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to raise her hand and ask a potentially silly question.

Articles are a fun approach to writing on a topic. Less formal than essays, they still have a specific purpose (which the teacher assigns) while allowing for more creative flexibility on the part of the student. Articles can be informative - "How the water cycle works", speculative - "What would happen if the water cycle was disrupted?", evaluative - "What are the scientific flaws in Dr. B.G. Harvischend's paper about the water cycle and global warming?", or opinion-based - "Supporting/Disagreeing with Dr. B.G. Harvischend's conclusions about global warming". (B.G. Harvischend is a fictional name - don't go looking for this paper, please.) Articles have the added bonus that they can have diagrams or illustrations, allowing for more creativity.

Anything that can be portrayed in traditional formats can also be presented by actors - enter the scriptwriting assignment. Whether the scripts are enacted or not, the opportunity to develop characters along with meaningful content offers a great deal of fun and a change of pace for students. The need to maintain a coherent sequence of events promotes ordering a set of concepts that might previously have been jumbled in the student's mind. Indeed, any process or series of events that a lesson demands can easily be transformed into a plot. Depending on the student's creativity, this can bring whole new dimensions to a lesson. Imagine - the tragedy of a photon's sacrifice as it gives itself to sustain the plant it loves, only for that plant to be eaten soon after by a voracious rabbit with an evil, quivering nose.

Essays are a more traditional format, which typically restricts how much can be written. This can be an invaluable tool, as it forces the student to consider what the most important points are, and to focus on developing those, rather than expanding on every detail they may find in an internet search. Like articles, essays can be written for a variety of exact purposes, so it is the job of the teacher to define this purpose well. Good essay-writing skills are developed only with practice, so it is wise to provide a good amount of guidance (and leniency in rewrites) on early essays.

Fiction, like scripts, requires a blending of subject matter with a fresh invention of characters and ideas. Let a new understanding of geometry or physics serve as the basis for a murder mystery. Put genetics into a tale of fantasy or science fiction.

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