Ana Garcia-Moreno spent three days carefully crafting a composition about her grandparents - how much they mean to her and the activities she likes to share with them.

But the exercise wasn't over when the writing stopped. There were corrections to be made - an important part of the writing process at the Calvert School.

So 8-year-old Ana stood quietly in the classroom and watched her teacher, Kathy Agley, go over her 1 1/2 -page essay line by line.

Agley erased the contraction haven't, and Ana replaced it with the words have not. Then Agley explained that sailboat is a compound word, not two words as Ana had written. Holding her pencil between her thumb and two fingers, Ana carefully connected the words.

The editing exercise illustrates the high priority given to writing at the Calvert School, a private institution with an enrollment of about 400 in Baltimore's Tuscany-Canterbury neighborhood.

The school's program is built around a strict writing regimen that leaves room for pupils to exercise their creative impulses. Highly regarded by educators, the program is also used by parents who teach their children at home and by schools around the world.

"Writing is the most important part of teaching at Calvert School," said Merrill S. Hall III, the school's head master. "I'd have compositions in their folders, if nothing else."

Hall said the school has always put a premium on writing and literacy, from the time of the first head master, Virgil M. Hillyer in the 1890s, who wrote books for children.

claqbbertyt"I think it's always been that way," Hall said, pointing to copies of folders, or books, from the early 1900s that contain compositions on topics still being written about today. Even the script looks the same as that used by present-day pupils. "You can see the resemblance," he said.

"Writing also brings in reading and helps organize thoughts," Hall said. "It brings out a higher level of academic work because the writing becomes permanent."

The writing program is among the curriculum materials the school offers to families who home-school their children and to educational institutions through Calvert Education Services, which supplies instructional aids to more than 17,000 students worldwide each year.

'College-level paper'

Sam Stringfield, a research scientist at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at the John Hopkins University and a member of the Baltimore school board, is familiar with Calvert's writing program. He saw it used in the city's Barclay Elementary School.

Each year a pupil's work is put into a book, and each year the writing gets better, Stringfield said. By the time pupils have to draft term papers or reports, writing has become a natural process because of the high academic expectations.

"The [seventh-graders] at Calvert can write a college-level paper," he said.

Cursive writing is taught from the time the children enter first grade - or "7th age" as Calvert School administrators call it, as pupils are grouped by age. They start forming cursive letters in the first week of school and then blend them into a word, a sentence and a paragraph. Within weeks, they are writing.

The style is scripted, but the writing comes from the creative minds of the 7- and 8-year-olds.

"When the students leave Calvert School, they are noted for their written work and how expressive it is," said Sally Carr, principal of the lower school. Calvert includes grades one through seven, with an eighth grade to be added next year.

Refine and rewrite

Hall said that by the middle of 7th age, the pupils are writing modeled compositions with topic and closing sentences. At the beginning of 8th age - second grade - they can write two-page compositions because they have creative thoughts. They also get a lot of positive reinforcement from teachers.

"Knowing how to write a paragraph is a discipline," Hall said.

Carr said that by the time they have reached 9th age, the pupils have enhanced their writing.

"As they do more writing, they learn to refine and rewrite," she said.

The pupils spend a part of every day writing, either working on compositions or their journals. The school invests heavily in its writing curriculum; four years ago, it started a program that uses laptop computers.

"When we went to the laptops, we discovered that the boys were writing more and also proofing their work more," Hall said. "It was a better quality of writing."

Agley and Michele Woods are the two experienced teachers assigned to Ana's classroom, 8-A, with 27 girls. But when it is time to write compositions, Judy Rice, the school's curriculum coordinator, comes in to help.

The compositions are started the same way: The topic goes on the first line; the second line is blank; and the third line is indented, with the pupils leaving two big finger spaces before starting a paragraph. Hall said part of the discipline of learning to write is the repetition.

The three teachers walk up and down the aisles, answering questions about spelling, capitalization and punctuation. They also integrate spelling and grammar into the writing process.

Rice said there are two rules the pupils must follow when writing - they are not allowed to use slang or contractions.

"The students do such a wonderful job," Woods said. "The writing is done systematically, and everybody follows the same pattern."

Mistakes are OK

Woods knows firsthand about the writing program. She attended Calvert School, where her mother worked for 25 years. Her daughters are graduates, too.

"We teach the children that it's OK to make mistakes," Wood said. "That's how they learn to write."

Making mistakes is part of the learning process, but so is the editing that comes later.

That's why every morning between 8 and 8:30, Agley, Woods and Rice spend time correcting mistakes with each pupil. Two teachers read each composition to make sure they have found all the errors.

"That gives us two eyes on everything," Rice said.

Muriel Berkeley, president of the Baltimore Curriculum Project, a nonprofit group that writes curriculums for city schools, described herself as "a fan of Calvert's writing program. They pay a lot of attention to teaching the children to write correctly."

She also praised the attention given to editing.

"Attention on corrections is important because it establishes a work ethic for life," Berkeley said.

Pupils at Calvert are assigned a composition every week that includes topics for the younger students such as wishes, colors, seasons and special people.

One of the recent topics for classroom 8-A was grandparents, chosen because Nov. 27 was Grandparents Day at the school. The compositions were displayed on bulletin boards in the classroom.

Here's what Ana wrote:

Grandparents are very special people who give their grandchildren love. I call my grandparents Gigi, Boompa, and Abuelo. Boompa and Abuelo live far away. Boompa lives in Harbor Island, Bahamas. I see Boompa once every summer. I like to go on his boat with him. Abuelo lives in Mexico City. I see him every other year at Christmas. I enjoy going to the park with Abuelo. Gigi lives far away on her sailboat. I have not seen her in a long time. I love my grandparents because they are always there for me when I need them.