HOME SCHOOL or ON-LINE 6-12 CREATIVE WRITING CURRICULUM:
MASTERING SENTENCE STRUCTURE & LANGUAGE SKILLS!
“Thank you for showing me how to become a better teacher of writing. Before I found your curriculum I was unable to explain how students could improve their phrasing and sentence structure, except to say that it didn’t sound quite right. Your curriculum has given me the tools to know how to break sentences down, how to put them back together in new ways, and how to teach students to do the same thing.“
Arwen C. High School Teacher
“Dear Bruce, Writing to let you know that your program has been a tremendous success at our school. All of our students are in Writing Achievement 3 hours per week (1 hour per session) and all look forward to the class. The best part is that outside of class we hear the kids use vocabulary they have never used before and many of our students can be found looking through the Thesaurus on a regular basis. What is so wonderful about your program is that all the students benefit, no matter their grammar level. Thanks again for developing a great product.”
W.H.W. Principal | Independent School
High Performance 6-12 Creative Writing Curriculum:
Before Students Can Write to Learn…
They Must First Learn to Write!
This curriculum has been tested with over 6000 students 6-12, and is designed to produce dramatic writing achievement, regardless of entry level ability. A descriptive writing mode is the engine that best confers high quality sentence structure and grammatical mastery. Students learn by doing exciting and interesting short assignments, not by copying exercises in a grammar book or on the web. This curriculum begins by assuming no knowledge on the part of both the student and the teacher. By the time we get to an unfamiliar term in the curriculum, both you and your student will have already arrived at understanding. Step by step: We learn together by going where we have to go!
Home school, middle school and high school teachers of writing grapple with the same challenge year after year:
How do I guide all of my students toward authentic writing skill mastery?
How do I create lessons that give them the tools and inspiration to write with clarity, precision and expressive power?
Teachers, parents are students are desperate for results, but most realize that there are no shortcuts to achieving them. Daily oral language, journal writing, the study of rubrics…none of these permanently transforms the quality of student writing.
And what about writing across the curriculum?
By now, everyone realizes that merely assigning more writing is not the same as systematically teaching student how to become better writers. Without quality, systematic instruction, well prepared students pass easily through the grades without ever achieving mastery, and the under prepared majority of students end up stuck in a loop called “more of the same.” Unfortunately, this is exactly the state of affairs in many public and private schools universities today.
Authentic writing breakthroughs require mastery learning instruction–systematic activities that blend creativity, excitement and structure while language is examined and new skills are learned and applied on a daily basis.
And when these methods are embedded within an exciting creative writing format, why shouldn’t a writing class be the high point of each school day?
Imagine a selection of sentences written by your home school student as part of a short (one paragraph) creative writing assignment entitled “Still Life: An Old Work Shoe”:
…Its worn, brass eyelets rusting, the dreary shoe tugs toothlessly at a besmirched, spurious lace…”
“…Descending and submerging, a criss-cross patterned sole sinks into the damp, boggy soil…”
“…A seam, raveling and slipping, arches around the worn and dusty surface…a mucky, sweat-blemished shoe tongue cowers between two mountains of uplifting leather…”
“…A silver, dulled hook, its metal oxidizing, holds out its ends to clasp on to ancient, threadbare laces…”
These sentences were crafted by middle level students who were four weeks into the program. They are independent creations, built from the ground up and rely upon language skills acquired via mastery learning methods. They are not templates where structure is supplied and students obediently fill the blanks. As such, they are emblematic of a dramatically heightened awareness of the descriptive power of language. Let me state this clearly: none of these students could have written these sentences when they first began. The curriculum and only the curriculum was what got them there.
And this awareness will be possessed by each attentive student, including those who begin this class with the desire to accomplish, but are knee capped by below grade level skills.
Consider this high school level student’s creative use of parts of speech and her eye for detail in an assignment wherein only simple sentences and present tense verbs are allowed. For this piece, the student chose to describe Einstein’s original hand written depiction of the famous formula “E=mc2”:
“The curved, flowing line of the “e” turns in a slow three-quarters circle to touch a straight horizontal line. Extending through the middle and touching the upper cut-off, it slashes through a peaceful cul de sac. Two lines, parallel to each other, link the letter to its equality. A series of three curved vertical lines hump over to form a perfect “m.” The “c,” gently arching, lies flat on the snowy white paper. A petite swan’s neck rises from a small, unchanging dash. The “2” hovers above, looking listlessly at the letters below. This simple equation contains the power of an entire universe.”
Soon enough, attentive students master the construction of compound and complex sentences, as well as the clauses and connectors they contain–but for the first nine weeks several sessions their work will be confined to simple sentences where word choice, phrasing and punctuation skills can be locked in. (Here a reader might say: “Oops, sounds too difficult to me. I don’t know what these things are, or even what he is talking about!” To which I reply: “Not to worry. attentive students will come to these understandings naturally, almost without trying to.”)
Each of my studentss start from the beginning–previous knowledge or experience are not assumed. And quickly enough, they become excited about learning how easy it is to write with energy and with precision–accomplishments that will be obvious to to them for the rest of their lives.
I invite all teachers and students of writing–whether novices or experts–to join me on this mastery learning journey. This his is your opportunity to permanently transform your own skills as a teacher of writing. Guaranteed.
Impacts for Students, Parents and Teachers
Bruce, the proof of any teacher’s effectiveness is in the performance of his students, and you and I both know that the work your kids have produced is superb. Their observation skills, their ability to use language to vividly describe their observations, and their rapidly increasing understanding of syntax and sentence structure are among the most impressive I’ve ever seen as an English teacher, principal, or superintendent in any school at any grade level or program. The fact that you have produced this level of accomplishment with such young kids is incredible.
Mike Riley, Former Superintendent Bellevue Public Schools, WA
Weak sentence construction skills limit the depth and quality of student thinking. With this curriculum, all our activities become learning laboratories where teachers and students explore, evaluate language, acquire new knowledge, practice techniques, and gradually learn to write powerful sentences that are designed to carry more detail, more thought.
This mastery creative writing curriculum is not a grammar textbook with reproducible lessons confined to dittoes.
This incremental approach to skill development is most important:
Before we can begin to use hugely versatile participial phrases, for example, we must first learn what a participle is, how it is used, what role it can play–but we do this in a creative writing mode that replaces dreary traditional grammar study with the “wow” of what happens in sentences when they are used.
Early sharing activities are gradual, incremental and limited in scope.
Initial activities like these develop confidence, pride in new learning, and jump start student understanding of what quality writing looks and feels like.
This curriculum leads students to life long proficiency in language awareness and use. It’s not what you are used to. It is absolutely transformative.