Columbus (Georgia) College's Challenge Squared program consists of three 2-week enrichment day camps for gifted students in grades 5 through 10. In past years, students have worked with an artist to create local history murals and have written and produced video plays in cooperation with a media specialist. Most recently, students were involved in…

In 1989 the Portland (Oregon) Public Schools conducted a Direct Writing Assessment of approximately 6,000 students. A voluntary portion included 103 ninth graders who wrote essays on the same topic. The papers were scored twice: once in each student's handwriting and once in word-processed form. Papers were separated into short and long categories…

This document consists of six issues of a newsletter that provides a forum for the sharing of research findings and instructional strategies by faculty of Western Michigan University. Issue Number 1 addresses writing in the Writing Across the Curriculum Program with notification of a faculty workshop, hints on how to encourage good writing, and a…

This casebook is part of a set of materials written by the members of the Making Thinking Visible Project. It offers high school, college, and community college teachers' multiple perspectives on the teaching and learning of collaborative planning, and on classroom inquiry and practice. The casebook explains collaborative planning (a writing…

Five college writing teachers who consider themselves critically and politically progressive were interviewed to see how much their political views influenced what they did in their composition classes. The comments of the teachers suggest that although they are very sensitive to the students' needs and go out of their way to accept diverse views…

Strange as it may seem, the classroom is not, by and large, accepted within the composition discipline as a scene for genuine knowledge-making and theory-building. Teachers should go back to the "concrete materials" from which knowledge and theory are made. An example of what can be learned in the classroom comes from an effort to…

Designed to tap the rich collection of instructional techniques in the ERIC database, this compilation of lesson plans offers practical suggestions for developing high school students' writing skills. The 37 lesson plans in this book are divided into four sections: (1) descriptive; (2) audience/voice; (3) expository; and (4) creative. A user's…

A study investigated the composing process to examine why different types of instruction have different effects on composing products. The study contrasted three treatments: (1) presenting students with models (the traditional method); (2) the general procedures approach stressing freethinking process; and (3) a method stressing task-specific…

Though popular in the late 70s and early 80s, the instructional technique of sentence combining attracts little support today, even though practice has proven that teaching the processes of combining and expanding sentences can enhance syntactic maturity. A student writer who is made aware of the expectations of form will be prompted to generate…

The idea behind this project created by two teachers of different age groups was that providing students with penpals would give students a real audience to write to and change their attitudes about writing. Seventh graders and college students exchanged letters and were required to send working drafts of some class assignments to each other to…

The instructor/author first started to think about the relationship between time and literacy when she was writing her dissertation and doing a study in a first-year composition course at a community college in Chicago. She realized that many teachers at community colleges think about the issue of time, as they realize it is something their…

On November 17, 1995 the following news item appeared in "Time Magazine": "Long-lost cave reveals burial tombs of Maccabees." You (the student) are a journalist who has been asked by your editor to follow up that news item with an in-depth feature a two page spread with text and graphics entitled "The Life and Times of…

Introducing middle school students (grades 6-8) to the joy of writing, this book presents ideas, practical lessons, examples, games, and resources. Step-by-step guidelines and helpful tips for educators are combined with numerous writing and prewriting activities for students--from "braindancing" and "zoom lens" to "downhilling." The book is…

A disturbing gulf between the culture of the United States and that of Singapore, was noted by an American English professor after spending the 1986-87 academic year as a Fullbright lecturer in Singapore's Department of English and Literature and again after returning for the 1991-92 academic year as a visiting professor. Cultural differences were…

Community college students are often described as less motivated, or "turned-off," compared to other college students. This stereotype has prevented many writing instructors from trying new ways of reaching these students at a Midwest community college, the majority of whom have access to the Internet either at home or in the local…