Gives an overview of how one English teacher uses students' inherent understanding of film by asking them to write movie scripts. Advocates the use of screenwriting in the classroom. Details numerous reasons for such methods, and describes eight specific suggested class activities employing script writing. (HB)

Narrates one teacher's move from high school to eighth-grade English. Describes a method for teaching middle school students how to write collaboratively. Provides details of writing assignments, units, and techniques successfully utilized, including publishing a teenage magazine. (HB)

Outlines some of the issues and problems inherent in the group dynamics in the English classroom. Considers how English teachers are part of the group in a classroom and, therefore, are subject to the same predictable anxieties and are reliant on similar coping behaviors. (HB)

Describes the Navajo reservation in Arizona, its inhabitants, and the inservice workshop given there by consultants of the National Writing Project. Relates personal anecdotes. Claims that life and education on the reservation are much like they are everywhere else. (HB)

Describes a writing course project that provides students with a portfolio of works representing various stages of their own growth and writing achievement. Shows how the project results in a published volume of student writing. Argues that the project also validates the effectiveness of the English curriculum. (HB)

Considers the benefits of a multicultural anthology entitled "Braided Lives." Outlines how one ninth-grade English teacher used the anthology to develop student personal writing concerning the texts read. Uses student responses in journals to generate essays on multicultural topics. (HB)

Describes how word processing terminology can be usefully adapted for peer review writing tasks in which students try to help each other revise and improve their written work. Demonstrates this revision technique with specific examples. Outlines how teachers can institute the method in their writing activities. (HB)

Reports on ways in which an undergraduate English course can be structured to invite wide-ranging forms of response. Describes how this was done through an expository reading and writing course based on rhetorical modes and noncanonical texts. Claims that student satisfaction and achievement were excellent. (HB)

Expresses a concern to look beyond happy endings in reading materials to texts whose bleakness, harshness, and grimness deal with complex human issues. Provides ideas and methods by which teachers might accomplish this. Discusses relevant literary texts. (HB)

This journal article focuses on the return of grammar in composition teaching. After about 2 decades of virtual banishment from the higher reaches of English teaching theory, grammar has returned as a subject of serious discussion. This is the result in part of a new assertiveness by a group of people who never lost interest in grammar as part of…

Although many educators consider the teaching of the research paper in high schools old-fashioned, this aspect of the English curriculum remains important for helping students master inquiry and reasoning skills. If carefully presented, the research paper develops skills indispensable for today's complex, information-based society. A review of the…

Creative writers have moved into the mainstream of English departments without understanding or reviewing their own history, and without reconceptualizing graduate and undergraduate creative writing programs. Such a history can be constructed from sources in three areas: institutional history, creative writing history, and rhetorical history. An…

Prewriting, writing, and revision represent vital elements in both the total writing experience and the evaluation of writing programs. An effective writing program should include (1) a written plan to guide composition instructors and ensure that students receive balanced instruction; (2) clearly stated purposes reflecting concern for composition…

In conjunction with the New Mexico State Department of Education's Writing Appraisal Program for high school students, a project was designed whose central goal was to identify and clearly delineate writing competencies for students in the younger grades. A pilot project first collected student writing samples and descriptive data from third and…

To communicate the writing instruction techniques they learned at the California Writing Project, 11 teachers organized a district writing resource team offering workshops and inservice sessions to other writing teachers in their district. Among the results of this subsequent Glendale Writing Project are a renewed enthusiasm and cooperation among…