The Water in Africa Project was realized over a 2-year period by a team of Peace Corps volunteers, World Wise Schools (WWS) classroom teachers, and WWS staff members. As part of an expanded, detailed design, resources were collected from over 90 volunteers serving in African countries, photos and stories were prepared, and standards-based learning…

Compares the effects of an enriched syllabus including extensive reading and frequent writing assignments on English descriptive writing performance at four form levels for Cantonese-speaking students participating in three English programs: (1) regular plus unrelated (mathematics) enrichment; (2) regular plus extensive reading; and (3) regular…

A practicum was conducted to develop critical thinking and improve expression through creative written language utilizing precision teaching as an evaluation of student performance. Six students (grades second through sixth) with low idea generation and few organization skills were trained by three teachers and a teacher advisor using…

A case study was conducted in which a teacher followed the progress of a first grade boy over the course of a semester, collecting samples of his written work and observing his interaction with peers. The teacher came to understand how the boy expressed his uniqueness in his writing, and how important it is for all students to be allowed to use…

The first statewide direct writing assessment was conducted for grade 8 by the California Assessment Program (CAP) in the spring of 1987. Each student wrote an essay in response to 1 of 15 prompts (writing tasks) representing: (1) an autobiographical incident; (2) a report of information; (3) a solution to a problem; and (4) an evaluation. In all,…

A year-long study of the writing growth of eight seventh grade children was conducted to determine whether knowledge of reading rhetoric could be directly applied to personal writing behavior. It was assumed that active comprehension of a distinctive literary model would provide awareness of the structure of narrative prose and improve the…

A study of children's syntax from a transformational perspective was initiated to explore the following areas: syntactic differences between narrative, descriptive, expository, and argumentative writing, and the relation of these differences to IQ, sex, and reading comprehension; the relation of syntax content; and the relation of children's…

This language unit for grade 10 builds on a definition of the expository use of language developed in the two previous 10th-grade units. In a brief overview of report language, the referential language of Thomas Huxley is compared with the expressive language of Edgar Allan Poe. The writings of S. I. Hayakawa, Hans Guth, and others are examined…

Ways of introducing children to the pleasures and value of poetry are discussed in this publication. Following a brief survey of various kinds of poems and the needs satisfied by poetry, some of the vocabulary and technical elements of poetic design--meter, stanza, rhyme, figures of speech, and selected verse forms--are explained and illustrated.…

This article describes an undergraduate course in creative writing offered by the Department of English at the University of Hong Kong. Most students in the course have Chinese as a native language and have received their secondary education in English. They have had extensive practice in writing English in connection with their studies. The…

The activities presented in this book, designed to help children translate their thoughts into spoken and written words, can supplement an elementary teacher's own language arts lessons. Objectives for each activity are listed, with the general focus of the many oral activities being to develop a rich verbal background for future written work. The…

This book presents a program for increasing the student's command of language through the experience of writing poetry. Designed to encourage students to systematically and accurately transform their experiences into brief expression, the program is divided into two sections--introductory and advanced. Each of the sections is composed of units on…

This article discusses methods of teaching poetry and composition to German speaking elementary-school students in Switzerland. One effective device for treating poetry is enactment; children practice acting, declamation, pantomime, and narration while learning the poem. Another device is choral speaking with individually assigned roles, which…

Described a program to infuse art into a writer's workshop in an effort to improve writing and self expression across grade levels. Notes how the students' artwork elicited more descriptive writing, improved students' observation skills, provided a necessary image for writers to write with clarity and purpose, and improved learning. (SD)

The second statewide direct writing assessment was conducted for grade eight by the California Assessment Program (CAP) in the spring of 1988. Each student wrote an essay in response to 1 of 45 prompts (writing tasks) representing 6 types of writing: autobiographical incident, report of information, problem solution, evaluation, story, and…