Describes a series of activities to help middle school students develop an artist's vision and then convey that vision through poetry. Describes how lessons progress from looking at concrete objects to observations of settings and characters, gradually adding memory and imagination to direct observation, and finishing with revision. Notes that…

Argues that children are as deep as the ocean, with secret places inside of them waiting to be opened. Notes that it is powerful for students to learn they can make sense of the world through words, and describes inviting them into poetry as they read poetry, create poetry packets, and write and revise poems. (SR)

Describes organizing a poetry "slam" (a contest in which people read their original poems and listeners cast votes for their favorites) involving 200 eighth graders from two different schools. Discusses how this experience made vivid for students the need to write for an audience and to revise. (SR)

Describes a project in which students in a seventh-grade English class were paired with university students in an English methods class, sharing weekly writing and responses via a computer network. Discusses how the project enhanced the teaching and learning opportunities for both sets of students. (SR)

Describes how the author discovered practical, accessible ways of talking with her seventh and eighth graders about the considerations and decisions of fiction writers. Appends a fiction writing handbook. (SR)

Describes the Power and Literacy for Disadvantaged Youth (PAL) project which includes more than 45 teachers from 20 different middle schools who are committed to work with at-risk students in a workshop atmosphere in their English language arts classrooms. Describes how each PAL teacher developed an implementation plan. Discusses what these…

Relates how one teacher restructured her classroom to use reading and writing workshops. Describes how three at-risk students in her classroom, in the course of the academic year, moved from being at risk of academic failure to being on the path to promise and success. (SR)

Describes a month-long project in an eighth-grade English classroom in which students (from many countries, many of them immigrants) read an array of bicultural literature, and each researched, wrote, and compiled a many-faceted Family Tree notebook. Shows how students can achieve both their own cultural authenticity and English language…

Describes how the author used writers' notebooks with her students (grades 6-8), all Chinese immigrants, to find and express their memories and dreams, to find meaning in their experiences of change and loss; develop voice and a sense of audience; develop fluency in English; and find a growing sense of control over their new language and their new…