What do David Foster Wallace's essay on wars over usage and Pico Iyer's comma personification have to do with improving students' academic writing? Everything. For all of the attention supposedly paid to Bloom's Taxonomy-with creativity at the top-educators tend to shy away from encouraging students' creative choices in areas where traditional analysis and the critic's style and tone have reigned. While we do not want our students to write inane or empty verbiage, we unintentionally set them up for this inevitability--or worse. The movement away from children's natural creative impulses in elementary school to a direction in which they literally fit their writing into preconfigured shapes is a gradual one. Although purportedly taught to instill academic structures, these boxes are also designed to facilitate the ease with which student product may be assessed. We need a more creative approach to teaching writing. A methodology incorporating creativity, as modeled by students in this text, demonstrates the kind of progress we are all seeking, offering an exciting challenge for young writers and educators alike.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction: Writing Well Matters Chapter 1: Encouraging Creative Frameworks for Critical Thinking and Writing Chapter 2: The Writer as Critical Thinker Section 1: Playing with Language Section 2: Taking Creative Risks to Improve Writing Chapter 3: Recognizing the Problem Section 1: A Familiar Scene Section 2: Why the Essay Genre Presents Such Challenges Section 3: The Hollow Middle Section 4: When a Good Student Writes a Bad Essay Section 5: When a Student Surprises with His/Her Writing Chapter 4: Outlining Creative Applications to Academic Writing Section 1: Where to start and how to proceed with instruction in creative techniques and creative choices Section 2: Applications with Metaphor Chapter 5: Applications with Prose Poems or Poetic Prose Chapter 6: Discourse Applications with Poetry Chapter 7: Applications with Narrative—Story, Dialogue, and the Mini-Script Chapter 8: Applications with Parody and Satire Chapter 9: Applications with Musings and Journaling Chapter 10: Applications with Unusual Vessels and Technology Section 1: Student Applications with Unusual Vessels Section 2: Applications with Technology A: Texting B: Blogging Chapter 11: Traditional Looking Essays Incorporating Creative Techniques Chapter 12: Changing the Landscape of Academic Writing Assignments and the Classroom Environment Chapter 13: Making Editing Integral Chapter 14: Inviting the Common Core Standards into the Classroom and Recognizing they are First Cousins to Creativity Chapter 15: Lesson Planning Involving Creative Choice and Techniques Section 1: Building Creative Techniques into the Writing Lesson Section 2: Tweaking the Assessment Rubric to Encourage Creativity Chapter 16: Setting Up Action Research Section 1: Student Writing Surveys Section 2: Examining Comparative Data Section 3: A Procedural Guide—Building Creative Choice into the Compositional Assignment Chapter 17: Providing Students with Opportunities for Authentic Audience Instructional Application and Dedication Appendix A: A Guide for Parents Appendix B: A Sampling of Young Writers’ Conferences Appendix C: Helpful, Creative Resources for Writers and Writing Instruction Bibliography Notes