Teaching Language Arts Through Literature
Brave Writer’s tailor-made Mechanics & Literature programs help you execute your best intentions with regard to:
- grammar,
- spelling,
- punctuation
- and writing mechanics.
These tools feature a quality work of fiction while highlighting passages that assist you in teaching these language arts elements to your kids in the context of real writing.
Real Writing
Sometimes I’m asked if these tools are sufficient for teaching grammar, in particular. What I’ve noticed over the years of home educating five kids myself as well as the thousands of students we’ve now taught through Brave Writer is that the best education for the mechanics of writing is reading real writing. Some parents complain, however, that their kids read a ton and aren’t making the connection between what they read and what they write. It worries them! And of course it does! These are your kids.
Our programs give you the ability to feature language arts elements in the context of great writing! Your kids naturally come to adopt the mechanics of writing in English through the soothing, repetitive practices of:
- reading,
- pondering,
- and copywork.
The power of this methodology came clear to me when my then 14-year-old son, Liam, who struggled a lot with writing (has dysgraphia and was delayed in writing), suddenly blossomed. Copying passages from Redwall (his previous obsession) bore fruit! As he started writing his own reviews of novels he read, the flair to his natural writing voice, his “knack” for punctuation, and his spelling were startlingly accurate. Sure he had some run-on sentences and occasional fragments. We would address those later. But the heart of his writing was pure flair and personality, mixed with terrific spelling and a reasonable grasp of basic punctuation.
I did no formal teaching of grammar with him. I just continued to trust the process of:
- reading aloud,
- reading to self,
- talking a lot about the novels and stories,
- and then copying passages from them.
We haven’t even graduated to dictation yet! Still the results are impressive.
Take a look at Brave Writer’s Mechanics & Literature programs. Download the free samples and try them out. Then if you like them, feel free to purchase a yearly subscription or order Literature Singles based on the individual books you’re reading. You’ll be glad you did.
