Question for HollyS

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  • March 7, 2016 at 11:30 am
    Julie
    Participant

    I read a comment you made on the Grammar Philosophy thread, and wanted to ask you a question/opinion.

    You mentioned that you are actually more drawn to classical language arts program than CM. What are your thoughts on the writing part of classical compared to CM?

    And what I mean by that is, for example, Writing With Ease and Writing With Skill the child moves through writing in a systematic way. With CM, the child starts out with written narrations, then moves on from there. I am not very confident when it comes to teaching writing, so I get very concerned that if I follow CM, that my daughters will reach high school and college, then realize that they did not learn some of the important parts of writing because I didn’t follow a systematic way of writing.

    I love the CM way. It just makes sense to me, but there is always that little thing in the back of my mind that makes me think I may mess them up!! lol Maybe I’m over thinking this…!!!!!!

    March 7, 2016 at 12:30 pm
    HollyS
    Participant

    Honestly, I’m not having luck with the CM writing methods with my oldest.  🙁  My DD used to write books as a child…she’d draw the pictures, then write the words (or dictate them to me).  I’m not sure what happened from there.  She quit writing these, and we spent quite a bit of time focusing on oral narrations, so she wasn’t writing during lessons either.  Then we started written narrations, and I haven’t had much success on my own.  She stares blankly at the paper or computer screen, and on a good day, I’ll get a few sentences from her.  I’m finding myself struggling to help her because writing has always come easy to me.  My hope is that my younger DC won’t need quite as much help (and I’ll have more confidence in how to help them) and we can make just written narrations work until high school.

    I actually just purchased WWS 1 to use with her next year for 9th.  The teacher guide is filled with ideas of what to do when they are stuck.  It’s exactly what she needs!  Some moms think it’s overkill for some students, but I hope it gets her going.  However, there are some things I don’t care for with the WWE books.  I don’t like how dictation is done without looking at the words first.  You read a sentence aloud several times, and then have them write it from memory.   Spelling Wisdom makes much more sense to me.  I also think WTM spends too much time on language arts, especially with several children to teach.

    I started ELTL this year and it’s been a nice balance of CM & classical methods.  I like that it gives some guidance for written narrations, moderate grammar for each year, and some writing copia exercises.  She does use prepared dictation, but I prefer the Spelling Wisdom passages, so we just substitute them in.  Overall it feels like a light version of WWE, which is perfect for us.   I’m hoping this will be a good fit in the long run, because I really don’t want to try yet another program!  We are set to continue with ELTL/Spelling Wisdom next year, but I need something else for 9th, hence the WWS.

     

    March 7, 2016 at 1:50 pm
    KeriJ
    Participant

    I’m not Holly, but I wanted to mention that we are using Writing With Skill this year (in 7th grade) for the first time, and it has really worked well for the reasons Holly mentioned above.

    However, as I have been thoroughly going over the new Using Language Well samples, I think there is quite a bit of help in that area also.  Maybe not as much as in WWS, and of course, not covering all of the same material as WWS.  But it looks like Sonya has included quite a bit of help for the teacher when teaching some of the specifics of written narration.  I’m encouraged by that for my future students. 🙂

    March 7, 2016 at 6:04 pm
    Julie
    Participant

    Thanks Holly for the advice. I’m not supper crazy about WWE either. We tried it years ago when we first started homeschooling and we ditched it after a few weeks. I’m really thinking more about WWS 1. My dd will be in 5th next year, but I will not start WWS 1 with her till sometime in middle school. I’m just trying to think ahead and have some sort of plan. 🙂

    March 7, 2016 at 6:10 pm
    Julie
    Participant

    Thanks Keri…Glad to know someone else likes WWS also. We are using ULW 1 this year. We are a little over half way through and we’ve enjoyed it. My daughter LOVES, LOVES dictation! lol

     

    I guess I feel like I may need a little more hand holding when it comes to writing and I’m wondering if ULW will do that. My dd just started written narrations this year, so I’m not expecting full page narrations. I’m more concerned with when we get into all the other mechanics of writing.

     

    March 7, 2016 at 7:44 pm
    HollyS
    Participant

    Keri, I’m glad to here this as well!  I think the teacher guide looks very helpful, but I was a bit worried when I saw how big both books are (think phone book size)!  After going through the introductions and a few lessons, I’m much less worried.  The first several lessons look much like what she’s been doing with ELTL, but with more help for me when she gets stuck.

    I really wish we could have used ULW, but she would need Level 3, which isn’t out yet.  I’m curious to see what will be covered in the upper guides.

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