Describes the use of "idea books" (journals) with third graders as part of their history/social studies instruction. Discusses entries from units on Christopher Columbus and on George Washington. (SR)

Describes the "shrinklit," a rhyming summary of a literary work which serves as an alternative to student book reporting. Suggests that shrinklits are enjoyable because they contain relatively sophisticated humor and are easy for secondary students to mimic. Provides examples of shrinklits written by students. (SG)

Suggests that one of the greatest outlets for the middle school voices in one particular classroom is the students' immersion into poetry during writing workshops. Describes a classroom environment that encourages children to express themselves in writing, speech, and action each day. Presents numerous examples of students' poetry. (RS)

Describes the Los Angeles Urbanscape Tour, in which the city of Los Angeles provides 11th graders with a living laboratory of the principles studied in-depth in their literature and social studies classrooms. Describes writing assignments which grew out of the tour. (SR)

Describes a project in which students combined personal narratives, drawings, and Japanese woodblock prints. Includes three examples of students' stories and prints. (SR)

Describes how, after studying the Holocaust and other human-rights issues in their eighth-grade language-arts classes, students felt compelled to create a permanent memorial and reminder. Discusses how the project unfolded from finding and shaping an idea, collecting stories from around the nation, crafting the mosaic and the flower garden, and…

Describes the design of a standard first-year composition class in which the author used online discussion forums. Discusses how these design choices helped create a dynamic community of readers, writers, and learners in a writing classroom. Discusses pedagogical goals, and course design. Discusses several reasons why this approach works so well,…

Examines how children's written work is enhanced through "teachable" lessons, where the teacher draws attention explicitly to aspects of literary texts and where children explore and evaluate literature through group reading and discussion. Explores the relationship between group evaluations of texts and children's writing development with…

Examines the creation of process drama and writing experiences in a second/third-grade classroom. Describes how the classroom teacher used process drama (involving students in imaginary, unscripted, and spontaneous scenes) as a context for learning. Notes how process drama provided a context for content area instruction along with writing…

Offers researchers' perspectives for online publication. Shows how to establish criteria for validating these sites as valuable resources in student-centered teaching and learning. Gives reasons why middle school writers should publish on the web. Presents a chart of 18 websites with a description and a list of key factors regarding the websites.…

Describes methods especially suited for large classes of nontraditional students in community college creative writing courses. Suggests that by commenting upon and grading students' written peer responses, the instructor can enlist the class to become a peer audience that thoughtfully writes criticism and comments on each others' work each week.…

Contends that children assimilate enormous amounts of information from society. Reveals the presence, in one child's fictional piece of writing, of complex layers of gender (including gender stereotypes), societal tensions, and economic social forces which one might expect to be beyond the grasp of a seven-year-old. (SR)

This essay attempts to demonstrate how transgender theories can inspire pedagogical methods that complement feminist compositionist pedagogical approaches to understanding the narration of gender as a social construct. By examining sample student writing generated by a prompt inspired by transgender theories, the author's analysis suggests how…

The samples of students' writing found in this document exemplify the criteria used to score students' written responses on the June 1994 Grade 9 English Language Arts Achievement Test. Representative of the full range of students' writing, the examples in the document are intended to be used as tools to assist teachers, students, and…

The writing samples presented in this paper were selected from the portfolios of eighth-grade Vermont students as examples of the various points in Vermont's newly revised analytic writing assessment guide. The benchmark writing pieces in the paper, when used with the analytic assessment guide that begins the paper, are guideposts for assessing…