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Encouraging Student Self-Expression through
Zines
NCTE members highlighted "the rights
of expression by students at all levels in a variety of media" by passing
the Resolution
on Students' Right of Expression at the Annual Convention in Indianapolis
last month. Zines, self-published periodicals exploring a specific topic of
importance to the author, can provide a great option for safe, guided exploration
of students' interests at all levels.
In "The Zine Project: Writing with a Personal Perspective" (E-C) from the November
2004 Language Arts, author Barbara Cohen explains how both graduate
students and elementary students expressed their ideas on a wide range of topics
in a variety of genres.
Christie "CJ" Bott's "Zines--The Ultimate Creative
Writing Project" (M-S) from English Journal outlines a project that moves from
reading about zines to composing original pieces in verse and prose. The article
includes a book list.
Read Dan Fraizer's "Zines in the Composition Classroom" (C) from Teaching
English in the Two-Year College stresses the benefit of this form of student
expression: students "learn more about both writing and text production because it
is important to students."
How do you get started? Ask students to collect articles and similar resources
on the topics they've chosen and creating headline poems with the ReadWriteThink
lesson Alliteration
in Headline Poems. Suggest students use the Comic
Creator to
add comics to their zines, and then have students publish their articles with
the ReadWriteThink
Printing Press.
For more ways to extend the creative writing students do in the zines, take
a look at the new NCTE title Wordplaygrounds: Reading, Writing, and Performing
Poetry in the English Classroom (M-S).
NOTE: Free access to journal articles mentioned in this Inbox is provided
for 21 days. After this free access period expires, articles are available
to journal subscribers only. This Inbox Idea was published 11-16-2004.
Initials in annotations indicate academic level of the resource (E=Elementary,
M=Middle, S=Secondary, C=College, G=General).
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