Grades 4-6 Wordsmith: Apprentice Ebook

Wordsmith Apprentice was created with two basic purposes in mind:
1) To supplement and apply grammatical principles. Many students learn punctuation, parts of speech, and basic sentence structure as workbook "exercises" but don't necessarily see the relevance to actual writing. Every grammatical principle taught in Wordsmith Apprentice will be applied to several unusual exercises and at least one writing project, reinforcing the idea that there's a reason we learn this stuff!
2) To introduce the student to several types and purposes of writing, in an imaginative way that will create enthusiasm for the subject. The newspaper theme provides a practical, relevant format for exploring the many ways we use the written word.

All the practicality, humor and fun of Wordsmith, but written for the younger student, ages 9-12. An easy to use writing course encouraging students to develop their writing skills as they participate in every role on a newspaper staff: editor, reporter, writer, etc.

Children develop a love for writing as they express themselves through sentence and paragraph writing, persuasive writing, and much more.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

PART ONE: NOUNS, VERBS AND SENTENCES

Nouns
Principles taught: how to recognize nouns by "noun markers" (articles); the difference between proper and common nouns; the importance of specific nouns over general ones.
Projects: "For sale" ads, cinquain and other types of "form" poetry
Verbs
Principles taught: the difference between action, helping and linking verbs; preferring vivid actions verbs
Projects: "Help wanted" ads, action poetry, writing definitions
Sentence structure
Principles taught: the two basic sentence forms; subject and predicate; compounding; the four sentence types
Projects: picture captions; invitations; letters; newspaper headlines
 
PART TWO: MODIFIERS

Adjectives and adverbs
Principles taught: how to recognize adjectives and adverbs and how they are used
Projects: games and word puzzles; diamante poems
Prepositions
Principles taught: what prepositions are and how they are used
Projects: expanded picture captions, display ads, real-estate ads, travel writing, book reviews
 
PART THREE: ORGANIZING AND REPORTING

Paragraphs
Principles taught: recognizing topic sentences and sentences that don't belong; good organization
Projects: recipe writing, household hints, writing synopses for movies and TV shows, organizing a contest
Reporting
Principles taught: the five "W's" (who, what, when, where, why), plus "how"
Projects: fictional and actual news stories
Dialogue
Principles taught: what dialogue is and how it is represented on paper
Projects: comic strips
Introductory sentences and paragraphs
Principles taught: what makes an interesting "hook"
Projects: writing original articles from pictures; interviews
Fact and Opinion
Principles taught: the difference between reporting and opining; steps to writing an opinion piece
Project: editorials

SEE SAMPLE PAGES: HERE

GRADE LEVEL: 4-6