This teaching tip highlights three writing minilessons that help students construct vivid sensory detail (textual detail related to the five senses) in their fiction and creative nonfiction writing. Learning to show, not tell, is a difficult task for novice writers. The author explores reasons why this is the case and provides directions for the…

Reviews various commercial materials for use in preparing story dramatization activities. (FL)

Demonstrates how writing can grow from the ongoing curriculum by discussing types of writing included in a unit on pets, suggests areas of the curriculum and materials that are good springboards to writing, and describes instructional materials that focus on writing. (ET)

Reviews two instructional resources which encourage the use of poetry in the elementary classroom as a unique genre with its own purposes and value. Uses the six criteria (explained in earlier columns) to detail how the resources were selected. (MG)

Uses boxes, bottles, bags, brochures, and other print materials to create more interesting and more effective whole language lessons. (MG)

Seven contributors write concerning (1) parent involvement in reading, (2) selecting reading materials, (3) the language experience approach with a microcomputer, (4) idea books for content area teachers, (5) cloze procedure and dialect speakers, (6) developing library skills, and (7) a reading and writing program that developed from a lunch…