To help students meet the demands of society, the University of Houston is using the framework of learning communities and constructivism to create a cross-disciplinary approach to teaching to provide media-rich thematically linked courses to engage a diverse student population. A case study investigated three semesters of thematically linked…

This article addresses the concern many instructors have about students who do not complete assigned work, particularly the reading. The author explains briefly why extensive reading is so important in developmental writing classes and discusses a multi-step approach she has been using successfully for years. A list of short novels and stories…

Offers seven effective learning activities for the first day of class. (MS)

Describes a project in which children wrote with a purpose and with a definite audience in mind. (FL)

Offers guidelines for grading essays so that students and parents can see what is expected. Suggests keying a grading scale to the criteria set forth in the guidelines. (FL)

Suggests, on a humorous note, a game-plan for assignment justification and elaboration that utilizes, in a constructive and professional manner, the best of what is known about assignment-making. (EL)

Recommends adding formal training in note taking to the high school English curriculum to help students master the skills of abstracting major ideas from texts, summarizing facts, and paraphrasing materials. Suggests an approach to note taking. (RBW)

Offers suggestions, based on textbook materials, for helping English-as-a-second-language students learn to write coherent English. (FL)

Recounts a literature instructor's successful entry into teaching technical writing. (HTH)

Suggests several short, manageable activities for teaching writing, such as writing cereal box copy, characterizations, test items, and obituaries. (JL)

Ponders plagiarism. Proposes a "personnoting page," a place where students acknowledge everyone who helped them as a way of avoiding plagiarism. (JL)

Explores what "grammar" means. Suggests that grammar has a place in the writing classroom and the whole-language classroom. Suggests that modifying "grammar" with adjectives such as "functional" and "rhetorical" can contribute to positive, meaningful changes in the language arts curriculum. (RS)

Describes three approaches with which grammar may be welcomed back into the composition classroom. Considers how the teaching of grammar is making a comeback, with scholars acknowledging that the objections raised by process theories were valid but also investigating how to use grammar in writing classrooms, how to answer old process objections,…

Discusses using students' graded papers as a "text" to be read and commented upon by other students. Notes that sharing students' papers (and the teacher's comments) (1) reassures the students that they are not the only ones making errors; (2) deepens their understanding of literature; and (3) increases their awareness of writing styles and…

Describes a prewriting activity in which students form questions about their classmates' research topics. Notes that this activity provides students with multiple questions concerning their topics, and conveys the message that they will be writing for a real audience of peers. (MM)