Publisher's Synopsis
We nurture creativity by offering choices. In this curriculum, students have required topics, optional topics, and general topics that nurture decision-making within the confines of an assigned essay style.
Students are required to write to a certain standard, to use a certain page format, and to use specific writing constructs. At the same time, they are allowed the choice of topic, content, and the placement of those writing constructs. Unlike other curriculums, there is no requirement that the third sentence in every paragraph must follow a particular sentence construction. Sentence construction variations are helpful for students to learn, but students learn them best when they create their own and place them in their essays where they choose.
Reading literature and reading "just for fun" books can help a writer unconsciously learn how to write, from the grammar level to the overall structural level. Students will be encouraged to read and to think about their reading choices while they write.
Writing is an important skill in today's communication-hungry world. We need to form our words clearly and to understand the emotions that those words may evoke, intentionally or unintentionally. From casual journal entries to formal, multiple-draft essays, students will write each day. This daily writing practice will help create good, overall writing habits and an increased comfort level with writing. Relaxed writers who have training in good sentence structure and essay structures will find more success in all types of writing. .
