Frontiers in Writing Teacher/Student Combo

Students will explore source texts covering science topics such as Halley’s Comet, Copernicus, and the Mars landing. They’ll also explore history topics in excerpts from famous pieces such as The Boy Who Cried Wolf and Tom Sawyer. This 30-lesson course helps students practice how to write from notes, retell stories, summarize references, and write from pictures (skills introduced in Adventures in Writing and Discoveries in Writing, previous volumes of the Hillsdale K-12 series). Additionally, students will be introduced to inventive writing, formal essays, and formal critiques. This curriculum assumes teachers have learned the methodology of and have access to the IEW method, Teaching Writing: Structure and Style. Consider adding in a literature component with the suggestions provided: The Secret Garden; The Wind in the Willows; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; and Charlotte’s Web. A convenient package of these selections is also available. The recommendation for these novels is to read each book over a two-month period. Adding literature guides of your choice or discussion questions (along with handwriting and other student-needed skills) would round out the student’s language arts course. The thirty lessons (one year) also introduce vocabulary that is practiced regularly, quizzed periodically, and ideally incorporated in students’ writing. Students learn words like methodically, contaminated, acoustic, traverse, and treacherous (with quizzes possible for review). This is the fourth in a series of multi-theme courses created in conjunction with Hillsdale’s K-12 American Classical Education topics of scope and sequence, which assigns a Grade 5 reading level to this course. Appendices include a mechanics and vocabulary overview and review games (in Teacher’s Manual only). First edition. ~ Ruth