Writing: Ancient History-Based Writing for Form 3 – Bluebonnet Home Scholars Collaborative

Subject(s): English

Description:

The Ancient History-Based Writing class, which will be specifically geared for our Form 3 students, will move at a faster pace and with more advanced assignment extensions especially geared for Form 3 students (generally grades 7–9). This class will be ideal for students who might fall between Form 2 writing levels and the more advanced Essay & Creative Writing class, and for students who would benefit from review of essential writing structures and stylistic techniques to build a solid foundation for later high school composition.

Using popular, parent-approved, and widely-loved curriculum from the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW), this class will provide excellent preparation for more advanced BHSC composition courses.

Students will participate in activities aimed to inspire a love of words, sentences, and word-play. With the support of guided group discussion, brainstorming, and critique, students will learn to write with appropriate structure while enlivening their prose with stylistic flare.

Ancient historical characters, events, and stories will captivate students as they learn to write with structure and style. Students will take notes, summarize narrative stories, write from pictures, put together a research report on a historical person or event, and compose creative essays.

Over the course of the year, students will gain a growing awareness of sentence structure and grammar that goes hand-in-hand with their growing ability to amplify and manipulate the parts of a sentence. We will focus on developing vivid vocabulary and sentence variety in a range of compositions including both fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

In addition to weekly class sessions, students should plan to spend another one to three hours each week completing assignments at home.

Materials:

Families will need to purchase the following curricular materials for the 2026–2027 school year, before the start of class:

Student Copy of Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons (IEW) or Ancient History-Based Writing Lessons (Rainbow Resource)
Worldly Wise 3000 3rd Edition Student Book 7 OR Book 8 OR Book 9 (based on preference/ability, or which book may have been previously completed)
Wordly Wise 3000 3rd Edition Book 7 Answer Key OR Book 8 Answer Key OR Book 9 Answer Key (based on preference/ability, or which book may have been previously completed)
For grammar, pick one of the two options below:

Grammar Option 1:

Easy Grammar Plus: Student Book ISBN: 9780936981147
Easy Grammar Plus Student Test Booklet ISBN: 9780936981536
Easy Grammar Plus: Teacher Edition (with answer key; one time purchase per family) ISBN: 9780936981130 (You can buy in a set with the 2 other required Easy Grammar books to save!)

Grammar Option 2:

Jensen’s Punctuation ISBN: 9780890519943 (if Easy Grammar Plus was previously completed)

Families will also need to secure the following supplies before the start of class: (Linked brands are suggestions.)

Pens, black ink, 2 or more
Pencils, 3 or more, pre-sharpened and ready to use
Colored pencils, erasable, including red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, and brown
Erasers
Dedicated 3-ring notebook binder with tab dividers (binder will be used exclusively for Writing class)
Three-hole punch and stapler (kept at home; used by students to prepare assignments for submission)
Dictionary & Thesaurus—for home use. Consider apps such as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and English Thesaurus.
Recommended/Optional: Reinforcing stickers for strengthening/repairing holes in notebook paper and handouts

Students will also need to be able to type, print, and email assignments using a sharable word processing program such as Microsoft Word.