Writing program advice

Well, do you really want my 2 cents?  I have been EXACTLY where you are, and if I could go back and change ONE thing in my homeschooling, it would be to never, ever, ever, EVER do a “writing program”.  EVER.  And DEFINITELY not Writing Strands. A fourth grader does NOT need a writing program.  A fourth grader needs to learn to do written narrations.  I have a long and complicated history that I’ve probably detailed here more than once, but I’ll give you the upshot one more time.  I panicked regularly with my oldest, that copywork, dictation and narration would not be “enough” and that he needed to write more.  So every year or two we’d buy yet another stupid program, spend money, invest time, tears and tantrums–and his writing would be no better and he would, in addition, hate it one exponential degree more.  If you are really interested, ask me about the Zoo Paper, and the Stupid Duckling Story My Mean Mother Made Me Write (Writing Strands assignment, incidentally.)  We tried, I think, FIVE programs before he turned twelve, and all were disastrous flops. 

I want to be very clear.  Written narrations are not the product of a “writing program.”  A “writing program” will not teach a child to do written narrations.  Narration is the building block–out of narration will come the writing, the “composition.”  The other way is to put the cart before the horse.  She’s only fourth grade.  The age at which my chldren have been able to turn out a multi-sentence, relatively coherent written narration is, in order, twelve and a half, twelve, and not yet (eleven and a half.)  If she occasionally writes stories, terrific!  Encourage her.  Hope she has fun with it.  She does not  need a habit of writing stories.  She needs a habit of narration.  How is her oral narration going?  The transition to written narration can be rocky, should be gradual, and takes time.  At first, written narrations will NOT equal oral ones.  That’s OK.  It’s hard work, taken a step up in difficulty.  In my experience, the keys to good written narrations are 1) Enough time to allow handwriting and basic skills like spelling and punctuation, to be relatively comfortable for the child.  It’s HARD when trying to write your thoughts when physical writing is hard.  If there are physical problems preventing writing, then teach the child to type before expecting much in the way of written narration.  2) The right book to narrate.  And this will differ for each child.  The key to my oldest nature-loving son was a book up his alley.  His first “real” written narration after giving me efforts that were basically a collection of bad sentence fragments saying nothing, was the chapter on “ant cows” in the Storybook of Science.  All of a sudden I got TWO pages on ant cows.  And 3) patience from mom!  This WILL take time.  There will be days all your friends’ kids have sheaves of little brainless written compositions and your kid is still turning out “This guy was in a war and he did something.”  Trust the method.  Trust the narration.  Narration is doing a work in your child’s mind that you haven’t even fully realized yet.  There will be a time and a place for helping turn the raw output of narration into different forms, like persuasive essays.  This time is NOT fourth grade for any but the very  most unusual kids.  Focus on the basics.  Make sure spelling, handwriting, basic mechanics and oral narration are going well.  Then begin nudging into written narrations, but consider a year like fourth grade as the very opening year of a multi-year process.  You wouldn’t expect a baby learning to walk to cross the room on the first day, but to take one or two steps before toppling over.  A one-line written narration is the first ‘step” before falling over and she just needs practice.  Just like she eventually crossed the room, she’ll eventually write down what she needs to communicate about what she’s read.  She’ll HAVE to, if the books are right, and if you insist on getting some narrations in written form, because when you narrate that’s how your brain works–you eventually HAVE to put out some “output” or you’ll blow up.  LOL  It’s why grownup CM moms have blogs, or write reviews on Goodreads, etc.–we are narrating.  LOL 

I’m extremely busy and stressed right now, but I wanted to encourage you quickly.

I agree w/above; continue into ILL, dictation, and written narrations, then tackle a little more grammar later. We are doing grammarland and ILL, along w/SW and written narrations (many which come from ILL) this year (4th and 5th gr.).

She’ll be fine.

Rachel

I’m not ignoring you amanda… I just don’t know the answers to your questions…..

Amanda, written narration segues almost effortlessly into other forms of writing.  I myself begin teaching some essay forms in middle school, and then expect regular essays in high school.  But what I teach is really just a “frame” to tack the raw product–the narration–onto to make it conform.  Successful narration, whether written or oral, is exactly the material you’ll use to write essays.  And it takes seriously maybe 30 minutes to teach the essay “form.”  Really.  I like one product that has a very, very gentle step by step approach that didn’t freak my kids out, but if I had a girl or someone who wasn’t sort of frightened by the very idea of what to do, I’d just have one nice session of what an essay is, what the different purposes are, and then give “narration missions” to elicit the form I want.  It’s so easy.  If you read through CM’s writings, she specifically mentions many things that her older students do–like compare-and-contrast, summary, —those are ESSAYS.  Essays growing right out of written narration like a flower blooms out of a healthy plant stalk.  You don’t really, at the very bottom, TEACH writing.  No one really can.  You CAN teach narration.  The child takes in the food of excellent writing for ten or more years, the child practices plentifully in giving back, having something to SAY about what he’s just read, and then you give a tiny bit of guidance (and a nice style manual) and your student does the hard work of writing.  You can teach someone–to write JUST LIKE YOU.  Or just like whoever wrote the program you are using.  But if you want to teach Mary how to write like Mary–you just can’t do it.  Only Mary can do that.  The worst writing I’ve ever read came from people who were taught “how to write” out of books on “writing’ in public schools.  I wish I could communicate to you some of the writing turned in by college freshman in the course I taught, even from kids from the very best schools.  Most of your eight year olds could do better.  I mean that.  There IS no “all they’ve done in the past is narration”  That’s like saying “My child can’t possibly learn how to walk when he’s a year old when all he’s done in the past is play, roll, crawl and use his muscles.  He needs a PROGRAM starting at birth to teach him how to walk.  We have exercises all planned out to teach him how to walk from birth.  It will take at least an hour a day for one year.  Then he’ll walk.”  Wouldn’t that be silly?  Your child kicks his legs.  Then he rolls over.  Then he crawls.  All the time he’s watching YOU walk.  Then one day he takes your hand and balances himself and walks a few steps.  Then he lets go and tries it on his own.  He falls down, you pick him up, and before you know it he’s tearing around the house all on his own, and all with no formal curriculum. 

If “all he’s done in the past” is narration, then he’s done the basic work already, and it needs only to shape and polish, and that’s the easy part.  Your narrations can gradually segue into “narrations with a purpose” and then to essays, and then right on to research papers, and it takes really very little time to TEACH those things (this is not to say it doesn’t take lots of time for your child to DO them–it does!) You can easily address some of the “mechanics” issues easily, on your own, just in the course of reading and commenting on your child’s written narrations, just when it needs to be addressed.  This can be individualized for your child.  Some children don’t even NEED to be taught certain things–there are children who just know what is a complete sentence and what is not, almost from babyhood.  OK.  You don’t teach that.  But you notice she starts every sentence with “Then . . .” so you talk about that, and after a little bit she doesn’t do that anymore.  Then you decide she is getting verbose and using too many unnecessary words, so you find a few examples and show her the difference there, and then after a bit she gets better at that too.  Then you teach her another item, and then another, as they come up in her writing.  It’ll be meaningful and not need a “program” because you are tailoring it to exactly what she needs, exactly when.   Then you teach her that there is a time and a place to break almost all the above rules, but it’s up to HER and the demands of her message.  (See, I even broke one of my own rules here for a purpose!  LOL) 

Don’t want to steal this thread, but I’m struggling with my current writing program (Classical Writing).  It’s so much work and my least favorite subject to teach.  But I hear the results are wonderful….getting kids to really think and form persuasive essays, all based on quality works.  Such a load would be taken off my back if we ‘just did narrations’ with my 12yo 6th grader. And if I could do Analytical Grammar at the rec. pace insted of higher speed to keep up with the writing program.  But I’d feel like a quitter and wonder what I’m missing. It covers so many things I wouldn’t think of/feel confident in, like synonym substitution, author’s emphasis, vocabulary analysis…

Bookworm, if you have time, could you list resources you spefically use to make sure all LA are covered?  I just don’t want to fail in teaching in this critical area.  Thanks:)  Gina

Typing at the same time!  That quote from Susan W. Bauer is EXACTLY what brought me down this path of feeling that I needed to do more with LA than CM suggests.  Scared me.  I still think ‘reams of wretched writing’ years after reading that:)  But I do wonder if those who she comments on who read lots of great books were actually doing written narrations, or just reading great books. Why do I make this so hard?   Gina

I have to hop on into this thread, because this is timely for me.  Sounds like a lot of us have issues and concerns over writing.  My sons are 11 and 9, and we have done, as I’ve said, AO for the last few years, narrating all along.  My ds11 has very well done written narrations.  My ds9 is a struggling writing/speller/etc.  I decided that this year we needed a writing program after some of the things I read.  I bought Writing Strands and looked at it and tried a day or two with my ds11 and it was TERRIBLE for him.  He is a kid who at least sort of enjoys writing, if not at first, after he realizes how cool it sounds in the end.  Writing Strands would have sucked the small joy he gets out of writing away very quickly, so we ditched it.  Then we tried Writing with Ease (using it currently).  I have read the reasons behind the method, and yet I find it very stifling.  My ds9 wanted to tell about these ponies (it was using an excerpt from Misty of Chintoteague (or whatever that name is) and he was describing about how they LOVED the snow.  I had to explain that he didn’t need to tell that, which seemed very strange to me as I was saying it.  I had to make him keep with the bare bones of the story.  “No, son, you may not tell about the frolicking ponies and their first experience with sonw, you must skip that and make sure what you say looks like one of these samples.”  Now that I think about it, how lame is that?  He’s 9!  He shouldn’t have to NOT tell me the wonderful ideas he’s hearing and loving.  I’ve been training him for the last several YEARS to tell me, and now I have to say DON’T tell me that much, it’s not important.  UHG.  I’m so dropping it.  He has plenty of time to learn how to summarize and write essays.  I am going back to my beloved CM writing and we’re going to trust the process.  Thank you, Bookworm, you have helped me more than you can know.  I’ve been struggling with this “writing thing” for a few months now.  I am finally going to be free of it.     I’m sure Susan Wise Bauer has her heart in the right place, but honestly, I think my 11 year old writes better than some high schoolers, and it was NOT because I used a writing program.  It was narrating.  Plain and simple.  And let’s remember, CM does NOT say that just from reading they will be good writers.  She said narrating was SO important that a lesson was almost wasted without it.  I will work on his grammar like she did, going through our grammar book slowly.  Sounds like a plan.