English Unit 1: Free Writing

English is divided into three parts each day: reading, writing and grammar. Reading is just for pleasure for 30 minutes at the start of every day. We are working our way through several workbooks for grammar, so that’s pretty straight forward. Writing is the real sticking point for English. Usually. But this year has been different.

 

My son has informational and analytical writing assignments integrated into every other subject. That means the writing portion of English can focus on narrative writing. The first four weeks of school were spent on increasing his writing fluency – the speed and ease that he gets his thoughts into sentences and onto paper. He’s always struggled with that. The goal for this unit was for him to get words on paper. I didn’t care how well he wrote or how long it took. Here were his assignments for those first weeks:

• Free write – 10 lines, any subject (repeat for 3 days)
• Free write – 15 lines, any subject (repeat for 3 days)
• Free write – 15 lines, narrative (repeat for 2 days, can continue story from previous day)
• Free write – 15 lines, “What if…?” (repeat for 2 days, can continue story from previous day)
• Free write – 15 lines, Sci-Fi short story (repeat for 2 days, can continue story from previous day)
• Free write – 15 lines, with dialogue (repeat for 2 days, can continue story from previous day)

A funny thing happened, though, by the time we got to the Sci-Fi short story. My son was no longer struggling with getting words into sentences and putting them on paper. He said that writing was becoming his favorite subject! And, he got excited about his first attempt at writing science fiction. He added dialogue to that story for the next assignment. Then, he decided he wanted to get it polished enough to publish. Thus, the Sci-Fi short story unit was quickly pulled together and started the following week.

 

(Note – English writing assignments only run Monday through Thursdays. Fridays are devoted to working on his book review blog. He publishes a new review every two weeks.)