I'm an English teacher in Madison, WI, and I'm reaching out to anyone who has used On Writing in the classroom.
I'm teaching a class called "The Novel" and the idea is for the kids, mostly 12th graders, to write a major work (quite ambitious, I agree). To start the semester we've been doing some fun activities to get the ball rolling. One that we did I based on the 'Plums deify' notion that any verb and noun together can make a sentence. Randomly writing nouns and verbs, mixing them up, and pulling out combos, we ended up with some odd and hilarious sentences:
Perforate hamsters. Yeti crafting. Smash New York. Those were the favorites.

Question to teachers: have you ever used On Writing as a springboard for writing exercises? If so how did you incorporate the book, and was it successful. Thanks!
Dan