Praeexercitamina: Invention through Imitation at Sts. Peter and Paul School

Developing the art of writing can pose a difficult task, particularly in knowing where to begin. This difficulty is further compounded when teaching the skill to young minds who often believe writing to be taxing and more tedious than enjoyable. However, writing is one of the most human and celebrated forms of expression. Everyone enjoys a good story, so it seems problematic that despite our natural inclination toward writing, so many are at a loss as to how to write themselves. Some schools foster creativity by doing away with boundaries and parameters, believing that they "hinder a student's self-expression." It is as if, rather than actually teaching the skill, teachers expect it to already be present in their students. At Saints Peter and Paul, we take a more vibrant approach, one employed by great writers from Cicero and St. Augustine to St. John Henry Newman and John Milton; it is called the praeexercitamina.

The praeexercitamina, or "preliminary exercises," is a model of writing rooted in the classical world and handed down through the Latin tradition to prepare students for writing and public speaking. Its foundational principle is that imitation precedes invention. A common pitfall in today's education is encouraging students to be creative but failing to provide them with good examples of writing. Being exposed to great pieces of literature—and, for us, above all to Sacred Scripture and the lives of the saints—is the catalyst for composing our own works of art.

At Sts. Peter and Paul School, every lesson begins by setting a worthy text before the students to inspire awe and wonder. After reading it, the class is guided through a discussion of the characters and the moral or meaning of the story. Students then play with the sentences, which is as fun as it sounds. They are given a sentence from the text, we discuss its quality, and then they imitate it—first substituting words with synonyms and noticing how the sentence changes, then rearranging the word order, and finally using a skill called "copiousness" to add details and descriptions to the original. With a strong example laid before them, students craft their own ideas and, even more, share those ideas with the class, which inspires the other students. Often our last task is to change the point of view, so that a familiar story is told through new eyes.

What changes from grade to grade is the text we imitate and the skill we emphasize. We draw our models from the Bible, the psalms, and the lives of the saints, choosing each for the age and heart of the child so that, as their writing matures, so too does their faith.

Here are some examples of praeexercitamina applications ordered to grade level:

Kindergarten. We begin with the life of St. Francis of Assisi—his preaching to the birds and his taming of the wolf of Gubbio. The story is short, full of wonder, and beloved by the very young. Here the emphasis is on oral narration and retelling: children learn to put a small story in order and to imitate a single simple sentence aloud before they ever set it on paper. A child might take the sentence Saint Francis spoke to the birds and, changing just one word, offer Saint Francis sang to the birds.

First Grade. Students read the account of Creation from Genesis. Its ordered, repeating structure—"And God saw that it was good"—gives young writers a pattern they can hold onto. They imitate that pattern, substituting their own words and watching how a sentence can be built and varied while keeping its shape. From the refrain And God saw that it was good, a student can build And God saw that the bright stars were good.

Second Grade. As our students prepare for their First Holy Communion, they read the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, when Our Lord fed the five thousand. The lesson dwells on synonyms and the beginnings of copiousness: students add sensory detail to the scene—the crowds, the baskets, the bread—learning that a few well-chosen words can make a story vivid. A plain sentence such as Jesus fed the crowd with the loaves and fish grows, through synonyms and added detail, into Jesus took the five small loaves and the two fish, blessed them, and fed the hungry multitude.

Third Grade. Students read the famous parable of the Prodigal Son, a tale of forgiveness and a father's love. Though most are familiar with it, a closer reading lets them see it with fresh eyes and apply its depth to their own lives. Here we work on copiousness and changing word order, and we end by changing the point of view—asking the children to retell the story from the older brother's perspective and to feel how that shift changes everything. The sentence The father ran to his son and embraced him might first gain detail—Seeing him still far off, the father ran down the road and threw his arms around his ragged son—and then change speakers entirely: I watched from the field as my father ran to welcome my brother home.

Fourth Grade. With the account of David and Goliath, students take up a heroic narrative in which the small and faithful overcome the great and proud. The skill in focus is description: painting the scene, sizing up the giant, and building suspense so that the reader leans forward, waiting for the stone to fly. A bare sentence like David threw the stone and struck the giant becomes David swung the sling once, twice, and let the smooth stone fly until it struck the towering giant full on the brow.

Fifth Grade. Students turn to the psalms—Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of God." Poetry asks more of a young writer, and here we practice imitating imagery and the parallel lines of Hebrew verse, teaching students to describe the created world as the psalmist does: as a sign that points back to its Maker. Imitating the line The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands, a student may compose a couplet of his own: The mountains shout the majesty of God; the rivers whisper the work of his hands.

Sixth Grade. Students read of the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus, a fitting text for a school under his patronage. This dramatic account of a persecutor struck blind and remade invites the exercise of impersonation: students write the moment from within, as Saul himself or as Ananias sent to him, learning to give voice to a heart in the midst of change. Where the text reads A light from heaven flashed around him, and he fell to the ground, a student writing as Saul might render it Suddenly a light brighter than the noonday sun blazed around me, and I fell trembling to the dust, my eyes gone dark.

Seventh Grade. Students study the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. Their balanced, parallel structure—"Blessed are the..."—is a master class in rhetoric. Students imitate that structure and then expand a single saying into a short reflection, learning to unfold a brief and weighty maxim into fuller prose. Modeling the line Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy, a student can frame a beatitude of his own—Blessed are the patient, for they shall be given peace—and then unfold it into a paragraph on what that promise asks of us.

Eighth Grade. As a capstone, our oldest students compose an encomium, a formal speech of praise, modeled on St. Paul's hymn to love in his first letter to the Corinthians and on the classical tradition of the form. Fittingly, they often write in honor of our patrons, Sts. Peter and Paul. Here the earlier exercises come together: narration, description, imitation of structure, and a mature sense of how to move and persuade a reader toward what is good. Borrowing the cadence of Love is patient, love is kind, a student praising St. Peter might write Peter was bold, Peter was faithful; he did not waver at the last, nor count the cost of the cross.

Thus, when learning to write well, students begin by reading good writing. Imitation is not the antithesis of creativity; it is its foundation. We are created in the image and likeness of God, and so we are by our very nature imitators who long to imitate Him, the one true Creator, through our own created works. The saints themselves became who they were by imitating Christ. Our patrons remind us of this daily: Peter the fisherman and Paul the persecutor were each remade by grace into apostles whose words still form us. When our students imitate the great texts of our faith, they are learning far more than a craft—they are being shaped within a long tradition of holiness and beauty. All for the greater glory of God!