Describes a successful workshop approach to teaching writing which uses elementary school students' own papers to teach ways to refine writing skills. (DD)

Presents an instructional unit, "Literary Lifeboat," a purposeful writing exercise in which students write character justifications for familiar stories. Describes the unit's implementation in a Year 5 class, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the exercise. (MM)

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)

Discusses ways teachers can help their students write worthwhile poems by preparing the children, providing them with suitable occasions for writing, and giving them opportunities to refine their poems. (DD)

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)

Describes the process of teaching fourth graders to combine facts and narrative in writing a research report on animals. Asserts that this type of report writing increases students' understanding of their subject, and illustrates that research is an ongoing activity. (MM)

This guide discusses how a computer can motivate students, how it can be used as a support for the writing process, and how it can help teachers reinforce good writing habits. The guide includes sections on managing the classroom computer; student scheduling; human resources; introducing the computer; learning editor commands; managing student…

This book contains a collection of "model" poems by adults and by children and ways to use the poems in children's poetry writing workshops and activities. After an introduction to the text and its subject matter, several chapters discuss ways to write poems, focusing on acrostics, the sound or shape of a poem, poems from memories or dreams,…

Various approaches to teaching creative writing to children are described. The book contains many examples of children's writing and stresses the need to listen to the child, to praise, to make suggestions gently, and to encourage the child to use his own senses for firsthand impressions and to say what he truly feels. Some of the chapters discuss…

Describes the buddy journal (a diary that two students keep together, in which they "converse" in writing) and suggests ways to use such journals to build children's literacy. Proposes that buddy journals can highlight the reading-writing connection for children by involving purposeful, personal communication to enhance students'…

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)

Describes three ways to elicit children's poetry about their family histories. Illustrates this teaching technique with sixth graders' poems. (RL)

Describes a second-grade class project in which students wrote a fictional biography in response to several books read aloud to them. Enumerates the 9 steps in the process, and presents selections (chapters 1 and 10) from the book "The Man in the Walnut Shell." (SR)