According to this book, writing is a process of "uneducation," rather than education. The book cites the secret of creativity as subtracting rules for writing, not adding them. Most people are baffled at how to teach this, since teaching and "uneducation" appear contradictory--but experience in Zen meditation, which is…

An ethnographic study examined the impact of a writing workshop on non-academic writers. Subjects, 11 adult non-academic writers who wrote little, were seldom around others who did, and did not think they were good writers, participated in 10 Saturday sessions conducted in a bookstore in a rural town. They wrote narratives on self-selected topics…

Intended for anyone who wants to write poetry (and do it well), this guide provides the "nuts and bolts" of craft and process, as well as the sources of inspiration. The guide contains brief essays on the elements of poetry, technique, and suggested subjects for writing; each essay is followed by distinctive writing exercises. Included…

This book dares educators to rethink their beliefs about how they design writing workshops, use writer's notebooks, choose appropriate genres, teach spelling, help students connect their reading to their writing, and even edit and publish students' writing. Filled with stories and work samples of real children in a diverse urban setting, the book…

States that, for one instructor, professional inquiry in a graduate education program has led to a critical examination of day-to-day practice in the classroom, especially regarding the writing process in the grade 7-9 writing workshop he formerly taught. (PA)

Describes the Writing Workshop (WW) program at Upland Elementary (Indiana) and how it emphasizes the use of doing rough drafts and revising them to teach writing. Recounts the stories of five grade-school children who blossomed in WW. Summarizes the steps in-process writing: rough drafts, self-editing, peer conferencing, teacher conferencing,…

Drawing on theory and practice, the authors argue that, rather than trying to "cover" all grammatical skills, something traditionally done in many classrooms, and with limited results, teachers can more successfully teach less grammar with better results by focusing on key grammatical options and skills in the context of actual writing, throughout…

Designed to create and maintain an effective classroom writing workshop, this book explains how to teach young writers style and genre characteristics, composing skills, conventions, and the many aspects of the writing process itself. The second edition includes more information, models, and examples in the expository genre, as well as elaborating…

Suggests that the best writing curriculum for second language students is one that balances content and form, that calls for an attention to writing process and to written product, and that draws on knowledge from both teacher and student. Describes the "focus on form" approach the author uses in her mainstream basic writing class, as well as some…

Reviews 9 books that reflect the ideas of teachers and researchers who have been successful in developing classroom practices based on holistic theory and have moved beyond process to explore new frontiers in writing. (RS)

Presents six teachers' responses to the "Private Eye" workshop (which encourages thinking by analogy and incorporating writing in many forms into content area teaching). Notes that the workshop was described in two articles in the November/December 1993 issue of this journal. Notes the energy that flows out of the teachers' writing about…

In this article, the author discusses several approaches in facilitating teachers, faculty, and staff members in giving birth to publishable writing that will allow them to share their ideas with other professionals. One effective approach is to find the strongest angle for a story and then narrowing it down.

Students who engage in the writing process learn to write. Period. And yet many teachers, including Lain when she was a beginning teacher, don't know how to make the time for it, how to structure it, and how to evaluate it. Here, Lain offers us the help we need by focusing on the teaching tools for introducing students to this format, the…

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…

Two important schools of thought in the teaching of writing are those of the "writing workshop" and "critical pedagogy." Both encourage expression on the part of the student, but while writing workshop advocates assume that the student writes from a stable, unitary, autonomous self, the critical pedagogy advocates do not.…