Baines, Lawrence, and Anthony J. Kunkel, eds. Going Bohemian: Activities that Engage Adolescents in the Art of Writing Well. Newark, Delaware: International Reading Association, 2000. 165 p.

After prefaces defining what “Going Bohemian” means to teachers stuck in the ruts of tradition and uncreative interpretation of state and district expectations, on the necessity of developing a philosophy as well as a practical approach to the assessment of writing and how much student writing needs how much teacher-provided assessment, and on the view one high-school student took of his traditional and “Bohemian” teachers, their methods and subsequent credibility and value in his education, Going Bohemian becomes a compendium of specific plans for lessons in writing/thinking/responding, arranged in nine sections. Each section supplies five lessons devoted to a particular type of writing, writing skill, or material to be used to inspire writing; i.e., nonfiction, sentence structure, multimedia. Each lesson includes everything necessary for immediate incorporation into an existing (or developing) curriculum: objectives, time frame, supplies, play-by-play, summary, and enrichment possibilities. Many are accompanied by student samples.

Although not all lessons provided here would “fly” in all established middle school language arts/literature classes, all do provide worthy models of design for lessons that could and would fit into an individual teacher’s year-long plan. Most accomplish the type of writing starts that collect well over the year in student folders and provide fodder for more formalized, finished pieces; some produce full-scale, finished performances, as does “Sudden Performances,” in which students choose a short story and adapt it to stage performance—then perform it. Others work as mini-lessons in technique and/or style, such as “Rapid Transitions,” which forces students to use sensible transitions in an otherwise not-so-sensible impromptu essay. All the lessons encourage student interest and direct involvement with thinking and writing. Middle and high school teachers need this book!