Rural school students need ample opportunities to engage in creative writing, particularly the writing of poetry. A student teacher and a cooperating teacher in a rural fifth-grade classroom (with 12 students) guided the students in the writing of limericks by starting out with couplets, then triplets, and then limericks. The teacher had clearly…

Pupils need to experience a quality literature program which stresses diverse cultures. A major goal of a quality multi-cultural literature program is to develop within pupils feelings of empathy, acceptance, understanding, and the wish to interact with persons whose value systems, beliefs, and thought might well differ from others in society. In…

Pupils may well enjoy studying and writing poetry if quality methods of teaching are used. A student teacher taught a unit of study on the writing of poetry to a class of sixth grade pupils who had previously shown no interest in poetry. Active involvement by learners was stressed throughout the unit. Student interest was piqued with a bulletin…

A sixth-grade student teacher developed and implemented a unit on creative writing, and one lesson in the unit on writing legends was particularly successful. A discussion of Davy Crockett and the legends surrounding his life, began the lesson. The student teacher then introduced trade books from the library station for the pupils to read.…

Pupils in the middle school can be motivated to enjoy and write haiku poetry. A student teacher taught two lessons to a sixth grade class in haiku writing. First, the student teacher read three haikus aloud to students. After discovering the characteristics of a haiku from two models, the class as a whole wrote a haiku based on slides from their…

Middle school pupils tend to enjoy writing verse containing a selected number of syllables per line. A student teacher taught a unit on poetry writing which included a section on writing tanka verse--a 5-line form with five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables per line. After discovering the characteristics of a tanka from a model, the class…

Pupils in middle schools should have ample opportunities to write with the use of word processors. Legible writing in longhand will always be necessary in selected situations but, nevertheless, much drudgery is taken care of when using a word processor. Word processors tend to be very user friendly in that few mechanical skills are needed by the…

After completing a unit of study entitled "Reading the Daily Newspaper" under the leadership of a teaching team consisting of student teachers and cooperating teachers, sixth-grade pupils wrote a newspaper for their parents describing their experiences in different curriculum areas in the classroom. Guided by the teaching team, student…

Middle school students can become fascinated with literature if they have a choice in selecting which trade book to read and the means of revealing comprehension. One student teacher (ST) developed a bulletin board to stimulate learner interest in reading for her sixth grade students. "Read and Digest" was the heading, with four…