Success in Schools: Read one teacher's comments about how Excellence in Writing is working in her class.

As a 6th grade Latin and grammar teacher, I am always eager to integrate my subjects so that my students are practicing the skills of both subjects simultaneously. I have found Excellence in Writing to be a fantastic tool which enables me to do just this: during our preposition unit, we added the preposition dress-up and sentence starter. We were also doing a preposition unit in Latin and I taught my students about the plethora of derivatives which stem from Latin prepositions, which they were then able to use in their writing.

I have found Excellence in Writing to be a good diagnostic tool, as well. Gaps in knowledge jump out. For example, I have discovered that several of my students can not write, nor recognize, a complete sentence when a dependent clause is being used. The clausal verb confuses them. Knowing this, I can teach to their weaknesses.

However, I have also found that Excellence in Writing is an excellent tool for my natural writers, as well. The advanced dress-ups encourage them to really think about their writing, so that there is progress and improvement. Some young writers mistake length for mature writing. As I was explaining to one of my gifted writers, the point is to improve her writing, not expand it. Excellence in Writing is really helping her explore different techniques to effectively and concisely express herself.

I made dry-erasable posters with the banned words go, get, big, pretty, and like. Different options are displayed and every once in a while we erase the options and try new words. I have also made a poster of the dress-ups and sentence starters, so that my students do not have to go to a workbook to find their requirements. This also helps them explore techniques they've not yet attempted, since they know that there is more to learn. Taking the advice of my trainer, I have put up other posters with words on them. We have an adjective, adverb and verb of the week, too. How cheering for a teacher to hear her students fight over the two thesauruses!

A note of caution for other 6th grade teachers: my students really want a sentence like, "The goddess was angry," to count for a very short sentence. Of course, we recognize that this is a very ineffective use of four words. I am about to require them to use a strong verb in any vss. The Gospel writer recognized the power of the action verb: "Jesus was sad" has nothing of the power of "Jesus wept." My favorite version of the example sentence: Enraged, the goddess vowed vengeance. (vss, -ed, and strong verb!)

Annie
Westminster Academy
Memphis, TN