Describes a course that integrates U.S. literature and history around key social issues to sensitize students to the need for a more just society and a higher quality of life for all citizens. Discusses the poetry unit that focused on contemporary U.S. poets of color, the teaching methods, and examples of the students' poetry. (PRA)

Investigates how a secondary-school teacher uses her "turning-point literacy experience" as a narrative template to guide changes in her teaching of literature. Scaffolds students' narrative modes of thinking in two contrasting classroom contexts: a twelfth-grade class for "at-risk" students and an eleventh-grade class for…

Describes how teachers (of grades 4-12) can use computers to teach writing at a variety of levels, from the one-computer classroom to the most sophisticated, networked environments. Describes approaches for four electronic environments, how they might best be used, and what types of computer facility are needed. (SR)

Writing research has long attempted to define and assess coherence in written prose; however the researchers have often ignored or inadequately met the needs of writing students who require a simple definition of coherence that they can use to revise their own prose. One exception is Joseph Williams, author of "Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity…

This study uses student reflections of previous success in academic writing to guide instructors as they design writing assignments. Seventy-one students in five classes responded to a questionnaire designed to help them identify particularly successful writing experiences and reflect on the circumstances, strategies, and methods they believed…

This article describes the "Add-a-Page Assignment" in which students choose a picture book to which they would add a page, imitating both the style and artistic medium of the illustrator and the writing style of the author. In this article, the author begins with quotes from students who have very different learning styles and vastly different…

A fourth-grade teacher developed a unit on writing designed to help his students go from oral to written text after finding that only 4 of the 22 in his classroom had the organizational and writing skills to get their ideas on paper. The basis of the unit was a unique problem which the teacher himself was trying to solve in real life; namely, how…

Noting that primary-school writers are imaginative, and that their writing often reflects a mixture of creative, highly individual styles, this book places teaching ideas and students' writing and drawings in perspective and views the experimentations and playfulness of students as ways of learning. The Six-Trait Analytical Model for Assessing…

This booklet contains 51 selected journal entries, written in English or Spanish by migrant students in the 1990 Migrant Education Summer Program of the Escondido Union High School District, San Diego, California. The students recorded their thoughts on the following topics: (1) personal histories; (2) experiences at school; (3) life in…

In a freshman composition course, the teacher attempted to motivate student interest in writing by assigning biographical readings and fiction that felt like real life. In reading the books, students found topics for writing about their own lives. During the first class session, students were given the topic "The Story of My Life: A…

Middle school pupils tend to enjoy writing verse containing a selected number of syllables per line. A student teacher taught a unit on poetry writing which included a section on writing tanka verse--a 5-line form with five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables per line. After discovering the characteristics of a tanka from a model, the class…

Everyone sees through advertisements, yet no one is immune from their appeal. In a writing class the students were able to look at ads without being injured or seduced by them, but doubted that others could do the same. It is important to encourage students to discuss what they actually think about writings rather than what they are supposed to…

This booklet outlines the California state guidelines for writing which assert that students should be carefully taught to read and compose many types of discourse to prepare them for higher education, the job market, and citizenship in democracy. The booklet summarizes the purposes for which the California Assessment Program (CAP) was developed,…

Good language users monitor and understand their own involvement in the learning process. They understand how language is used to make and reshape their world. Everyone needs to be allowed to test his or her personal theories of the world against practice and vice versa. Given the nature of society, it is important that conceptions of literacy…

Based on emergent literacy research, two components of reading and writing--the morning message and the writing process--were developed in a laboratory school kindergarten by teacher-researcher collaboration and later disseminated to both public and private schools through a project conducted for the Kamehameha Schools, a private school in…