Describes the association between homework participation and academic achievement and discusses the difficulties that often coincide with homework completion. Reviews interventions designed to address homework problems with particular emphasis on techniques that target the homework problems of students with low ability and/or behavior problems.…

Draws on Gerald Graff's work on conflicts over canonicity, pedagogy, and academic institutional structures to investigate ways of handling teacher-student tension over the use of popular songs in the classroom. Discusses two versions of a writing assignment dealing with such tension and what each assignment implies about the course's underlying…

Offers a humorous account of a writing assignment in which seventh-grade students, in response to a detailed description of a living room, wrote descriptions of who lived there, much to the chagrin of their teacher, whose living room it was. (SR)

Presents a rationale and method for introducing a hypertext authoring assignment in a professional writing course in computer-aided publishing. Describes a rhetorically centered pedagogy that incorporates portfolio assessment, collaborative authoring, and real world projects for teaching hypertext within the context of situated problem-solving…

Describes working with multiage elementary school students on demand writing--writing to meet deadlines. Discusses why to teach it, practical applications, what teachers need to know before beginning instruction, getting started, introducing demand writing, modeling it, teaching beginnings and endings, and revising and editing/proofreading. (SR)

Discusses performance appraisals in business. Describes a performance appraisal assignment that involves written assignments, role-playing an appraisal interview, and subsequent discussion of issues that arise. Includes several figures describing assignment activities. (SR)

Describes three approaches to writing a persuasive sales letter that require the student to either taste a product, try out an item, or touch an object before writing the sales letter to a prospective audience. Describes preassignment activities, the assignment, and student reaction to the activities. (SR)

Discusses the rationale and uses for personal or personalized writing in composition, literature, and content-area classes, and in curriculum conceptualization, research, and assessment in writing. Discusses relevant research studies and pedagogical criticisms of these kinds of writing assignments. Suggests that an excessive emphasis on personal…

Describes using music with eighth-grade students for generating story ideas to write about. (SR)

Advocates the application of writing-across-the-curriculum type assignments in mass communication and journalism courses. Offers an overview of transactional and expressive writing assignments used in such courses. (SR)

Describes how one English teacher developed an approach to teaching writing that was based on asking students to write memoirs or personal narratives. Presents an amalgam of letters written to a newspaper and to three co-authors of an article published in "The Chronicle of Higher Education" regarding the use of personal writing in freshman…

Describes the experience of a teacher and his students on Writers in Electronic Residence (WIER), a computer network available to schools in which students post their creative writings which are then discussed by professional writers, students, and teachers. Makes a case for using computer technology in language arts classes. Discusses some of the…

A new model reading lesson is presented for adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students. Teachers are encouraged to give their students real books to read rather than texts prepared especially for ESL students. The approach involves the teacher as a resource and advocates students learning to evaluate their own understanding by discussing…

Describes the experience of helping a student revise a personal, expressive piece of writing into a transactional essay. Discusses the pros and cons of such guidance. Concludes with a strong defense of conferencing. (HB)

Describes a writing assignment for high school English in which students argue persuasively on a current issue of their choice. Extends this assignment by having students revise the papers into letters to periodicals or politicians. Urges introducing students into active social discourse. (HB)