In this article, the authors share discoveries about how taking risks can expand students' and teachers' narrow experiences with academic writing. The article outlines four teaching strategies one of the authors implemented in her classroom, highlighting how these strategies fostered student and teacher flexibility, agency, and confidence in…

Providing students with the opportunity to generate new content and share it with a wide audience invites students to compose texts with the care and conviction that cannot be duplicated when writing solely for the teacher. This piece documents one teacher's effort to engage 99 eighth graders with an authentic writing opportunity: the…

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…

Describes the pros and cons of using collaborative writing assignments in the English classroom. Gives one teacher's experiences using collaborative writing in a college prep composition course. (HB)

Describes a group writing assignment in which high school seniors voice their most common concerns in an open letter to their parents. (KEH)

Describes a summer school remedial writing class' experiences writing children's stories. Discusses the reactions of children at an abused-children's shelter to the stories. Notes that the students increased their self-worth and confidence as a result of writing children's stories. (RS)

Asserts that a student-writing portfolio can be a powerful tool for writing instruction. Describes how students compile a portfolio, and the types of writing included. Discusses the use of collaboration in the writing process and methods of assessment. (PRA)

Details a unit of study in a seventh-grade English class based on collaborative story-writing activities. Describes how the unit, based on a mystery surrounding a fictitious character called "Admiral Brundage," uses drama, argument, and collaboration to improve students' thinking and writing skills. (HB)

Describes how a university professor collaborated with a ninth-grade English teacher in a research project aimed at studying the collaborative writing processes of the students. Analyzes the various collaborative writing processes of the students, including audience awareness, planning, and revising. (HB)

Describes a four week collaborative writing unit designed to develop students' sense of audience by producing a magazine to orient fifth grade students to junior high school. Discusses how students developed the idea, conducted interviews, wrote articles, used computers to produce the magazine, and distributed copies of their magazine. (RS)

Describes a collaborative reading and writing project matching preservice student teachers with eighth-grade students. Provides analysis of participant reactions to the program, including specific comments by both students and teachers about the readings and the subsequent writing assignments. (HB)

Describes several collaborative writing projects using electronic mail (e-mail). Notes that although most of these projects can be tried without computers, two of the barriers in the classroom--time and distance--are removed as a result of electronic communication links. (MM)

Describes a class novel writing assignment and points out its obvious benefits to the students' understanding of the novel genre. (RAE)

Narrates one teacher's move from high school to eighth-grade English. Describes a method for teaching middle school students how to write collaboratively. Provides details of writing assignments, units, and techniques successfully utilized, including publishing a teenage magazine. (HB)

Describes a course unit on fiction writing with an emphasis on motivating students to see value and relevance in writing. (RAE)