Copywork
Early in the year, your student will regularly be completing "copywork" for some of his assigned homework. These assignments are designed to accomplish several things.
First, in the words of author Susan Wise Bauer (The Well-Trained Mind), "When a (student) copies a sentence from Charlotte's Web, he's learning spelling, mechanics (punctuation and so forth), basic grammar (subject-verb agreement, adjective use), and vocabulary from a master of English prose. He'll need all this information in order to write down the sentences he forms in his own head. Jack London learned to write by copying literature in the San Francisco Public Library; Benjamin Franklin learned to write by copying essays from the Spectator. The (student) learns to write by copying great writers."
Second, the passage that your student copies on a given night will be utilized as a springboard from which to launch into the class material on the next class day. In others words, we will use the work he has copied in whatever we're studying in class after he has copied it.
I do not believe in "busy work," and I do not give homework lightly. Please encourage your student (and be convinced yourself) that this copywork is of immense value to him as we work together to improve his writing ability.