Presents a case study for use in business communication classes to help students understand and learn both the context and the strategies for the communication with business management. Deals with a business problem revolving around issues of appropriate e-mail use and privacy. Includes five assignments. (SR)

Shows how some key postmodern ideas about texts forced a teacher and her students to rethink typical writing assignments and typical student responses. Describes the assignments and considers how they invite postmodern critique. Suggests giving up grandiose, romantic notions that Freshman Composition can fix students either personally or…

Describes an intermediate college writing class that uses Paulo Freire's essay "The Banking Concept of Education" as its philosophical foundation to encourage students and teachers to engage in critical thought, critical writing, and critical action. Describes several assignments that evolved from the essay, and its implications. Shows…

Describes how a weekly focused journal writing assessment (in which students note any use of language they find interesting, puzzling, amusing, or annoying as well as their response to it) enhances composition students' awareness of how language is used and where. Offers several different advantages of such journal writing. (SR)

Describes a multigenre research paper assignment noting how the teacher guided the students with ideas and encouragement. Presents individual students' experiences with the multigenre projects. Discusses the instructor's political agenda, which was based on equality, empathy, and optimism. Concludes that a multigenre research paper takes more time…

Contains an imaginary writing assignment and an imaginary student's response to it that critiques it and the conception of writing it appears to be predicated upon. (TB)

Describes a very successful writing assignment the author uses with his high school English students, in which students write about a letter of the alphabet. Notes that this assignment grants freedom for exploration and voice, the raw material for shaping and can be used to teach everything from the writing of poetry to essays for college…

Looks at first graders enthusiastically writing their autobiographies. Describes an environmental and instructional model called the Center Activity Rotation System. Discusses its three phases and how children rotate through seven centers in the classroom, which allows for a variety of grouping patterns that invite children to work on skills as…

Relates how the author teaches elementary and secondary school students to write nexus poems--poems that use a nexus, or bridge, to persuade the reader, or to show the reader the link between where something originates and where people use it. (SR)

Argues that looking at students' uses of cliche in context can teach instructors about students' struggles to fashion new knowledge from what they already believe to be true. Examines students' most frequently used cliches. Suggests writing instructors who examine their response to cliche can learn how their pedagogical practices can deafen them…

Describes a writing exercise for middle schoolers to college students that encourages students to become more aware of language, especially word choice and audience in their writing, by writing lipograms (compositions from which all words containing a certain letter are omitted). Notes it can be used as a pre-revision activity, part of a poetry…

Notes the relationship between thinking and playfulness. Demonstrates that playful language is a valuable way for adolescents from varied cultural backgrounds to express their thinking. Explores in depth four approaches to writing that encourage linguistic play: choosing playful topics; emphasizing characteristics of linguistic play; selecting…

An English teacher believes that it is necessary for students to know how and why censorship operates in school libraries and classrooms to help them have the tools to speak for themselves. Free-choice reading, mock trails, and writing assignments are used to teach students about the censorship of books that are used in the schools.

High school students can actually write for real audiences and also meet state and national standards. A high school teacher confronts the challenge of helping the students to do so by requiring students to complete a senior project, authentic writing assignment.

One of the best ways for students to become involved in the classroom and engaged in their learning is to write. This article presents a rationale for the use of writing in any curriculum and offers suggestions about how to develop writing-to-learn assignments. Writing-to-learn assignments help students understand, reflect upon, and question…