In June 2008, the Department of English at the University of Minnesota partnered with the Minnesota Spoken Word Association to inaugurate an outreach literacy program for local high-school students and teachers. The four-day institute, named "In Da Tradition," used spoken word and hip hop to teach academic and creative writing to core-city…

Much has been written about evaluating student writing in the composition classroom, but there is still a tendency, in the creative writing classroom, to enact unanswered assumptions about what makes a story or a poem "good." If experimental or postmodern fictional writing is not inherently apolitical, neither is it inherently political,…

This collection of three "Childhood Stories," includes some of the stories used as part of the "Story Train" program, an elementary literacy program that offers students the opportunity to be published either on the Internet or on a cable television show also called "Story Train." The tales in the collection, written…

Initially an assignment for a library science class, this paper presents various definitions of the current creative writing phenomenon called "sudden fiction" (very short short stories with concise character sketches, and terse tales limited in length to several pages). The paper includes: (1) a list of well regarded sudden fiction…

Asking the question "What Is Poetry?" these essays seek out the art of true poetry--differentiating between facile novelty and genuine originality; asserting the poet's ability to question and lay bare reality; and demonstrating the subtle power of language in the "fruitful ambiguities" of its most ordinary parts, such as the…

Writing must receive major emphasis in teaching-learning situations. There are important differences between creative endeavors and those that involve role learning and exact answers. Creativity emphasizes the novel, the unique, the original, and the open-ended. Creativity should stress writing across the curriculum, and should involve reading and…

Pupils should develop a thorough appreciation for poetry. Poetry may be correlated with different curriculum areas in elementary schools, such as science, math, and health. Students can be introduced to various poetic forms, such as couplets, triplets, limericks, haiku, and free verse. Teachers should encourage experimentation and novel ideas in…

Based on the Screenwriting 434 graduate-level seminar at the University of California Los Angeles, this book guides readers/students through every step of the screenwriting process by putting them through the actual writing of an original script. Chapters in the book are: (1) Ideas; (2) The Two-Minute Movie; (3) Building Your Characters; (4) The…

In teaching poetry to unenthused students, a teacher began as though the student have never seen a poem they liked. Teachers are advised to keep to free verse whenever possible, and when possible to stay contemporary, especially in the early stages of poetry teaching. Poems that don't need footnotes for clarity can be taught and whatever texts are…

This book is a selection of profiles of children's authors featured in the journal "Language Arts" over the years. The book's 12 individual profiles highlight some of the real people who contribute to children's book publishing, provide a sample of a few of the many genres of books available for children, and give an insight into the…

Describes the scripting, casting, and filming of "The Loves and Hates of Mrs. Jones" by an elementary language arts class. (RB)

A series of papers dealing with the development of writing abilities, focusing on: the child and his reader, the functions of writing, genuine communication, the importance of writing differently for different purposes and audiences, and the growth from the expressive to more specialized and differentiated kinds of writing. (EH)

Presents one teacher's observations on the activities happening in the writing and drawing classes in New York's P. S. 84. (RB)