An advanced writing course that does not repeat freshman English materials and techniques can encourage a variety of students to become enthusiastic about writing. One such course focuses on three writing modes: the poetic, the informative, and the persuasive. For the poetic mode, students write informal essays; for the informative mode, they…

This booklet is one of a series developed by the Northern Colorado Educational Board of Cooperative Services to make available to teachers ideas designed and tested by other teachers. Many of the ideas are from educational journals as well as from the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). The booklet contains sixteen activities…

Journal writing can motivate students to write frequently, thereby creating content which can later be properly structured. Students who keep journals tend to write better than those who do not. To help students explore certain ideas in journals further, teachers should ask questions or make statements that relate to the students' ideas. Sometimes…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is an information-gathering project that surveys the educational attainments of 9 year olds, 13 year olds, 17 year olds, and adults (ages 26 to 35) in ten learning areas, one of which is writing. This report focuses on persuasive and explanatory letter writing, representing two basic aims of…

Proposes a heuristic to generate specific and vivid phrasing and to draw on the right hemisphere of the brain for the substance of the essay. Describes stages of process as DRAW (Delineate, Ruminate, Analogize, and Write). Emphasizes creative description and expressive language rather than generation of ideas. (JG)

Presents a study which assessed undergraduates' and children's music preferences for examples of symphonic music. Serving as a teaching and planning experience for undergraduates, the study revealed that children's preferences were increased through undergraduate presentations and that college students used larger vocabularies when describing…

Evaluates the use of meditation as a basis for a descriptive writing assignment in advanced composition. (MS)

Analyzes the creative writing of 94 second-grade children in a suburban elementary school, comparing boys' and girls' creative writings when the composition was elicited from realistic fiction, fantasy, and fantasy in conjunction with stuffed animals and wind-up toys. Also examines the combined creativity of boys' and girls' compositions and the…

Presents a descriptive exercise, also useful for technical writing, that provides a real reader and a strong sense of the nature of descriptive writing. Students are given sketches of an art piece that they must describe for a museum for identification. (HTH)

The establishment and role of the Writing Center at Harvard is described as a means of improving freshmen writing skills. Students receive personal consultation, attend a series of mini-courses, and participate in a series of lectures by faculty members from different departments about how to write for various disciplines. (LBH)

This report describes a program for enriching language use in writing. The targeted population consisted of one classroom of fourth grade students in a public elementary school. This school is in the small rural community near a large city in the Midwest. The problem of lack of language skills in writing was documented with teacher and student…

A good English teacher is one who draws from his students stories that reveal the unique dignity of their personalities and the unique coloring of their experiences. The author shows how this is done, emphasizing use of student writing models as motivation, and stressing sensory diction. (Author/JB)

Recommends that teachers look for and value the freshness, naivete, humor, and wisdom in children's writing. Samples of children's writing are provided to illustrate these traits. (AEA)

A writing program that emphasizes daily writing practice, artistic as well as mechanical criticism, group work, student interests, and revision is being successfully taught in several elementary and high schools. (CJ)

A variety of sensory awareness games and activities are suggested to aid students in the development of writing skills and to stimulate students' interest in writing. (JMF)