This article argues that the goal of an educator is to help students realize they can be effective writers by giving them the ability to demonstrate their skills. Scene writing can make writing seem less like a chore and more like an opportunity to express ideas. As students write scenes that include both dialogue and action, they gain a deeper…

Whether novice or experienced, writers must come to terms with the daunting task of filling up a blank page, or screen, in an effort to produce writing. Student writers are no different. They enter teachers' classes having confronted similar difficulties with discovering what it is they want to say. In seeking to help students, they devote…

For students, writing is too frequently a matter of going through the motions, perhaps no truer than with the traditional academic essay. Although there are many culprits for this disengagement, one is surely an over-emphasis on form--and particularly set form--to the detriment of content. When form becomes formula, planning is stultified, losing…

Argues that outlining should not be abandoned as a means to teaching students how to organize their thoughts because it can be an invaluable tool in certain circumstances. Describes in outline form how one teacher goes about teaching outlines to her students. (TB)

Recommends adding formal training in note taking to the high school English curriculum to help students master the skills of abstracting major ideas from texts, summarizing facts, and paraphrasing materials. Suggests an approach to note taking. (RBW)

Describes how studying under Ken Macrorie led one high school English teacher to use freewriting as a prewriting activity in her classroom. (ARH)

Reports the results of a study that revealed that the instructional activities that precede writing are more important to student improvement than longer comments on the writing itself. (JL)

Discusses four stages through which writers pass during prewriting. Offers ways of helping students pass through these stages so that they can begin to organize their writing more effectively. (RL)

Describes different types of prewriting activities such as "brainwriting," visual synectics, and relational algorithms. (JL)

Describes a remedial writing class in which students learned organizational skills by cutting up and rearranging their own freewriting on a particular topic. (JL)

Describes nine prewriting activities using supermarket tabloids as the model for producing a newspaper on mythology. (RS)

Argues that emphasis on process has reduced the amount of time teachers spend teaching basic editing skills. Offers eight suggestions for incorporating instruction in punctuation into a process approach to writing. (MS)

Notes that many preservice teacher education students in a composition methods course confess they did not prewrite seriously in middle and high school, and that many did not prewrite at all. Introduces a technical writer who spends 80% of his writing time in prewriting activities alone. Discusses strategies to help students realize the value and…

Describes various revising operations that allow students to genuinely re-see their work in order to revise effectively. (CRH)

Lists 10 ways to involve students in the teacher's writing that can be beneficial to both teachers and their students. (MS)