At Free World U, we are committed to improving our students’ writing abilities in a manner that is authentic, realistic, and supportive of students’ individuality. We live in an age in which written communication is an ever-increasing presence in our lives. From email to social networking to texting, writing permeates our lives. We strive to help our students be proficient writers, ready to embrace the era in which they live and comfortably write anything from a quick email to a thoughtful position paper.

The Daily Writing Program of the Free World U accredited school combines frequency with high-interest topics to improve student writing in an individualized and enjoyable manner. Students are required to write frequently in their journals, working together with their teacher to find topics of interest. Much of the student writing is ungraded, allowing a low-pressure approach to gaining comfort with writing. For assignments to be graded, clearly defined goals are laid out in customized rubrics. Additionally, a student’s teacher may give a prompt and/or a writing goal for these assignments.

The Student Daily Journal is accessed via the Registered Students main menu tab. It is only accessible to logged-in students of the accredited school. Each journal entry has two text boxes, one for the student’s entry and one for the teacher’s response.

Any prompt (e.g. a topic the student is requested to write about), a writing goal (for example specifying for the student to use transitional words like “then,” “although,” and “afterward”), and/or a rubric that has been added will be visible to the right of the text box. If none are present, the assignment will not be graded and the student may write about any topic. Teachers will select writing submissions to be included in the student’s portfolio which may be accessed by students, parents, and teachers and functions as a means of keeping writing samples and demonstrating student progress. The student may type and edit directly into the text box or copy and paste from a word processing program. Clicking Save at the top or bottom of the page submits and stores the journal entry.

Below is a sample Student Daily Journal. The top entry shows an assignment that will be graded and has not yet been worked on, evidenced by the blank text boxes (due September 10, 2010), an assignment that was scored using a rubric and added to the student’s portfolio (September 9, 2010), one that was graded but not included in the portfolio (September 8, 2010), and an entry that was not graded.