This collection of interviews with authors of children's literature is organized so that young people can use it with or without directions from the teacher. The collection can be used in two ways: to give a reader background and insight into the writing approaches taken by an author whose book is being read, or to make known new or unfamiliar…

The Story Train is a non-profit, elementary literacy program dedicated to the development of creative writing and critical thinking skills. Those objectives are achieved through a variety of specific techniques utilized to inspire students. The four components of the program are workshop, residency, television production, and an Internet site. The…

Hypertext software permits students to write non-linear stories which include pictures and words. The characteristics of these stories may be affected by student and teacher understandings of how pictures and words may be combined to produce meanings for the reader. The use of images and words in comic books and children's picture-books contribute…

This book focuses on the integration of an individual's inner and outer landscape. It contains a series of invitations for young people to look out upon their own landscapes and to write the important themes of their lives. The writing experiences outlined in the book give children (and adults) space to become quiet and focused and to tap into…

Debates as to the critical element in the writing process have usually taken sides as to either the preeminence of the writer or the essential nature of the text. Throughout two separate studies into the instruction of creative writing genres, the key element in every teaching situation is, instead of writer or text, the creation of a tangible…

Gail Carr, a classroom teacher, and Rosalind Flynn, a drama specialist, have found that drama learning strategies can be applicable to many curriculum areas, especially literature. The teacher must take part, according to Carr and Flynn, by maintaining the drama in motion by questioning, challenging, organizing the group's thought, focusing on the…

According to Lawrence Chua, "zines" are "xeroxed broadsides" which "make marginality their starting point, empowering voices excluded from the slicker journals." According to "Ms," they are "downsized stapled rags...often defiantly tasteless." A subgenre of zines, "Grrrl zines" are those written, produced, and distributed by young women, usually…

A study investigated whether there would be any significant difference in test scores between students instructed in the use of graphic organizers during their creative writings and those students not instructed in their use. Graphic organizers can help writers keep to the topic by having their ideas in front of them as they are writing. They also…

A study investigated the ways male and female fifth-grade writers compose short, open-ended autobiographical narratives. The research focused on whether students composed narratives reproducing society's prescription of reality according to gender roles, or whether they found their own voices, writing as autonomous writers representing their own…

College students are often faced with a variety of writing assignments which might ask them to analyze data showing cause and effect, compose a sonnet, or creatively analyze a classic short story. To tackle these kinds of assignments, they must disregard traditional and often misleading definitions of analytical and creative writing which lead…

Richard Hugo's thinking about teaching creative writing can enhance the composition classroom: he offered both practical pointers about writing and advice about self-discovery for all writers. His pedagogy was directed at the most common elements in all writers--their humanity and their relationships to language, ideas, and feelings. "The…

A multicultural literature course at Loyola Marymount University (California) was designed to complicate ideas of culture with gender issues and explored a common but largely unexplored phenomenon--writers who write outside their own personal backgrounds and identities. The course drew from research on "women's way of knowing" and…

There are many learning opportunities in the science curriculum which emphasize creativity. Learning opportunities are described in this paper which involve: (1) problem solving experiences; (2) poetry reading and writing; (3) prose and its applications in creative endeavors; (4) art work as creativity in science; (5) creative dramatics and famous…

Fifteen poets have created this guide to teaching the work of Walt Whitman from kindergarten to college level. In essays based on the personal experience of these imaginative writers, the guide presents practical ideas for fresh ways to read Whitman and to write poetry and prose inspired by him. The guide also includes three pieces on education by…

This book is intended for use by older beginning writers and visual artists. It is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to the complexities of the creative process. The document is a guide to opening and using the creative process in the later years of life. It is arranged in chapters that take the student through a learning process. Exercises…