Examines several new writing environments, including prompted writing, text-based writing environments, graphics-enhanced environments, and hypertext environments. Evaluates each from an instructional perspective. (MM)

Describes a one-semester academic composition course in the English curriculum of Amarillo Independent Schools, Texas. Discusses the advantages of incorporating computer technology into the course. (MM)

Outlines the Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) program, a sequenced and structured reading/language arts program used by elementary level students at Bracher School in Santa Clara, California. Describes several cooperative reading and writing activities used in this program. (MM)

Describes three writing activities designed to link literature, technology, and the visual and performing arts. (MM)

Examines the effects of word processing on writing quality and the amount of text produced by basic writers. Finds that students using computers wrote more, but that there was no difference in quality between those who used a word processor and those who did not. (MS)

Examines cognitivist approaches to writing instruction by focusing on the pedagogy of problem-solving, specifically as presented in Linda Flower's "Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing." Emphasizes the need for a language of discourse which connects rather than excludes students' discourse from academic discourse. (MM)

Deplores the widespread practice of having graduate students with no teaching experience teach composition classes. Advocates (1) having tenured faculty teach one composition class per year, and (2) requiring graduate students to take a course in teaching composition before teaching it. (SR)

Explores the nature of children's poetry. Describes an underlying mechanism activated when children engage deeply, meditate unselfconsciously, and express those meditations through the act of writing. Urges teachers to incorporate into writing instruction children's natural inclination to play. (MM)

Discusses how the professional writer's approach to writing has influenced current thinking about writing processes. Examines how projects like the Somerset/Wiltshire "Write to Learn" have altered writing attitudes. Provides a list of booklets in the "Write to Learn" Project. (MM)

Examines the work of Linda Flower to explore "control" in writing, approaching her texts from a deconstructive (Derridean) perspective. Concludes that: the paradoxical nature of control has consequences for understanding cognition; and an acknowledgement of these consequences requires a reconsideration of "control" as the…

Asserts that student writers, teachers, and teacher educators must learn to "make do" with the time and circumstances they have in order to develop and grow. (MM)

Describes how to use pragmatic and logical arguments to change students' negative attitudes toward basic writing courses. (MM)

Reviews "Showing Teachers How," a series of 12 videotapes released in 1986 and 1987 dealing with (1) reading instruction using the whole language approach in the elementary grades; (2) social studies instruction using trade books; (3) writing instruction; and (4) discussion strategies for current events. (RS)

Presents 18 writing stimulus ideas that are intended as jumping off points for student writing and are based on poems from "If I Were in Charge of the World (and other worries)" by Judith Viorst. Offers some general suggestions for using poems in the classroom. (SR)

Describes a pen pal experience between a third and fourth grade class and some local senior citizens. (MM)