Discusses a composition assignment that integrates library instruction with a research assignment, thus encouraging students to take an interdisciplinary approach to their writing and thinking. (SR)

Offers six brief articles, each presenting a particular class activity for high school journalism students, focusing on feature writing, getting the whole picture, news writing, an observation test, sights and sounds, and a reporting exercise. (SR)

Describes an activity in which parents and students write together about their childhoods. States that parents and students offered positive comments about the activity. Notes that the parents were supportive of their students' writing for the rest of the school year. (RS)

Criticizes teaching formal, impersonal writing and argues for teaching that encourages students to write about what they know and love as they discover who they are and why words matter. (PRA)

Provides specific writing activities to be used with seven different books in the context of both primary and intermediate grade level writing instruction. (HB)

Describes an exercise for a technical writing course on documenting a problem within a corporate environment, thus giving students experience in appropriate documentation to tackle some of the operational, political, and ethical problems common in the workplace. (SR)

Offers five tips from writing teachers on writing activities that work well in their classrooms. (SR)

Provides the responses of 10 practicing English teachers to the questions, "What is your most successful writing assignment? Or, what is your favorite stimulus for writing?" (HB)

Describes how a writing teacher has his students write about one object in the four modes (description, narration, argumentation, and exposition) as a means of learning about writing and writing to learn. Suggests that students learn about their topics when they write about them in the four modes. (SR)

Describes a number of techniques used in a developmental English class. Notes that listening to colleagues in other disciplines and using writing-to-learn strategies are two ways to make a classroom successful. Suggests that these techniques can help developmental students become active listeners and readers. (SR)

Describes an assignment for a sophomore-level technical-writing course which teaches students to respond to different audiences with different needs by having them analyze and then respond to actual complaint letters (on the same topic but from two very different people). Includes successful and unsuccessful responses generated by the students.…

Describes a writing assignment (useful for junior high through college age students) that seeks to improve students' descriptive writing through a set of class writing assignments using visual and concrete objects. Allows students to gain awareness, gain knowledge and discuss it, and ask questions as a body of learners rather than in isolation.…

Describes an assignment in which students read a travelogue excerpt and then must determine specified aspects of the writer's character based on evidence from the text. Notes how this exercise shapes students' awareness of how character influences writing, and how biases and assumptions influence reading. (SR)

Describes a successful approach used by the author in "Composition and Literature" courses which teaches students to write in a relaxed manner about material unnatural to them (literary texts). Describes focusing on communicating to a generally ignorant reader who is knowledgeable about the work. Argues that papers became clearer as the semester…

Presents 13 short descriptions from 13 different English teachers describing the most effective writing assignment they have ever given. (SR)