In 1979, the Yonkers Public School district (New York) launched a project to design and implement secondary school language arts curriculum guides with an emphasis on written composition. A theoretical framework was developed, based on the work of James Britton and the philosophy of the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP). Britton's work provided the framework for the three types of writing in the curriculum--expressive, transactional, and poetic--and supported the design committee's position that writing is a process. As stated by Britton and practiced by the BAWP, students should be given the opportunity to write for a variety of purposes and audiences. While the curriculum was designed to be sensitive to the developmental nature of writing, the committee also provided activities and objectives that would prepare students for the mandatory New York state competency test in writing. The objectives and activities of the curriculum cover the writing process, the three kinds of writing, paragraphs and sentences, and usage and mechanics. Inservice training sessions were conducted and members of the curriculum committee continued to monitor the implementation of the curriculum. Feedback from the program has been positive as teachers come to realize that Britton's way of looking at the composing process is more like the natural development of the process and that students address many of the program's objectives every time they write. (HTH)