I’ve gotten several requests regarding how to use the progymnasmata exercises.
The first place I’d begin is with this little book : The Writer’s Workshop: Imitating Your Way to Better Writing
This book will give very specific examples of how to approach writing by imitation. The exercises will be over a child’s head. This is not for them, it is for you.
Next: I’ve given a detailed list of when we will begin the exercises of the progym. When we are reading books or stories in any subject I am always on the lookout for examples to use as an assignment. Great descriptions of people and places, great speeches, favorite stories for retelling. I keep them in folders for each progym exercise.
In pre-k through 3 we read copious amounts of fairy tales, folk tales, myths and fables. I don’t like to read just one author. We will read different versions and retellings and then compare them. We do this even if we aren’t using the story for the progym. But if we are using a story for the progym then we will definitely read several accounts. You should be able to discuss with your child the differences in the stories. I’d ask questions about what makes different versions more or less likeable. There is no right or wrong answer. This is to get them to think.
Next, go over any vocabulary the child doesn’t know. This is where I’d get out a thesaurus and look up synonyms. This is purely so the child begins to grapple with the nuances of language. You might look up the words and some of the synonyms in a dictionary so you can help the child to determine if other words would have worked in the situation or what words came up as synonyms but don’t work at all in the context. This is where you’d also go over words that might be a spelling hazard and write them down.
Next – make an outline of the story. It should include people, places and events. A child should be able to look at the story and retell it from the outline. But it should not include every detail.
Last – retell the story.
In kindergarten – early 2nd grade this is where you finish. If my child is doing all his own writing – I am going to check for spelling mistakes on the rough draft and then write them in a spelling notebook. These should be studied and tested later on. Most spelling mistakes are from laziness. When my son realized that he was going to have to write the words 20 times, give me the spelling rule for the word, and then be tested, his spelling improved dramatically. We are also checking for proper grammar.
The final version – this should be written in the child’s best hand writing if the child is doing all the writing and kept in a notebook.
When the children are ready you can change things up a bit. Cut the story down to 50 words. What happens when you do this? Can you really shorten the story this much? Think of other stories that are similar to this one. Even if the plot of the story is common how does it change when we add different elements. Find stories that share the same plot and compare them. Now take the plot and rewrite the story with different characters in a different time. Rewrite the story as a newspaper article. Retell it from a different point of view.
I give out one assignment a week. In middle and high school it depends on the assignment. You will probably want to get a decent Rhetoric book then or go to a curriculum. I like Farnsworth 's Classical Rhetoric. It is not a curriculum rather, it is a list of rhetorical devices with lots and lots of examples of excellent writing. I looked through Classical Composition stuff and it looks good especially for the older grades. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student is very good. There is a lot of good stuff out there.
When you get to the proverbs, invective, confirmation and refutation I just went through what we had read or heard about in the news. I might search the internet to see if someone has picked it apart. This will help me get a different point of view. Discuss the writing and follow the the previous format. And then apply the same style of argument to a different subject. Maybe here is where you want to think about a curriculum. Now that I think about this, there is a lot I just can’t explain – you are going to have to have a decent grasp of rhetorical devices and how to make arguments.
Descriptions: We love literature and stories in our house. My son and I have always found great joy in sharing descriptions we find in books. I’ll photocopy sections and put them in a folder for use later. What makes a good description? How does the use of words create mental images? What kind of mental images is the author trying to create by using this description.
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud
to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in
anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold
with such nonsense.
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty,
wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor
yet a dry sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat:
it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. . . . This hobbit
was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The
Bagginses have lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time
out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not
only because most of them were rich, but also because they
never had any adventures or did anything unexpected.
Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which
made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck,
although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs. Dursley was
thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck,
which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time
craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The
Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion
there was no finer boy anywhere.
The mother of our particular hobbit—what is a hobbit? I
suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they
have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They
are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller
than the beared dwarves. Hobbits have no beards. There is little
or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort
which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large
stupid folk like you and me come bludering along. . . . They are
inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours
(chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet
grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the
stuff on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown
fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs
(especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they
can get it).
The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a
secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover
it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out
about the Potters. Mrs. Potter was Mrs. Dursley’s sister, but they
hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Dursley’s pretended she
didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing
husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The
Dursleys shudderd to think what the neighbors would say if the
Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters
had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy
was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they
didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that.
As I was saying, the mother of this hobbit—Bilbo Baggins, that is—was
the famous Belladonna Took, one of the three remarkable daughters of
the Old Took, head of the hobbits who lived across The Water, the small
river that ran at the foot of The Hill. It was often said (in other families)
that long ago one ofthe Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife. That was, of
course, absurd, but certainly there was still something not
entirely hobbit-like about them, and once in a while members
of the Took-clan would go and have adventures. They discreetly
disappeared, and the family hushed it up; but the fact remained
that the Tooks were not as respectable as the Bagginses, though
they were undoubtedly richer.
When Mr. and Mrs. Dursley woke up on the dull, gray Tuesday
our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside
to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be
happening all over the country. Mr. Dursley hummed as he
picked out his most boring tie for work, and Mrs. Dursley
gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into
his high chair. None of them noticed a large, tawny owl flutter past the
window.
J.K. Rowling
By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of
the world, when there was less noise and more green, and the
hobbits were still numerous and prosperous, and Bilbo Baggins
was standing at his door after breakfast, smoking an enormous
long wooden pipe that reached nearly down to his wooly toes
(neatly brushed)—Gandalf came by. Gandalf! If you had heard
only a quarter of what I have heard about him, and I have only
heard very little of all there is is to hear, you would be prepared
for any sort of remarkable tale. Tales and adventures sprouted up
all over the place wherever he went, in the most extraordinary
fashion. . . . All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning
was an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a
long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which his long white beard
hung below his waist, and immense black boots.
J.R.R. Tolkien
The above examples are wonderful descriptions and also mirror themselves. We used these excerpts for an assignment in 6th grade. How are these examples the same, different? What are they trying to accomplish? How do they set the stage for the stories? What are some of the best phrases? The list of things to discuss are endless. It is best if your children can discover this on their own with guidance from you. The assignment was to make a character description of someone he knew based on one of these models. It had to be the same number of paragraphs. It should sound similar. He could add other characters to help round out the assignment, but one of characters had to be someone he knew. You don’t assign this until a child has gotten used to taking these exercises and adding his own spin to them.
If you are starting with an older student, I would start at the fable stage and work up to the point you feel you need help and can’t do it anymore. A lot of time should be spent on those early exercises as they are putting lots and lots of material in their storehouse for later use. When I said one assignment a week, I meant one fully written composition a week. So, We would start one Monday and read the story and do the vocabulary work. On Tuesday we’d outline it the story. On Wednesday we’d work on a rough draft. Thursday correct it and then rewrite and turn it on Friday. This is not how it always worked. Sometimes we’d spend half a day on writing. If I want the child to then turn it in as a newspaper story I’d give a couple more days to do that. If we are spending some time with the story and doing multiple things with it, then there might be 2-3 compositions in a week.
Honestly, the place I would start is The Writer’s Workshop. It does an excellent job of walking through writing by imitation and how to do it, plus exercises that I haven’t discussed as it would take a book. You could get through most of elementary school using that book alone as your guide.
