Carolina Basic Skills Assessment Program's Objectives Reading/Science Match; (2)…

Three writing assignments not only gave students the opportunity to practice various rhetorical approaches in the assignments, but also provided students a learning opportunity and a chance to explore their own attitudes towards the problems and issues raised by the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) crisis. The first assignment involved…

The collaborative student essay invites exploration of various points of view in multiple voices. The co-written essay brings out language's heteroglossic richness, as shown by the students' collaborative writing experiences in a college writing class. Students worked within the frames of two assignments: (1) an analysis of a text or trend; and…

Measuring the effects of computer-managed instruction (CMI) on the teaching of and student writing about literature involves more than having students write and then evaluating their performance. Measurement is made difficult by the fact that the computer technology used in instruction is in a state of flux. Variation of computer technology,…

After students' interest in literature has been stirred by journal writing, it is time for them to turn their private journal writing into writing for an audience. Instead of having students write the usual responses to literature, vary their assignments by offering them creative responses, either occasionally or as an individual alternative to…

This paper describes a writing assignment given in an introductory literature class at an open-admissions university. In what can be called "the paper of many parts," students write six short pieces in which they do different things with a poem. The paper begins and ends with response statements: an initial one and one at the end that…

This document outlines the development of an American Studies learning community in which a literature and a history professor created a framework for collaborative inquiry across the two disciplines. The learning community was situated within General Education requirements, and thus reflected the freshman course level. The community was linked…

This paper is a "how-to" paper for promoting writing and critical thinking skills. Intended to be practical in providing timely and helpful strategies for fostering analytical thinking and effective writing among college students, the paper is offered as a useful resource for classroom instructors seeking fresh new ideas and approaches…

Learn how to use literature to teach students the six traits that characterize effective writing: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. This practical text gives the reader a variety of ideas and strategies for developing and integrating the traits into students? writing, bibliographies of recommended…