Written Work in a Charlotte Mason Curriculum

This is a week's worth of written work done by my 12 year old daughter who is doing AmblesideOnline Year 7. Each week is a little different, depending on what else is happening, but essentially after each reading she is required to do an oral narration or some sort of written account, which could be a notebook entry, a composition or creative narration or just a retelling. I sometimes leave this up to her to decide or ask her to do something specific if I think she needs more variety.

Besides this her written work includes weekly dictation (we don't always get to this) & daily (or at least a few times a week) copywork.

Poetry

We've been reading through the Oxford Book of Poetry as well as doing lessons from the Grammar of Poetry. This week I chose a poem, The Lady of Shalott by Tennyson, read it aloud, and had my daughter tell me its rhyme scheme (AAAABCCCB). Then I asked her to write a poem of her own following the same rhyme scheme, which she almost did: 

 The War of Words

Once upon a time,

In a faraway clime,
In the season of springtime,
A princess sublime,

Was held prisoner by a knight.

Many a gallant knight
Offered for her to fight
 But their offers ended in flight,

And the evil knight still held the princess.

Her father did beg,
And he offered an arm and a leg,
And he did not renege,
But the evil knight was a prig,

And at the end of a year, he still held the princess.

Then one day,
The princess cried, ‘Hooray!’
For on the road, heading her way,

Came a tall knight, in silver armour.

He rode up to the door,
And kicked it on the floor,
‘Hi, evil knight,’ he said. ‘I’m here for war!’
And down he sat on a bucket of tar,

And waited for the evil knight to speak.

The evil knight drew forth his sword,
And they went out upon the sward,
‘But stop,’ said the tall knight, ‘I’m bored.

Why not have a battle of insults instead?’

To be finished...she's been sick and laid up with a fever and didn't get back to it...my daughter, not the princess.

Architecture Notebook

An entry is done in her notebook once a week.

Shakespeare

Shakespeare and Plutarch have often provided some fruitful ideas for narrations with their rich language and drama. I used this suggestion from the Cambridge School Shakespeare as a base for my daughter's narration below:
Imagine you are Caesar's intelligence agents who have shadowed Brutus and Cassius (in Act 1, Scene 2) and bugged their converstion in order to make a report on them to their master.

She typed this one & I copied it here unedited, except for the dialogue, where I used a different colour to make it easier to read:

Description of Brutus

Brutus is of middling height, with a stern gaze upon his countenance, and Rome in his heart.

Description of Cassius

Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much, therefore he must forthwith be dangerous.

ACT 1, SCENE 1

Brutus and Cassius standeth together, talking in low tones, glancing this way, and that way, making certain that no one doth intrudeth forth into their conversion.

Brutus

‘How now, Cassius: what brings thee to converse with me?’

Cassius

‘Oh, my dear Brutus, ‘tis nought but friendly talk.’

There arises a shout from the populace, in the direction of Caesar’s whereabouts

Brutus

“Alack, alack, I fear me that honour hath been given Caesar. Alas for Rome! Ah me! We sinketh thus to the depths of d…. I mean, harrumph, ah, hooray!’

Cassius

‘Thou needst not fear me, Brutus, I am one of those excellent and most trustworthy people, who . . .’
Cassius’s words fade unto the air, as in the distance they heareth the voice of Caesar, who sayeth unto Antony,
‘I want fat men about me, Antonius. That Cassius hath a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Sniff. Such men are dangerous.’

Cassius

‘Ah, excuse me. . . now, as I was uttering, when so rudely interrupted, cough, cough, thou canst trust me, Brutus. Thou dost not approve of honours given unto Caesar?’

Brutus

‘Aye, Cassius. Methinks, thee also . . .?’ 

Cassius (drawing Brutus aside)

‘Oh, the day, when men fall down in front of men, made up as gods, when once they were as equals! I, fearless before foes, the terror of mine enemies, reduced to this! I, who once had to draggeth Caesar out of the Tiber!’

Brutus

‘Out upon thee! Explain thine self, eh?!’

Cassius

‘Why, my dear Brutus, upon the banks of Tiber I stood with Caesar, who turned unto me, and spake, ‘Cassius, wouldst thou jump into that flood with?’ I up and spake, ‘Aye Caesar, that would I,’ and forthwith I jumped straightway into that roaring flood, and Caesar jumped in with me. I had reached the farther bank, when whereupon Caesar cried unto me, ‘Help, o noble Cassius!’ (see what opinion he had of me!’) I turning around, with all the goodness of my heart, jumped into that flood once more, and dragged him upon the bank, for, he was too weak, forsooth, to do it himself! And now, I ask thee, Caesar holdeth the laurels?!’

Brutus (impressed)

‘Oh dear, Cassius. Of a truth, methinks thou art more fitted to hold the laurels than Caesar! I bear him no ill will, but the bettering of Rome is in my thoughts, O Cassius.'

Cassius

‘I agree, Brutus. And, moreover, when Caesar had a fever, he asked for water.’

Brutus (horrified)

‘Oh horror! What a calamity. Oh justice, thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.’

Cassius

‘Yea, Brutus, I hear the trumpets this way come. Thine self I shall meet on the morrow.’

Brutus

‘Aye. Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night ‘til it be morrow.’


History


A handwritten narration from Churchill's Birth of Britain. She is quite neat when she does her copywork and dictation but more haphazard when doing a hand-written narration.

Science


This is from her Anatomy & Physiology book (see here & here for the books we're using for Year 7)

Ambleside Online Year 6: looking back on the week

We finished Shakespeare's King Lear yesterday. Moozle wrote this narration on the play today in 'the style of Plutarch.'

I've mentioned in previous posts that we were watching a movie version of King Lear on YouTube. We've got as far as the end of the eighth video but I'll probably skip at least the next two for Moozle as I think they're a bit too gory in places for her at this stage, although all in all, the movie is quite well done.

AO Year 6 has some interesting science books scheduled: starting off with The Mystery of the Periodic Table, a biography of Albert Einstein and The Elements by Theodore Gray in Term 1 and adding in a number of others as the year progresses, so we began a Science Notebook as she's been itching to add it after seeing what her older siblings have done previously. As I've done with the others, I added in the Periodic Table of the Elements videos on the Nottingham University website. She watches these after reading chapters from The Mystery of the Periodic Table & The Elements. 

I'm looking forward to reading Rachel Carson's, The Sea Around Us, which Benj enjoyed a few years ago. I posted some videos and other resources on Pinterest when he did it, but this time I think I'll put them in a blog post as they are scattered all over my Pinterest pages and are hard to find.

This is a creative narration from a later chapter in the above book:

Art

A painting in acrylics, copied from a photo:

Reading

In case you haven't realised, Moozle is a book gobbler. She reads incredibly quickly, as did Zana, one of her older sisters, but they both have excellent recall, regardless. This week she has been re-reading some of the Billabong books by Mary Grant Bruce plus a whole stack of Patricia St John titles.

  


As I've substituted Australian content for some of the American titles in the Ambleside Online curriculum over the past five years, I haven't worried too much about keeping historical fiction in chronolgical order, especially as all my children have loved reading and it's been hard to keep up with their reading habits. We read books such as John of the Sirius by Doris Chadwick, Stowaway by Karen Hesse and many other Australian titles as family read alouds regardless of what historical time period we were studying. The younger ones listened in as I read to the older ones and picked up so much history on the way. My girls read the Billabong books for themselves as soon as they were able and I didn't wait until they came to the historical time period they were studying before I gave them the books. That said, I haven't found it difficult to supply them with great books for the time periods they study, but it has freed me up in some ways so that I can include classic books other than predominantly Australian titles - from Scotland & New Zealand, for example - over the course of their education.

Benj, Moozle and I have been listening to this Sherlock Holmes audiobook narrated by Ruth Golding on our car trips:

Linking up at Weekly Wrap-up

Looking Back on the Week

This week I listened to an interesting Schole Sister's podcast on leading our children through encounters with viewpoints with which we don’t agree. This is definitely something I've had to grow into over time. When my children were little my concern was mostly about shielding them from  potentially harmful ideas and situations, but as the conversation on this podcast pointed out, there's a difference between innocence and naiveté, and it's important to prepare our children for these opposing viewpoints.

Moozle has been reading the Tom Swift Jr. books by Victor Appleton II. They're out of print but you can read about them here and they're available secondhand.  They're also online at Gutenberg.
A young person's introduction to science fiction, rather than being great literature, this series is interesting for children who have a science bent as Tom dreams up some very interesting inventions. In fact, one of the books, 'Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle,' inspired the physicist and inventor, Jack Cover:

Cover named his invention from a story by the science-fiction writer Victor Appleton that he had loved as a child, called “Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle”, about a boy who invented a rifle that fired bolts of electricity. The acronym TSER however was too much of a mouthful; so Cover added an “a” and the Taser was born.

The Independent, 2009 

A few months ago she lapped up G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown books so I decided that this one, by the creator of Winnie the Pooh, would be a good follow up now that she's caught the 'crime bug.'

The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne was published in 1922 and the author dedicated the book to his father: 

Like all really nice people, you have a weakness for detective
   stories, and feel that there are not enough of them. So, after
   all that you have done for me, the least that I can do for you
   is to write you one. Here it is: with more gratitude and
   affection than I can well put down here.

I stumbled upon it at the library about ten years ago and then found it online and downloaded it onto kindle for free but the only free version I've found when I had a look recently was at Gutenberg.

It's a good introduction to the genre for a young person who isn't ready for writers such as Agatha Christie but who enjoys a bit of mystery and detection.

A poetic narration on The Hobbit:

Benj is busy preparing for possibly his last piano exam which takes place next week. Between this and his two days a week at Augustine Academy, and one half day at his part-time job, he's only been joining us for Devotions, Shakespeare's King Lear and Plutarch's Life of Marcus Cato the Censor.

Aussie Folksongs - this is one we've been listening to. The song is based on the 1897 poem, 'The Lights of Cobb & Co' by Henry Lawson. The poem and some information about Cobb & Co are on this blog and also here.





This is one of a series of CD's that introduces the music and lives of some of the great composers. We've listened to the Classical Kids series (Beethoven Lives Upstairs etc) in the past, which are ok for younger children, but this series is better if older children are also listening in. The story is told in the third person, sticks to the facts, and contains a good selection of the artist's music.

Linking up with Weekly Wrap-up.

Ambleside Online Year 7 - Creative Narrations using Alliteration

Many children write verse as readily as prose, and the conciseness and power of bringing their subject matter to a point which this form of composition requires affords valuable mental training. One thing must be borne in mind. Exercises in scansion are as necessary in English as in Latin verse. Rhythm and accent on the other hand take care of themselves in proportion as a child is accustomed to read poetry.

A Philosophy of Education Pg. 193

Bengy is working through The Grammar of Poetry and I asked him to use write a narration based on the Battle of Bosworth (covered in AO Year 7) using alliteration:

Lesson 23 is on Alliterative Imitation and the student is asked to read some excerpts from Beowulf and then write an alliterative poem with a similar sound and feel. Bengy chose to base his poem on Ivanhoe.

We're not rushing through The Grammar of Poetry but it's been interesting to note that this is my son who would choose to do a poetic narration any day over any other kind of narration but he struggles with the more formalised presentation in this book. I have the older spiral edition which doesn't have a great deal of practice in some sections where it would have been helpful but there is a new version with additional aids that I haven't seen. The book does go in to quite a bit of technical detail on the different types of 'feet' which is probably the hardest part and there are numerous exercises in scansion. I like how the tropes or pictures such as similes, metaphors etc are presented but more ideas for practice would have been helpful. The book is easy to use and so far I haven't seen a book that includes both the writing of poetry and the appreciation of poetry that I like better.
Bengy says of the book: 'Some parts of it are interesting but some I find extremely boring.'

Ambleside Online Year 3 - Shakespeare, Plutarch & Poetic Narration

A few months ago I shared some of Moozle's written narrations inspired by Plutarch. Since then she has continued to do a written narration once or twice a week and has branched out a little from the letter form she started with.
The  first one here is still in letter form but was inspired after our weekly reading and listening to Twelfth Night, which we finished about six weeks ago.

This one was a 'news report' she wrote after we'd read a lesson from Plutarch's life of Crassus. Some poetic license was taken in the 'Consul Spiro Maximus Nero' addition - Spiro and various derivatives of said name have been popping up in all of her Plutarch narrations, regardless of whether the characters are Roman or Greek.

This one was done this morning. She's been keen to do a poetic narration and she asked if she could do one after reading a chapter of Our Island Story. I thought she'd be so intent on making it rhyme that it wouldn't make much sense but I was surprised when she came up with this: 

  

I shouldn't have been surprised because she's been listening to poetry for years and absorbing rhythm, rhyme and the beauty of words and that should translate into her writing at some point but I wasn't expecting it at this stage. Just as I wasn't expecting her to get anything much from Plutarch, either.

The reading of poetry will:

 '...accustom him to the delicate rendering of shades of meaning, and especially to make him aware that words are beautiful in themselves, that they are a source of pleasure, and are worthy of our honour.'

Home Education by Charlotte Mason

Pilgrim's Progress Notebook

Pilgrim's Progress is a wonderful read aloud which suits a broad range of ages. I read it to 4 of my children aged 7 to 17 years of age over a number of months and my 15 year old decided he'd do a pictorial narration. These are some of the notebook pages he did. It got out of order in the way I scanned it but it gives an idea of what he did.

 

 

Encouraging Children to Write - Late Readers

I've been asked at various times what I've done to get my children writing and whether there's a need to use resources to help in the writing process if you are following Charlotte Mason's educational ideas. What I've written here is my own personal experience: what has worked with my own children; what I've learned in the course of teaching various ages, stages and abilities; what I understand of CM's principles and how I've applied them as I've taught my children.

Charlotte Mason recommended that in the high school years, 'some definite teaching in the art of composition is advisable, but not too much, lest the young scholars be saddled with a stilted style which may encumber them for life.'

I know the writing process is a concern for many home educators and those who have had no formal training themselves often feel unequipped for the task. My eldest three children (girl, boy, girl) were comfortable with writing and my main object was to encourage them, provide them with ideas from living books, give them an outlet or audience and work on giving their writing some polish. I'll share some of the ways I did this in another post.

I wanted to concentrate on what I did with my fourth child, Hoggy, in this post. A late reader, he was high school age before he could read well and even then he had difficulty with anything not in story form. I started to panic especially because I was comparing him to his older siblings at the same stage. He was totally different. I tried using different writing programmes, without much success, and then I thought I better do something about his vocabulary and tried using workbooks and other materials to try to make some progress. It was rather miserable for a while.

What I should have done was let him gain confidence and fluency with oral narration and then progress to written narration. He had some visual problems, least of which was short-sightedness and probably tracking issues, plus he is dominantly left handed, but information on these issues wasn't as accessible as it is now so it was trial and error.
I had read Charlotte Mason's ideas but only through the writings of others who had interpreted her but when Hoggy was about 15 years old, I began to read her own words (I started with A Philosophy Of Education) and began to put it into practice. Oral narration was the catalyst for his writing. It was the best thing I could have done.
A few months before he turned 17 years of age I started him on Ambleside Online Year 8 with his 15 year old brother. He completed that year and then six months of work I'd put together using a combination of AO years 10 and 11 after which he started work full time.

I love this quote by A.W. Tozer:

 

'That writer does the most for us who brings to our attention thoughts that lay close to our minds waiting to be acknowledged as our own. Such a man acts as a midwife to assist at the birth of ideas that had been gestating long within our souls, but which without his help might not have been born at all.'

Putting the right books into our children's hands helps them develop their thoughts and ideas and bring them to birth. Oral narration allows a late reader or struggling writer to perceive and articulate ideas without the encumbrance of putting them down on paper until they are at a stage of readiness.

Thoughts disentangle themselves as they flow through lips and fingertips.

Oral narration isn't second rate. It allows thoughts to disentangle themselves and it's difficult work. If you don't believe me, try it.

CM talks about giving our children 'enough work of the kind that from its absorbing interest compels reflection and tends to secure a mind continually and wholesomely occupied.'

There's a tendency to minimise the difficulty of the work we give to a student who's struggling with reading and writing but sometimes we have to act counter intuitively and allow them a mental challenge.  

Once there is fluency in oral narration - and that will come fairly quickly with an older child if they are given compelling and living books to read - they can begin writing their narrations.

Boys often find it easier to use the computer for this and I noticed a marked improvement in the quality of their work if they didn't have to wrestle with handwriting at the same time.

Tozer had another interesting thought:

Perception of ideas rather than the storing of them should be the aim of education. The mind should be an eye to see with rather than a bin to store facts in. 

I realised in my panic that I was focussing on facts rather than ideas. I was cleaning out out under our stairs yesterday and found a notebook Hoggy used for writing stories in when he was 12 years old. He'd been reading everything by G.A. Henty he could find, after he'd weaned himself off the Redwall series (temporarily) and he was inspired to write his own story. Seven years on I have a different perspective and I can see that the books he was reading were beginning to help form his writing. I think I was looking at all the mechanics; his spelling!! etc and I was anxious because I was concentrating on what he couldn't do rather than seeing that he had been absorbing ideas all along.

It took me awhile to wake up to the fact that it was story that inspired him and that he could write decently well if he had a model to work from. As I gave him more of a challenge with books over a period of time his writing improved and he became more articulate generally. Part of the problem was lack of confidence and that came as even he could see a vast improvement.

This is part of his story I found under the stairs. He had a list of characters and a prologue: 

 

 



The story went on for another nine pages.

These are examples of his work after he'd spent time on oral narration:

I got him to read aloud his narrations to me and he'd pick up errors or substitute words if he'd used a certain  word too often. He enjoyed doing various forms of narrations and when we added The Grammar of Poetry during AO 8, he attempted some poetic narrations. I put some of his work on Pinterest. Studied dictation helped with punctuation and spelling, while still using The Spalding Method, which I highly recommend for anyone who finds reading or spelling difficult.

 

 

So in summary the keys were:

Challenging living books
Regular oral narration 
Studied dictation
A wide variety of written narrations
A good spelling programme

Update: I found this website a couple of days after posting the above: Is My Child Just a Late Bloomer? Lists some 'red flags' regarding reading difficulties.

Written Narration Prompts for Reluctant Writers (journey-and-destination.blogspot.com)

Plutarch Narrations from a 9 Year Old

Moozle has been listening in on our Plutarch readings since she was about 7 years old and has often surprised me by jumping in and giving her version of the story. I've just started her on written narrations this week by asking her to write a sentence on something she's read or I've read aloud to her. She wrote a couple of sentences after I read Our Island Story but she really wanted to write a narration based on Plutarch's life of Nicias which we started a few weeks ago. One of her brothers chose to write his narration from the viewpoint of Cleon, the antagonist, and Moozle decided she'd do something similar:

Yesterday I had to go out for a while and when I returned she'd done the work I'd asked her to do under the supervision of one of my older children who was home holding the fort and then she produced three more narrations she decided to write while I was out. (Her enthusiasm was partly because I said she could write in a lecture notepad...)
Last night she showed them to her dad and he read them aloud with a dramatic flourish (keeping the niaces and afears etc. intact).

Today she was still on a roll and came up with this:

We take the child to the living sources of history - a child of seven is fully able to comprehend Plutarch, in Plutarch's own words (translated), without any diluting and with little explanation.

Charlotte Mason, Volume II 

Written Narration Prompts for Reluctant Writers

These are some of the ideas I've used to get my reluctant writers writing. I've gathered ideas over a number of years and I can't remember which were from my head or someone else's so I apologise in advance if the idea was not mine.

Sometimes I let my children choose from the list and sometimes I give them something specific. I've found they each have their preferences eg. my 13 year old likes to write poetic narrations and would only do those if I let him but sometimes I'll ask them to choose a different way to narrate what they know.

I'll add to this list as I come across anything I haven't listed as I have a few lists tucked away on our computer that I can't locate at present. 

I'll start with the choices I think are easier for a reluctant writer to begin with. Sometimes the physical act of writing is difficult and discourages writing. I even found this with one of my teenage boys and found that doing a creative form of a narration was helpful. It was still a legitimate way for him to show what he'd learned.

• Draw a diagram with illustrations about what you've read - works well for science, geography and history.

•  Draw a map of the area you've been reading about.

• Draw a picture from a scene in our current Shakespeare play.

• Write an advertisement e.g. to sell a famous building or ship you've been learning about or to get people to enlist for the war. 

• Write a newspaper article e.g. a front page on the war they've been studying about in history. I give them some poetic license with this as long as they include what they've actually been reading about.

• Write an obituary about the person studied e.g. Genghis Khan or Captain Cook.

• Write a resume for e.g. Napoleon, Hitler or Pericles. 

• Draw or paint the painting you've been looking at for Picture Study. 

• Write a quiz for dad (you have to know the answers to the questions you ask!) The boys enjoy doing this.

• Write five questions you would like to ask e.g. Albert Einstein or Henry VIII. 

• Write a diary entry eg. a day in the life of Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven or William Wilberforce. 

•  Write a poetic narration using the rhythm of e.g. The Destruction of Sennacherib. (Using an online rhyming dictionary is helpful for this)

• Write a description of a bird you've observed and draw it from memory.

• Write a letter e.g. You are a sailor on board the Spanish Armada. Write a letter to your mother describing the condtions on board or write a letter from one character to another; you've just met e.g. Oliver Cromwell. Write a letter to a friend describing what he is like.

• Write a song about a scene or event from e.g. The Hobbit or The Battle of Hastings. You may use a tune from a well known folksong if you like.

• Write a play (or a scene from a play) based on e.g. a section of Plutarch, Shakespeare or an historical event.

• Write a conversation between e.g. Captain Cook and a member of his crew. 

• Compare two historical characters e.g. Stalin and Churchill

•  Re-write a poem as prose - an epic or narrative poem e.g. The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes or Lochinvar by Sir Walter Scott. 

•  Re-write or paraphrase an historical essay or other piece of writing. The Essays by Francis Bacon (1561-1626) work well for high school aged students.

• Our older three children did the SAT exams as part of university preparation & entry and they practiced timed essays using different prompts. They are good practice even if you don't plan on doing the actual exam.  The SAT has changed significantly since then but here are some we used for essay practice: SAT Writing Prompts

      

Narration/Composition

Narration is basically retelling what you've read or had read to you. I call it composition if it's a written narration. If it's some other form eg. a drawing, I  call it a creative narration but they are all forms of retelling and are all valid.

I thought I'd share some ideas I've used to help my children narrate/compose. I'll add notes as I go to explain.

7 year old girl - after listening to a gospel account.

 

And after listening to Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare by E. Nesbit

I didn't know she was doing this one but her brothers were doing their compositions so she decided to do one as well.

 12 year old (just give me the facts) boy.
 

The idea for this narration came from Anne White's Plutarch Study Guide when we were studying Poplicola.

 14 year old boy - an article for a magazine after we finished Longitude by 

 Dava Sobel as a read aloud and a retelling from a chapter in Churchill's History of the English Speaking People.

A creative narration after spending time on Mozart in our composer studies.

 This was done by my son earlier this year when he was 16 years old. He is a maths man, a late reader and always struggled with writing - mentally & physically. I've spent the last few months honing his oral narration and have spent years doing dictation and tearing my hair out over his spelling.

 This is a narration he wrote in the form of a letter after reading a chapter from David Howarth's The Voyage of the Armada.

Gradually, bit by bit his spelling has improved and now he knows a word 'looks' wrong even if he can't work out how to spell it. His punctuation has improved also and I can see an improvement in his writing which I know is a direct result of regular oral narration ie. he comes to me after every reading & tells me about what he's read.

I have to admit that it’s taken me some time to realise the value of oral narration. Maybe it sounded too simple - I don’t know why I thought that when I find it so difficult to intelligently retell anything I’ve read or heard - but I did. 

Maybe it was because my oldest 3 (girl, boy, girl) were natural writers and didn’t struggle in the process that I was led to believe that if my children were readers they would just automatically become writers. 

We’d always done some oral narration, my intent usually being to check if they’ve been paying attention while I’ve been reading aloud, or to check to see if they’d learned something I thought they should have; but I hadn’t used it as a means for them to tell what they knew or what they thought was interesting or important.

Today I asked my son to do a narration in verse form after we'd read from Plutarch. He's just turned 17 years of age and I could tell he enjoyed doing this whereas 6 months ago he wouldn't even have attempted it.

A couple of months ago I read Charlotte Mason's A Philosophy of Education (Volume 6) for the first time and found it very valuable. On page 193 she writes, "Many children write verse as readily as prose, and the conciseness and power of bringing their subject matter to a point which this form of composition requires affords valuable mental training."

She also mentions 'exercises in scansion' (had to look up this word - ie. checking the rhythm) and not long ago I discovered that the The Grammar of Poetry by Matt Whitling has lessons in scansion - I'd only just started this recently with my 15 & 17 year old boys so it will be interesting to see how  these exercises will effect their verse writing down the track.

I've kept  lists of different ideas for writing that I've gleaned from all sorts of places or thought of or which have been suggested by my children but there are a few that seem to work better than others and we tend to stick mainly to those, although I do try to get them to vary things somewhat.

 I also find that if they get too creative and use the computer for graphics and fancy stuff it becomes more of an exercise in using technology as opposed to writing but sometimes with very reluctant writers it helps them to ease into expressing themselves.