Through three semesters of teaching the nonfiction essay, an instructor has come to terms with the fact that she has yet to attempt the type of personal essay that she asks her students to write, essays in which personal experiences with death are shared. However, a reminiscence on death through a recounting of her reactions to and understanding…

This digest considers approaches to langugae arts teaching that are based on mythic or archetypal ways of experiencing and knowing. The Digest argues that such approaches address students' inner lives more directly than do the usual instructional methods such as whole language or student-centered instruction, and thus can help to promote…

A study compared the progress of children encouraged to use inventive spelling with those encouraged to use traditional spelling in their creative writing. It was hypothesized that there would not be a significant difference in the writing samples produced in terms of their length or degree of elaboration. Participants were two second-grade…

This manual is designed to help volunteer teachers in family literacy programs introduce a writing project that provides parents and children with a worthwhile learning experience to take home and share. The guide suggests ways to prepare parents and children for a collaborative story-writing experience and offers ideas on how to structure the…

Spotlighting a variety of venerable poets, as well as some rising stars, this book is the second series of conversations about the lives and works of poets who write mainly for children and young people. The book presents informal interviews with the writers about their childhoods, the influences upon their work, their writing processes, how they…

Chronicling a year-long project to study fantasy literature, this book presents essays, teaching units, student writing, and "jack tales." The project chronicled in the book consisted of a 3-week intensive study program for librarians and teachers of grades 2 through 7 throughout the Appalachian region, followed up by two more meetings…

Chronicling a year-long project to study fantasy literature, this book presents essays, teaching units, student writing models, and "jack tales." The project chronicled in the book consisted of a 4-week intensive study program for librarians and teachers of grades 2 through 7 throughout the Appalachian region, followed up by two more…

This issue of "Insights into Open Education" presents three short articles dealing with teaching poetry, English instruction, and the concept of time. The first article, "Teaching Poetry Tips" (Gem Reid), discusses the author's experiences conducting a week-long poetry workshop for a class of 30 second graders. The second…

Allowing, or encouraging, students to write fiction has not received much attention from college composition teachers, despite recent attempts to bridge the gaps between composition and the study of literature. Based on experiences with a number of students in a variety of writing courses, a college composition instructor questions assumptions…

The principle of empathic learning (involving activities that help students feel what it is to be like someone else) can be used to teach poetry, a material about which students have strong prejudices, and an activity they cannot imagine themselves ever doing or being interested in. First, students are presented with the conception that people…

This document is the report of a task force established to survey all arts education programs in New Jersey, develop a model curriculum with sequential instruction for grades kindergarten through grade 12, evaluate the effects of the arts experience on students, review and make recommendations to improve certification requirements for arts…

The "writing workshop" approach to teaching creative writing, virtually unchallenged throughout the United States, has recently come under fire. Two schools of thought, while agreeing that the traditional workshop needs a thorough overhaul, differ in approaches to that overhaul. One approach, using the theories of Harold Bloom, argues…

The curriculum for gifted students in grades kindergarten through 5 in Long Branch (New Jersey) is both accelerated and enriched using the basic district curriculum to ensure skill mastery and modified with additional materials and instructional strategies including: compacting of curriculum through mastery testing; increased opportunities for…

The YALA journal is an annual publication of the Young Adult Learning Academy (YALA) in New York City, New York. This journal, one of many YALA publications and projects, was designed to encourage students to assume active roles in their education and to present their ideas, feelings, and craft to others. The YALA was established in 1984 to…

Because poetic writing as a method of discourse and as a tool for learning plays a significant role in many theoretical models of writing but is rarely used in practice, a study was conducted to examine the effects on 70 college students in an introductory psychology class of a mixture of poetic and transactional assignments on the subject of…