Because of her unfamiliarity with the culture, an experienced creative writing instructor in her first year of teaching on the big island of Hawaii decided to use the standard writing workshop model. The University of Hawaii Hilo draws a diverse mix of students, returning students, and local students who speak Creole. Some students were uncertain…

Intended to impart the basic ways a poem is constructed, this concise handbook is a prose guide to writing poetry. The handbook talks about meter and rhyme, form and diction, sound and sense, iambs and trochees, couplets and sonnets, and how and why this should matter to any person writing or reading poetry. Interspersing history and analysis with…

Details some of the activities undertaken by members of a high school English department who began exchanging their own writing with each other. Argues that this is a stimulating and learning experience that improves both writing and instruction. (HB)

This book offers guidance for poets at every stage of development. It is a book about a person's shaping his or her memory and passions, pleasures, obsessions, dreams, secrets, and sorrows into poems. The book contains chapters on the language and music of poetry, the art of revision, traditional and experimental techniques, and how to get poetry…

Presents five ways elementary teachers can enrich their students' fiction writing abilities: teach students to incorporate their own experiences; encourage students to do research; give students chances to read and discuss fiction related to their writing; and help students recognize story elements. (SM)

Aims for students to explore spontaneous ways of finding material for their poems by suppressing control over their subject matter and letting their unconscious minds do the work. Uses a poem of William Carlos Williams, "Red Wheelbarrow," both with K-2 students and adults in a poetry workshop. Illustrates class procedures and activities…

This article describes the implementation of one element of an adapted language arts curriculum for Deaf students in a bilingual (American Sign Language and English) educational setting. It examines the implementation of writing workshops in three elementary classrooms in a school for Deaf students. The typical steps of preparing/planning,…

Background/Context: While the arts are being elbowed out of school curricula, new community-based education venues for the arts are emerging in cities across the country. This article describes Richard Hugo House, an arts center for creative writing in Seattle, which attracts people of different ages and sociocultural backgrounds who participate…

The cultural production of the free markets has surpassed the commissions of all the monarchs and popes put together. Because the production of art, artifice, and criticism has become so vast and various, almost any hypothesis can be posed about culture--no matter how absurd one's speculation may be--and countless supporting examples and arguments…

The data gathered for this study does not support the hypothesis that second grade students, when they write, do not borrow characters, settings, elements of a story, authors' styles and information from nonfictional literature. Students writings were studied to determine the extent of the borrowing, and to answer the questions: (1) Did the…

Theories of creative writing have been for the most part bound up with theories of art. Both teachers and the general public, however, are dissatisfied with such institutionalized theories. Creative writers should first look to theories of writing rather than infer them from art. Recent composition theories, both cognitive theories and those of…

The current development of mentorship programs for gifted students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong is explained with examples from the search for potential mentors within the university community and a discussion of the development and operation of the mentorship program of Chinese creative writing for Hong Kong students. (Contains…

In a creative writing workshop of seven male and nine female graduate students, two female students became increasingly aware of a sexual bias. Though the male instructor made an effort to create a non-hierarchical, student-centered environment, informal hierarchies developed among students that granted the male instructor and the male students…

Experience and research have shown that writing workshops are an excellent tool for improving workers' writing skills. In the past 5 years, the emphasis of writing instruction has shifted from a focus primarily on handwriting, correct spelling, and simple reinforcement of skills to a focus on empowering students by emphasizing fluency and student…

A process writing and hypermedia literacy program was designed, taught, and evaluated by early childhood teachers. The program, funded through a Goals 2000 grant, took place in a public school summer camp for children (n=160) ages 6-9 in a public school in rural northeast Mississippi. Reactive-participant data collection methods were used to…