Advantages of peer evaluation of writing are outlined, questions that arise once instructors decide to use this method are presented, and steps to develop students' awareness of what to look for and what to say about the writing of peers in English composition and other disciplines are discussed. (MBR)

Describes a critical writing assignment in which students assess the role that television "soap operas" have played in relationship to the students' culture and to themselves. The assignment includes collection and separation of material, unifying arguments, enlargement of perspective, and analysis and illustration. (HTH)

Describes the Bernard Haldane System for Identifying Motivated Skills, an English course integrating job seeking skills with freshman composition and rhetoric instruction. An achievement essay, classification essays, and research essays precede preparation of resumes, application letters, and interview techniques. (HTH)

Explains the rationale for and offers suggestions on implementing content area writing. (MM)

Argues that paragraph form congruent with the patterns and habits of thinking develops from the writer's sensitivity to the impact of visual images on the reader's mind. (MM)

For the 2 years the author was a kindergarten teacher in a public school, the students did journal writing. This was a new initiative in the school, which was performing low and had been placed under "registration review." The idea of journal writing in kindergarten was met with a lot of resistance from the other teachers who felt kindergarten…

A longitudinal study combined Stephen Tsuchdi's Workaday activities with Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives to bridge the WAC/WID (writing across the curriculum/writing in the disciplines) divide. The researchers hoped that by combining concrete activities that can be applied across disciplines with a Bloomian conceptual framework of…

This book is aimed at those who want to record personal stories, or for family and friends, or for fulfillment of higher literary standards. It is a book to open up conversations about memoir and a practical guide to the craft, the personal challenges, and the ethical dilemmas of writing true stories. The chapters deal with getting started,…

Noting that one of the most important parts of knowing how to write well is to feel comfortable doing it, this information sheet lists some things parents can do to encourage their children to write and presents a series of writing activities. The information sheet notes that parents can: (1) show their children that they write often; (2)…

Based on a successful workshop, this book presents the basic elements of narrative and a series of exercises that offer a self-guided set of discussion topics and exercises for a writer, a small group of writers, or a class interested in the craft of narrative prose. Topics addressed in the book are: the sound of language; the narrative sentence…

Using this workbook, elementary students can learn to write sentences like their favorite authors. Using sentences from more than 100 popular stories and novels as models, the workbook offers extensive practice in four sentence-manipulating techniques: sentence unscrambling, sentence imitating, sentence combining, and sentence expanding. It shows…

A student in a distance education course, as part of a midterm project, set out to build a Web site that had written communication as its main focus. The Web site, "The Global Campfire," was modeled on the old Appalachian tradition of the "Story Tree," where a storyteller begins a story and allows group members to add to it.…

This teaching guide is built around a method (called the "Caught'ya" method) of teaching grammar and mechanics with humor. The guide contains story ideas and three sets of 100 Caught'ya sentences, as well as a chapter which discusses specific ways to use the Caught'ya at home. Following an introduction, the guide is divided into the…

A poet-in-residence discusses some of his teaching techniques for exposing students to a variety of poetry. (MM)