Intended for adaptation by teachers to suit their students' and their own strengths, this guide is a series of thematic units intended to encourage meaningful language use in an enjoyable and serious atmosphere in the ninth grade classroom. The guide includes many reading and writing activities that can be used in both the specific contexts in which they are suggested and at other points during the six weeks of the program. The guide's first two units, "Biographies: Writing about Each Other" and "Timelines: Writing about Ourselves," involve extensive prewriting activities leading to more formal pieces of writing, in the first instance about a classmate's life and in the second, about a significant incident in the student's own life. The third and fourth units, "Family and Culture: A Reading and Writing Unit" and "Stories about School: A Reading and Writing Unit," integrate reading and writing around themes felt to be meaningful to students. The fifth section, "Preparing for High School," focuses more directly on the students' expectations and concerns about starting high school, moving to actual investigations of aspects of their new schools. Finally, in the sixth section, "Preparing a Publication," students have the opportunity to look back over the many pieces of writing they have produced during the five weeks and to choose one to work on further and prepare for publication in a class magazine. (SR)