A study investigated whether 10-grade English students would write more descriptively when their thinking was stimulated through viewing images, or hearing music, or both. Subjects, 49 students in 2 intact classrooms in a middle-class, suburban high school in the Jurupa School District, were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups that administered…

Psychologists and sociologists recognize the importance of graffiti, yet there is a lack of information on the content of high school desk top graffiti. To study desk top graffiti, a 9th and 10th grade English classroom located in an inner city high school in the southeastern United States was found in which graffiti was written on nearly 90% of…

Designed to tap the rich collection of instructional techniques in the ERIC database, this compilation of lesson plans offers practical suggestions for developing high school students' writing skills. The 37 lesson plans in this book are divided into four sections: (1) descriptive; (2) audience/voice; (3) expository; and (4) creative. A user's…

The purpose of the proposed study was to examine relationships between instructional characteristics in required high school composition classrooms and quality of writing in one of the four domains included in the curriculum, the imaginative/narrative domain. Questionnaire data were collected on objectives, writing activities, and specific writing…

Intended for high school composition instructors, this book resolves the seeming contradiction between creative, expressive writing and formal exposition and argumentation by presenting a teaching method that treats creative writing as a necessary--if not sufficient--cause for exposition. The first two chapters describe a sequence of short fiction…

An Elementary Secondary Education Act Title I English/Writing project was continued at two Phoenix Union high schools, Carl Hayden and North High Schools, in 1974-75. Although the objectives and instructional method (individualized, diagnostic, prescriptive approach) were the same at the two schools, the entry level skills and abilities of the…

Differences between reporting and classificatory functions in writing were examined in the responses of grade 10 and grade 12 students: 60 who were successful English students, and 60 on the borderline of passing in each of the grades. The reporting tasks required students to write compositions describing their first day in a high school or some…

A study was conducted to compare the writing performance of tenth grade students across three modes of discourse. Subjects were 80 students who had been classified as "masters" or "nonmasters" of writing based on their scores on the writing section of the Texas Assessment of Basic Skills. The students were assigned three…

The Nevada Writing Assessment Program has been developed, implemented, and facilitated by Nevada classroom teachers, who have adapted, designed, and continually revised the scoring criteria; designed the assessment writing prompts; evaluated and chosen anchor papers; led the scoring sessions and read and scored the student papers; and made the…

The aim of this course for grades 10-12 is to develop in students their command of language through their use of it. It tries to guide the student through the actual process of composition, avoiding the treatment of the pre-writing stage and the writer's situation. The instruction material is divided into six categories (Conciseness and Clarity,…

Arranged into four parts, the paper offers practical and motivating techniques for using the dime novel in high school classrooms, particularly in the study of women's history. The first part of the paper describes the historical background of the dime novel that was originally intended to entertain the reading public with fast-paced action, high…