Six Free Lessons

When we want to learn how to improve our tennis serve, we watch videos of Serena Williams. When we want to learn how to shred the guitar, we listen to Jimi Hendrix. And when it comes to learning how to ride a bicycle, we turn to Mom or Dad. We go to the experts.

And when we walk around the classroom discussing great literature, we are holding hands with an expert. Maybe it’s J. K. Rowling, or John Steinbeck, or Tara Westover, or Elie Wiesel. My favorite was Jack London, and the book was The Call of the Wild.

As my ninth graders and I tromped through the snow, searching for gold, we discovered something even more valuable—great sentences. By the time we finished, in addition to the obligatory discussion of theme, character, and conflict, we had selected 17 beautifully constructed sentences, with a focus on the use of free modifiers. The final assignment was to take three of those sentences, dump out his words, and write in their own. If he used an absolute phrase, they use an absolute phrase. Imagine it's page 50 of a 250-page story. 700 words. Due Tuesday.

On Tuesday, they each chose two of the Jack London sentences to read to the class. Talk about pride. They had never written like this before. They even let their parents read it. Unheard of.

Well, I have given away the first secret of these writing lessons: real authors. You will see hundreds of sentences throughout the lessons, almost all of them taken from well-known books of all types. As one of my students commented, "It's like learning how the magicians do their tricks." They learn that a close look at the reading will teach them the writing. They will have greater confidence, broader imagination, and a deeper vision of the possibilities in their writing than they have ever had before.

So now, I might as well tell you the second secret: commas. I firmly believe that the secret of great writing is the comma. Here’s what I mean. At the end of a simple sentence, you could put a period. But instead, put a comma. Suddenly you are launched into another level, and that’s where you find Free Modifiers. They are free because they have escaped the restraints of the main clause. (Jack London loves absolute phrases.)

Before I go further, let me tell you about myself. My name is Don Stewart, and I taught English at a private all-boys school outside Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to my decades of classroom teaching, I founded and taught the Write for College summer program for 24 years to students from over 60 towns in the Boston area. Two hours each day, for three weeks.

The lessons here are exactly the ones that I used in my Write for College summer course. The three weeks followed the same structure, with Sentences in the first week, then Paragraphs, then Essays. The progression is both logical and flexible, able to be delivered in those three weeks, or a semester, a year, or even spread over the complete span of grades 9-12.

This "Free Product" includes the first three lessons of the 25-lesson Sentences section. Also included are three additional lessons, taken from the Paragraphs and Essays sections. I hope that, together, they will give you a feel for this unique approach that actually teaches the students how to write.

All of the products are delivered as ebooks and can be viewed using apps such as Thorium, or your choice of reader from Google or Adobe.

Please feel free to reach me directly at don@writingwhatever.com.

Donald Stewart

P.S.: The cost for my Write for College summer course was $875. Here, the Complete course is $247. We can also help you install Complete on your school's LMS, making it available to all. don@writingwhatever.com