The traditional academic research paper isn't always the best form in which to judge student writing. When students are given a choice in form and genre, their true talents and creativity can be unleashed. Miller offers up classroom examples and ideas on how to let students express their creativity in writing literary papers, research papers, and…

Writing is a complex and learned activity in that it requires us to shape our thoughts into words and texts that are appropriate for the purpose, audience and medium of a variety of communicative forms. Writers must constantly make decisions about how to represent their subject matter and themselves through language. In this way, writing can be…

Eight students who excelled in a statewide, middle school creative writing tournament discussed their relationships with writing. Students' interview transcripts were analyzed for references to positive and negative teacher influences. Students needed teachers who provided structured writing time and clear deadlines, valued the message of the work…

Donald Graves's early professional books inspired Koshewa to look more deeply into student writing during the 1980s, and to value all phases of the writing process. Graves's perspective on uncovering and celebrating voice elevated Koshewa's writing instruction to a new plane. In this article, he writes about the impact that Donald Graves's work…

In teaching a research-writing unit, the author has asked her students to research and write a persuasive speech, a multigenre paper, an I-Search, a historical and comparative connection to literature, a country brochure, and a social criticism essay. While she found benefits and disadvantages in all of these assignments, the author was…

Intended for elementary level students, this book presents 12 writing ideas and several suggestions on how students can make a book using their writing. Each writing idea is presented with a brief description (addressed to the student), several examples of student writing, and a blank page on which to write. Writing ideas include freewriting,…

Describes using self-reflective synesthetic writing exercises (which prompt students to think metaphorically about crossed senses--taste of clouds, smell of anger, etc.) in creative writing with high school students. Notes how such writing allows a reader/teacher insights into students' lives and personalities. Includes student sample poems. (SR)

Describes how the author, when teaching dream poems and poem writing to older kids, uses Margaret Atwood's "Dreams of the Animals" to extend the discussion about dreaming and have the children think about dreams that have little to do with their own. Includes examples of students' poems about animal dreams. (SR)

Describes the author's experience teaching poetry to a fourth-grade class, and how an inspired moment from one student (improvising a poem about an imagined hairstyle of poet Federico Garcia Lorca) led the entire class on a journey of inspiration. Looks at the route to that place of "inspired rightness." (SR)

Uses Theodore Roethke's poem "The Old Florist" to illustrate the model, or structural, approach to teaching poetry writing (where students discover the operating structure of a poem in order to write their own). Discusses the student poems it inspired to show the potential of this approach. (SR)

Illustrates how riddles can be used to teach poetry. Provides analysis of several riddles and resources for riddles. (MS)

Argues that the differences between the worlds kids live in and the worlds they are taught to desire (through television, movies, music, and magazines) can cause a desperate confusion that children long to have resolved. Describes how the author, a teacher of writing, has students think and write about reality. (SR)

Describes a writing assignment in which students rewrite literary classics or fairy tales from a new perspective (i.e. making an originally minor character the protagonist, or putting the original story into a different century). (MM)

Presented completely in Spanish and intended for elementary level students, this book offers 12 writing ideas and several suggestions on how students can make a book using their writing. Each writing idea is presented with a brief description (addressed to the student), several examples of student writing, and a blank page on which to write.…

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)