An atypical and challenging writing assignment for courses in general or abnormal psychology is to ask the students to write a poem about the experience of mental illness. The format, length, and topic are left entirely up to the student. While shocked at first, students rose to the challenge after being told they would be judged on content and…

Pepperdine University lies between the mountains of the Santa Monica Conservancy and the Pacific Ocean. The hills surrounding the campus are a paradise of native vegetation, much of it under federal protection, where there are many types of wildlife and the air is loud with insects and all sorts of birds. And yet, not only are the vast majority of…

This teaching guide is the result of 3 years of thinking, trying, rethinking, and trying again with an assignment sequence in which one instructor attempted to address the personal as well as the academic needs of students in the Program of Intensive English at the University of California at Santa Barbara. According to the guide, many of these…

The IowaLink Program at the University of Iowa is a two-semester, academic support program for recruited students. The program provides an extended academic transition between high school and college for students who have demonstrated the potential to succeed at Iowa but who do not meet standards for regular admission. One of the features of the…

Ken Macrorie coined the term "I Search," which puts the writer at the center of the paper and seeks to put a human face on the data collected. Looking for a way to use the research writing assignment to help students learn to adjust their ideas to different formats by becoming more aware of how different structures can be shaped around…

The main purpose of this study was to look at how we used specific writing assignments in our courses to encourage metacognitive reflection in order to increase the learning that takes place. The study also aimed to aid in the development of higher order processing skills through the development of student reflection. The students involved in the…

In the struggle to find an acceptably academic voice that still felt personal, an instructor started thinking about what it would mean to say that academic writing is always autobiographical. Reading student work for how the autobiographical is presented in academic discourse, the instructor thought about how autobiographical writing could be used…

A course taught at St. Augustine's College uses "A Voice from the South" (1893) by Anna J. Cooper (a collection of essays representing women as being bold, in-charge decision makers) as an example of how "Feminism across the Disciplines" is expressed. These essays, as well as works of a number of other writers, can be used in…

This paper discusses the juxtaposition of teamwork as found in school writing assignments with the value of individual work as demonstrated in the ideas of intellectual property and copyright. It begins by addressing the question of whether students perceive collaborative writing tools such as peer response as helping or hindering them when faced…

This book is based on the premise that a writer is much like an artist who paints images, only using grammatical structures as tools. In conjunction with this approach, each chapter is divided into concepts and strategies: concepts illustrate how professional writers have applied image grammar to develop their art, and strategies provide…

This digest explores the literature related to journal writing from various disciplines, including psychology, language studies, outdoor education, and experiential education. Although journal writing has been around since ancient times, it was not until the early 1960s that it flourished as a learning tool. Instructors from a wide range of…

Pupils need variety in their writing experiences, and social studies writing involves writing across the curriculum as well as stressing positive attitudes and feelings of the learner. Subject matter should come from the pupil, and diverse learning opportunities should assist the pupil in acquiring the relevant facts, concepts, and main ideas…

This lesson plan introduces students to one of the most widely-read genres of 19th-century American literature and an important influence within the African American literary tradition today. The lesson focuses on the "Narrative of William W. Brown, An American Slave" (1847), which, along with the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick…

While a single lesson plan cannot fully explore the variety and complexity of African life, in this lesson students can gain insight into the lives of some black women in Sub-Saharan Africa by adopting a perspective that is in part traditional, based on the arts of African village life, and in part postcolonial, based on the work of African women…

Describes a method that spurs students to engage in the process of self-analysis and exploration that makes an excellent antecedent to informed college selection. Students wrote essays describing their ideal college. The exercise allowed students to keep a goal in mind as they began their college search. (RJM)