In recent years, haiku has become a widely adopted part of the language arts, social studies, and multicultural studies curriculum, particularly at the elementary level. Haiku became popular in the 17th and 18th centuries in Japan. Haiku remains popular because these poems describe nature and human experiences, as well as being simple and short.…

Written for those who want to write poems but are not sure how to start, this book presents 20 short exercises plus short pieces ("written talk") about poetry. The exercises in the book are designed to be completed in about 10 weeks. The types of poems in the 20 exercises include "found" and "headline" poems (which…

Students and teachers in the adult basic education unit of the Lutheran Settlement House Women's Program were actively involved in production of a student newsletter. A review committee of adult students and teachers was formed to perform editorial planning and control functions. Three editions of the newsletter were produced with features…

Tests were given to a nine-year-old boy to establish the constraints operating when he was writing poetry. The tests involved writing cloze tests on poems by poet Ted Hughes and on a poem the boy had written a year earlier. The boy was also asked to write a poem and then to discuss what he was thinking as he wrote. The following constraints were…

One of the best means to create student awareness of play structure is through assigned reading and classroom discussion of successful plays used as models. Various plays from the 1982 edition of "Best Short Plays" are appropriate for discussion of the following structures and techniques: (1) development of conflict and action, suspense,…

The teacher of creative writing should be willing to begin by making a fool of himself. (JH)

Organization of a class as a "publishing house" motivated more writing. (JH)

A creative writing class explored the feminine creative powers evoked when searching for the Muse in an attempt to understand women as writers. Female student writers occasionally found "masculine" figures, but predominantly experienced a figure of the Muse that had a distinctly Goddess-linked quality or was not genderized at all.…

The literary field offers an especially rich array of examples of the insight phenomenon and demonstrates that insight experiences occur outside the problem-solving paradigm of cognitive science. Analysis shows that the seemingly unitary moment of insight is actually a microgenetic sequence (a rapid sequence of developmental change) deeply…

Quality children's literature can model a wide range of effective writing and illustrating techniques. When exposed to good models of writing, children can be encouraged to reflect on how authors and illustrators have shaped a story, and literary elements, story structure, and design can be identified. As children progress in their understanding…

This practicum study evaluated a non-basal, multidisciplinary, multisensory approach to teaching higher order reading comprehension skills to eight fifth-grade learning-disabled students from low socioeconomic minority group backgrounds. The four comprehension skills were: (1) identifying the main idea; (2) determining cause and effect; (3) making…

Designed to combine the science and the art of teaching composition, this series of assignments encourages junior high and high school writing students to explore tone, original visual images, point of view, and other literary techniques. One assignment asks students to write a number of paragraphs alternately using sarcasm, humor, melancholy, and…

The classroom activities suggested in this resource booklet, proven successful by South Dakota poet Jack Kreitzer, are designed to spark or increase students' creativity by bringing the exciting language of poetry alive in the elementary and secondary classroom. Introductory comments present thoughts on what poetry is and how it should be taught,…