In this course, students will learn writing in conjunction with critical thinking and speaking.
During the first half of the school year, students will learn about the form of fables, discover culturally important examples, practice reading short texts, learn to copy accurately, strengthen their memory through dictation, gain opportunities to imitate sentences & fables, learn about the concepts of the main idea/character traits, and more.
The second-semester students will be exposed to parables, myths, and other tales to teach beginning writers the craft of writing well. Lessons focus on beginning/middle/end; written and oral narration; longer writing assignments; the main idea; conflict; adding dialogue and description; writing given stories; and more.
Using books 1 & 2 of Classical Academic Press’s “Writing and Rhetoric” curriculum, students will learn:
Narration/telling it back (creating a natural sense of outline/sequence)
Analogy—learning how this story is like/different from other stories
Comprehension
Sentence play/word play
Rewriting (gaining a sense of internal structure of a piece of writing)
Summary
Amplification
Speak It—experiencing the story from your own mouth (orally) with an audience for a different point of contact, often with some sort of change than the first time you heard it.
Beginning, middle, end
Written narration as well as oral
Longer writing assignments or corollary assignments, changing the order of the story
Main idea
Conflict (middle)
Adding dialogue to the amplification (and description)
Rewriting given stories
