Language Arts advice needed for new high school cmer

Hmm.  Well, you have possibilities of some good, challenging literature for her this coming year.  You are feeding her the food.  I think I would take a term or two this year and focus on perhaps some written narration development.  You may need to model this for her a few times, to show her what you want beyond a mere summary.  Both of you read a chapter, and then each of you respond to it in writing and trade papers.  Do this a few times, and then see if it makes any changes in what she does.  And take a few risks in your own responses—write what you read, and your personal reaction to it, and if it reminds you of someone else, or a scripture verse . . . you are trying to show her that making connections is OK, in fact is what you want.  You don’t want to be asking her questions like “What color was the carpet in the dining room?”  or things like that–those questions are pointless and irritating.  But “Why do you think Marianne ends up choosing the Colonel?”–that is an entirely different beast.  Or “Does this chapter remind you of something in the scriptures?”  “Who do you like better, Jane Eyre or Marianne or Eleanor?  Why?”  Nudge her a little–see if you can elicit more info, more analysis, first in discussion and then in writing.  Once you get a fairly good response—-JUMP ON IT.  Take it and ask her a few more questions, develop it a bit more.  And then notice what errors she makes, and teach to those, and have her read it over again and find the mistakes and fix them, polish it up a little.  If she’s not done any written narrations of consequence before, then maybe start out with two or three a week–do a variety of her books.  Include the Mayburys, the history, the lit, etc.  Then in a couple months, consider spending a couple of days polishing one of those up, and when she adapts to that, do SOME writing every day and polish one per week.  Make your goal for this year something like 1) Develop the ability to describe, to analyze, to consider, to explain preference, to posit causality, orally, and then 2) to reflect these in written narrations, and then to begin some rudimentary editing.  Next year, perhaps your goals will be to teach essay form and do a grammar review and learn to thoroughly edit; your third year, perhaps add in a longer research paper (since she is likely college bound) and push her to learn some reasoning skills she can apply to arguments about literature, current events, history, economics, etc.  Does that make sense?  Then break down goals into smaller sections depending on how she progresses.  Perhaps she’ll get something more quickly than you expect, perhaps she won’t.  LMK if you  have questions.  I’ve survived dropping off Son #1 and am ready to get busy now.  LOL

Writers Jungle from Bravewriter really helped me with the modelling and the writing. Take a look at the chapter on Keen Observation, perhaps just start there. Also the communication game may seem like a waste of time but it is critical in getting used to pulling out the right words to communicate properly what you are trying to say. I chatted with Julie who wrote WJ and she suggests just taking it a chapter at a time, and also implementing freewriting. That chapter was interesting to me also. I have a few more years, my dd is entering 8th grade but I got lazy with this one and she has done no writing, barely any written narration and when she does it is often cynical or sarcastic. Yikes- this thread has inspired me to actually sit with her and write, journal, model and communicate. And WJ really did help- its my own fears and inhibitions that hold me back. My older 3 graduated kids just had a conversation last night on fb from their different corners of the world about how cool it would be to write a compilation of all their stories and poems. Music to a mothers ears, and what I did with them was very similar to what Bookworm describes above. I don’t know why I got lazy and went for workbooks with this last one, she deserves more. Good luck and thanks for the discussion!