Breaking Open the Box

A Guide for Creative Techniques to Improve Academic Writing and Generate Critical Thinking

Nancy DaFoe

• Publisher: R&L Education
• Year: 2013
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781475802757
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

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

• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface: Writing Well Matters
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Approach, the Heart of the Matter, the Structure
• Chapter 1: Encouraging Creative Frameworks for Critical Thinking and Writing
• Chapter 2: The Writer as Creative Thinker
• Chapter 3: Recognizing the Problem
• Chapter 4: Outlining Creative Applications to Academic Writing
• 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
• 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 State Standards into the Classroom and Recognizing That They Are First Cousins to Creativity
• Chapter 15: Lesson Planning Involving Creative Choice and Techniques
• Chapter 16: Setting Up Action Research
• Chapter 17: Providing Students with Opportunities for an 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
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Author