An author of young adult literature describes the difficulties confronted in writing the third novel in a trilogy and suggests that, for children, the historical novel can be a signpost between the fixed, always relevant, past and the changing present. (AEA)

Describes the expressive writing of Japanese elementary school children, citing examples designed to encourage American language arts teachers to use their responses to students' writing to bolster children's attempts to become actively and personally engaged in their writing. (HTH)

Offers advice and techniques for poetry writing in high school English classes. (RL)

Argues that teachers often mislead students into believing that writing poetry is an act of self-expression that focuses everyone's attention on the author, rather than a demanding art that produces a piece of writing separate from the author and deserving of its own attention. (AEA)

Describes the poems written by sixth grade students in response to William Carlos Williams's poem "The Dance" and Pieter Bruegel's painting "The Peasant Dance." (HTH)

Reports on the difficulties a teacher had while trying to compose her first poetry assignment at the Bread Loaf School of English. (RL)

Describes a way to motivate reluctant children to create stories--coordinating puppetry and writing activities. (RL)

Describes methods developed for a fourth- through sixth- grade writers' workshop designed to teach children to write within certain common structures. Separate workshop sessions dealt with descriptive writing, mood, characterization, adventure stories, tall tales, plays, autobiography, and reporting. (AEA)

Details a study that investigated incremental effects of intensive instruction in creative writing on 10 indicators of writing performance of seventh-grade students: vocabulary, morphology, sentence openings, sentence lengths, sentence types, organization, clarity, end punctuation, general clarity, and spelling. (FL)

Described is a puppetry project which incorporates learning music selection, introducing music in writing activities, learning how music tells a story, learning about sound effects and theme music, and music appreciation. Some musical resources are included. (KC)

The author describes the process of writing, from idea through final draft, as experienced by one third-grade class. She outlines the instructional sequence used by their teacher and includes suggestions for helping children to make revisions. (SJL)

Writing workshops are held for gifted students (7 to 15 years old) and include journalism, guidebook, and fiction work with critical analysis of each other's writing. Sample exercises and brainstorming techniques are discussed. (CL)

The author, who teaches a multischool writing seminar for K-8 students and their teachers, explains some of the activities of this interschool literary group and presents two writing exercises he has used, one on writing the introductory paragraphs for a novel, and the other on characterization. (SJL)

Explores the use of detective story writing to help children move from chronology to causality. Examines the elements of a detective mystery and includes a sample story written by a student. (HTH)

Presents four brief suggestions regarding methods for teaching poetry writing, descriptive writing, and vocabulary. (TJ)