Designed to combine the science and the art of teaching composition, this series of assignments encourages junior high and high school writing students to explore tone, original visual images, point of view, and other literary techniques. One assignment asks students to write a number of paragraphs alternately using sarcasm, humor, melancholy, and…

A lesson plan and supportive materials for an exercise in reading comprehension and cooperative writing are presented. The exercise is based on a story entitled "Testimony," in which a writer expresses feelings about a boxing match. The lesson plan outlines procedures for presentation of the exercise to the class, for the cooperative teams to…

Group activities in the classroom can be a useful way to explore various standard rhetorical patterns. For descriptive writing, students can select and write about unsigned collages made by classmates. The writer can try to find a unifying theme that characterizes the artist's personality. A narrative component can be added to descriptive writing…

Using the newspaper to provide opportunities for students to learn current events and further develop writing skills is described. Seven activities outline how to use cooperative learning to teach current events. Four types of assignments based on newspapers develop various types of writing skills: (1) personal writing; (2) descriptive writing;…