This article describes a poetry workshop to create a snapshot of unique moments in family history during the holidays. The workshop includes a working on a family photo poetry poster and participating in extension activities (e.g., writing personal poetry notebooks). A reproducible offers a holiday album of poetry snapshots. (SM)

This handbook for writers is designed to be a practical guide to the conventions of the English language in its written form. The handbook also offers information and advice on composition and grammar and on a selection of other editing- and publishing-related topics. Chapters in the book are: (1) Punctuation; (2) Capitals, Italics, and Quotation…

The revised General Educational Development (GED) tests introduced in 1988 require higher-level analytical skills of examinees than previous tests. The most immediate revision is the writing skills test, which requires examinees to demonstrate writing ability. This guide provides the GED student with a plan for writing an essay that will receive a…

In the many different stages of the writing process, teachers of composition need to be sensitive toward cultural differences which may exist between them and their students. Large numbers of foreign students participate in writing courses in American colleges, and research indicates that the minority student population will increase sharply in…

This book presents specific grading strategies and explicit instructions for using them while offering options which allow teachers to place the grading of writing into a communication context. The book introduces and explains a wide range of evaluation strategies used by classroom teachers to arrive at grades. Samples of student writing accompany…

Poetry comes to a person from outside, but for it to live, the person must come to it and meet it and complete it. Poetry is new every day because it is seen in different ways by different people. It makes possible the deepest kind of personal possession of the world. The first true encounter with poetry should be simple and should involve…

Designed to identify students with writer's block, this measure is an attitude questionnaire of 24 items separated into five subscales: blocking, lateness, premature editing, strategies for complexity, and attitudes. If teachers or researchers wish simply to identify blockers, they can administer only the items within the behavioral…

An alternative to the often artificial writing workshop model focuses on learning through imitation and on the writing process rather than the product. This alternative model also involves considerably more reading than a typical workshop class, requiring students to read the way writers do, with a critical understanding and an awareness of the…

The traditional approach to English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) curriculum development, which combines cognitivist and behaviorist approaches, reflects ideology that teachers often fail to recognize. ESL composition teachers should act not as guardians of "correct" English but as cultural or ideological critics. ESL students need to be…

It is proposed that many students are unable to distinguish between unguarded writing patterns and literate or expository ones, and it is becoming increasingly necessary in writing instruction to clarify and impose the distinction between these patterns. This problem is confounded by current trends toward exclusively spoken language in the…

Children's natural curiosity should be more adequately satisfied, resarch has suggested--especially in grades 4 to 6. Traditionally, the scope and sequence approach which is a learning-what-others think or have thought rather than a learning-to-think-for-oneself method begins during the middle school years. It is interesting to observe that…

The use of a Jonathan Schwartz essay as a prose model to teach writing lends itself appropriately to classroom discussions on various aspects of autobiography and general narrative design. Such use has proved to be particularly helpful with young writers because of its deceptively simple style and language and its use of a variety of sophisticated…

The value of creative writing instruction for educable mentally handicapped adolescents is considered and suggestions are provided regarding the development of creative writing activities. Suggestions touch on the students' needs for success, age-appropriate materials, continuity to strengthen concepts of cause and effects, and help in social…

Discusses the researched article as an alternative to the research paper and provides guidelines for students to follow in writing a query letter which sells the idea for the article. (RB)