Breaking Open the Box: A Guide for Creative Techniques to Improve Academic Writing and Generate Critical Thinking (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781475802733)

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.

Author: Nancy Dafoe
ISBN-10: 1475802730
ISBN-13: 9781475802733
Publisher: R & L Education
Language: English
Published: 02/21/2013
Pages: 210
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.06lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.63d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2013