ELEMENTARY CREATIVE WRITING
Students ages 7 and 8 are usually exploding with ideas. But this is an age during which, very often, the student encounters great resistance for his own perceptions and ideas, and even disapproval when he expresses them. Often, the resistance encountered is well-meaning, an attempt to helpeducationally "shape" the student. But such "help", no matter how well intended, is nearly always destructive of the student's own ability to perceive and create and express himself. These critical skills must be protected and enhanced in anyone, but most particularly in a young student.
This is the actual task of your Elementary Creative Writing Courses . The student does NOT work on syntax, sentence construction, or any technical elements of language or writing (including spelling). Instead, at this young age, he explores through carefully constructed exercises and lesson plans, ways and means of expressing himself and his own viewpoints in words. These exercises are fun. At this age, we expect the student to handwrite, or type his stories. (In Starter , they are generally dictated.)
Each course at this level consists of a semester worth of lesson plans at three per week, for about 18-19 weeks. Semester I, as an example, has 57 lesson plans, which are intended to be done one per day, three times per week.
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Creative Writing I - Semester I The student learns basic elements of the English language and immediately puts them to creative use, building his own stories out of nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs of his own choosing. |
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Creative Writing II - Semester II In this course the student learns about pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, articles, plots and essential story writing concepts, while authoring dozens of increasingly challenging and fun stories. |
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Creative Writing III - Semester III The basics of plot construction, including characters, and how to develop action and conflict through the character's attempts to get what they want, and their confrontations with problems. |
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Creative Writing IV - Semester IV This course develops the student's creativity and ability to shape a story using the tools of story-telling, such as character development, conflict, action, dialogue and description. |
