This book offers an entire year of journaling ideas--some serious, some "silly," but all tied to the calendar year. In fact, the book's sections are the months of the year. Each idea in the book comes with a fact-filled introduction and aims to prove that writing does not have to be boring or dull. As a special feature, many entries in…

In "Rhetoric, Discovery and Change" (1970), R. Young, A. Becker, and K. Pike took Carl Rogers' empathetic approach out of the context of one-on-one therapy and put it into the writing classroom. They proposed the now standard formulaic structure of argumentation which emphasizes a strong thesis up front, a detailed account of the…

The Aquinas Program is an 18-credit first year college learning community which provides a more effective way of ensuring support for first-year students in becoming members of the academic community. One of the most successful innovations of the program is an assignment called Occasions, in which a student convinces a certain number of other…

Noting that at Saint Mary's University (where the authors teach) the issue of spirituality is in the forefront of education and is seamlessly woven into required courses throughout four years of college in an attempt to "enhance students' spiritual and personal lives," this paper positions writing centers as a place for student inquiries…

Showing how to introduce poetry to encourage creativity while teaching solid craft skills, this book presents mini-lessons and activities to help teachers in grades 3 through 8 get students to respond to poetry with joy and enthusiasm throughout the curriculum. The skills students learn from doing the exercises in the book support national, state,…

Middle grades students read, write, speak, listen, and research as they interview a partner and write an article, write a personal memoir, take partner photographs, and use the Internet to find pictures and information illustrating their partners interests. Results are shared in the form of a poster and a classroom presentation. During the fifteen…

The literature of the contact zone has done an excellent job of elucidating the ethical demands of the classroom as a hybrid space of variously raced, classed, and gendered subjects discursively engaging across multiple identity boundaries. But a chief concern of one writing teacher is whether and how writing teachers can revise the symbol systems…

When a class of lethargic college students showed no enthusiasm for their reading assignments in English class, one instructor turned to drama. She assigned a collaborative script, and the students' enthusiasm and motivation relegated her to a "pleasant oblivion." She thought that the novelty of the play genre might enliven the class,…

Ancient languages are the deepest root of the humanities, drawing life from that distant time when the study of history, philosophy, literature, and of language itself began. On the Internet, students can return to those times, re-enter that age of discovery, and gain the linguistic skills to help keep the many branches of the humanities rooted…

The assumption for many college professors is that academic discourse is a hallmark of the educated, a form of communication accepted and expected both academically and professionally. Typically, academic discourse entails the conventions of a particular discipline's writing form. A writing center tutor and administrator must find ways to teach…

Offers suggestions for teaching dyslexic students from a graduate student who teaches composition and is himself dyslexic. Recommends the following strategies: one-on-one help, study skills assignments, individual strategies, step-by-step process, oral discussion, topics of interest to the student, and questions to build confidence. (PA)

Reports on an experimental enterprise in which a writing course and a mathematics course were linked together so that writing was incorporated into mathematics instruction and problem solving was emphasized in writing instruction. Describes two writing assignments and two mathematic assignments. Contains student responses to the assignments. (TB)

Describes an approach, called "dependent authorship," to reading literature and writing literature that is used in the middle grades through the college level and that is effective both in teaching writing and in promoting careful reading. Notes that students use a published literary work as a foundation for their own creative writing. (SR)

Develops a college-level writing assignment using Adrienne Kennedy's autobiography, a multisectioned list poem. Discusses why the personal list poem is appealing and how lists--a simple but generative form--work well for students. States that students wrote a succession of paragraphs about people in their lives who had influenced them. Gives…

Presents a dialog among three English teachers concerning teaching performance poetry to ninth graders. (RS)