Examines three writing assignment variables--topic, purpose, and audience--to determine how writing prompts affect student performance in grades 7, 9, and 11, and in college freshmen. Finds these variables influenced writing quality at different grades in different ways; generally, specific purpose and topic cues produced better essays. (SR)

Looks at the process of designing and assessing coursework for the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) course in Business Studies. Provides a flow chart illustrating stages in coursework design and includes examples. Offers suggestions for grading assignments according to the GCSE Business Studies syllabus. (LS)

Three teachers (one university professor, one secondary teacher, and one K-12 language arts coordinator) formed a writing group to generate texts about the phenomenon of student autobiographical writing in the classroom. The paper discusses the benefits of autobiographical writing to students and describes teachers' experiences with student…

Suggests that those teaching "basic" social studies should establish a climate of success for students, who often suffer from low self-esteem. Recommends organized, brief, concise daily lessons, consistent routines, and frequent opportunities for student writing. Explains a Model Student Program in which the reading teacher acts as a…

Presents two ideas to help beginning mathematics teachers. The first presents a way to record and grade homework. The second suggests a manipulative to help students understand the trigonometric concept of reference angle. (MDH)

Argues that, when instructors consider only the socially constructed in their classrooms, the intricacies of individuals are lost. Points out that, when teachers think students are completing assignments, the students are actually completing their own understanding of the assignment. Suggests that instructors explain repeatedly what they expect of…

Discusses how the computer can be used to help students learn to revise their writing through peer review, rereading their writing, and reacting and reshaping their writing in response to their peer's comments. (MG)

Describes a writing strategy that teaches students how to write a first person narrative and revise for more exact and fresh vocabulary words. (MG)

This paper describes the WRITE UP strategy for helping emotionally disturbed students overcome fears of creative writing, organize their thoughts and improve their writing skills. The writing process is covered from subject selection and brainstorming through composition to editing and the final draft, with grading seen as a teaching tool. (PB)

Explores the interrelationship of learning, language and literature. Suggests assignments that allow students to respond like readers rather than like apprentice critics. Asserts that writing is not merely recording, and reading is not merely decoding. States that confusions about meaning and syntax disappear when writers read their own work…

Describes a CD ROM created by three co-authors which presents a multimedia exposition and comparison of three parallel productions of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by a single director staged sequentially at the Tokyo Globe in 1994. Provides specific suggestions as to how secondary English teachers could use this material.…

Describes a unit in a writing-intensive course on reading in the content areas in which students take a familiar fairy tale and rewrite it in a modern context. Describes the four class sessions, including class activities and writing assignments, noting figurative language, elements of fairy tales, and critical reading, thinking, and writing…

Describes a four-part writing project that requires students to write about family memories and recent history, literature and folklore of their family heritage, migration patterns that brought their people to the United States, and their reflections on all of these areas. Shows how the project involves research, computer skills, and cooperation…

Argues that traditional textbook approaches to teaching literature alienate students from literature. Describes effective alternatives in which students learn interpretive strategies as they analyze and discuss their own important values in life, and then those of characters in a story; and learn to deal with irony. Outlines writing activities…

Describes a series of four lessons that integrate social studies, language arts, and life science for high school students. Explains that students participate in a wildflower collection activity, interview a person from another culture to collect interesting facts and wild stories, research a flowering plant, and make wildflower bookmarks. (CMK)