What writing is your 10 year old doing?

My 10yo (turning 11 in November) does italics copywork daily, Simply Spelling 2x a week for prepared dictation, and we are dabbling in written narrations from Aesop. She will begin more formal written narration 1x per week come the new year, which for us starts in three weeks along with copywork daily, KISS grammar 2x and Simply Spelling 2x a week.

Agreeing with all suggestions above.  Another idea, if you haven’t done this in the past, is to have your child dictate his narration to YOU, while you type it up.  You are not expected to type at lightening speed – he has to speak/dictate slowly enough so that you can keep up – and this, in itself is a great learning process.  He is watching on the screen as you type and he is experiencing the process of words-coming-one-at-a-time (he’s thereby forced to take his time getting through each thought/sentence) but without having to painstakingly write/spell each and every word. 

We made amazing progress here when we added this to our school week, once or twice per week, in addition to his one independent written narration.

My ds10 reads a chapter from an assigned literature book and writes a narration daily. His current book is Where the Red Fern Grows. In the past he has done written narrations on Swiss Family Robinson, Pinnochio, Caddie Woodlawn, Baby Island, and Mary Poppins. He did copywork daily until our third term, when I let him stop because his writing was beautiful and his hand was getting tired after doing copywork and written narration. Once per week, he has a creative writing assignment. He does prepared dictation twice per week, but he is now typing those instead of writing them. 

For transitioning to written narration from oral, the best thing to do is just do it. Tell him ahead of time what he’s going to be doing, and then just have him give it a shot. You might get two sentences; you might get two paragraphs! My son’s first written narration was an entire notebook page full! He doesn’t do that everyday, of course, but it’s a nice surprise when he does. It takes a bit of practice to get into it, but truthfully, it wasn’t as daunting as I expected it would be. I now have both children doing daily written narrations and both doing very well, I might add. 😉

I would say that for the first six months to a year of written narrations, just be happy with your child writing down his thoughts on paper. You can encourage him to give more detail or whatever. In my experience, half the battle is just building confidence–and the only way to do that is practice, practice, practice. I know many probably have a very difficult time with transitioning to written narrations, but our experience was not difficult at all. In fact, it was very pleasant, and I look forward to them doing it more next year.

My 10 year old girl is a reluctant writer.  This was a shock to me after two teaching two very writing-oriented older sisters.  Many attempts ended in tears and fretting, which is partially rooted (I think) in her perfectonistic tendencies.  I understand this as I have that tendency as well and am trying to grow out of it!

I backed off of written narrations for a while, allowing her to do most work orally at the beginning of the year, then gradually asked for one or two lines of written narration.  She has made good progress this year.  Her oral narrations are excellent, I think, in that she recalls quite a bit of detail and keeps things in great order with understanding – and she seems to so enjoy doing this.  Her written narrations have improved, too.  She has never written the “novellas” I used to get from her older sisters, but she is putting enthusiasm into her work and giving me a good paragraph or so with each effort.  We are concentrating on content over style at this point, but I think we will be able to move on to more rigorous requirements in the weeks and months ahead.

It sounds like our two are twins, lovinghomeschool!  😉