Writing program advice

Amanda, Susan Wise Bauer is a very smart lady and she’s done a lot of good for homeschooling.  She doesn’t, however, understand exactly how CM methods work, and she has a philosophical viewpoint different from mine.  I’ve read a number of her books, and in fact we followed TWTM for a year (a miserable year!) before we began switching.  It’s a complicated subject, but in my opinion CM much better described and fit my children than did TWTM.  So I don’t really pay much attention to her.  I do agree with her that most writing by new college students is atrocious; I differ with her in the idea that prescribing lots of rule-laden writing assignments at a young age will help with that. 

One thing she charges is that CM (she is taking on Catherine Levison, here, specifically of course–and Levison’s writings are very, very helpful but very BRIEF and IMO more info is needed to get the most of of the CM philosophy).  One thing she says is that JUST reading good literature won’t necessarily make a good writer.  Well, yes.   That is true.  But that’s not at all what I was suggesting.  I’m suggesting reading, NARRATION, copywork, dictation, and incidental instruction in a variety of topics as they come up in writing.  That is NOT at all the same as “just reading”–in fact, this is a full and very busy course of action that occupies my three boys during LA time quite well.  I personally find that lots of “short, skill-building assignments” assigned at young ages produce children who are really good at—short, skill-building assignments.  This is ALSO not at all the same as “writing”  I ABOLUTELY agree that tossing in a kid in junior high and telling him to write an essay is unfair and likely to be unproductive.  HOWEVER, I believe that the HARD part in high school writing is in HAVING SOMETHING TO SAY.  CM students who care about and interact with the material they read have something to say.  Kids drilled in grammar and “skill-building assignments” often have nothing to say beyond the fact that they hate grammar and skill-building assignments.  I’d a hundred times rather take a 14yo who has opinions and passions and ideas and can’t punctuate, use parallel phrases correctly and mistakes “lay” and “lie.”  I can fix that in fifteen minutes.  I CAN’T do much with a kid who has great grammar but has no opinion at all on what happened to David Copperfield.  I’d also personally consider a child who can fluently tell me what Heidi just did, and saw, and felt, but who did not compose an “essay” about it yet, to be years ahead of a child who can only “summarize” and has lost all the heart and passion and sensory detail of the passage. I think it is harder to express your thoughts than it is to conform to all the little “rules”.  When I write, I write it all down first.  THEN I revise.  In that process, I fix my errors.  My thoughts are down.  Now I can concentrate on the form.  And it is NOT hard to teach this.  Does it take some instruction and some practice?  Sure.  But it is  NOT unduly difficult and one could spend half an hour a week with a ninth grader who owns and can use a style guide and get it done.  One does not have to begin learning it in the second grade.  Were that so, I’d have been sunk because until I was a junior, I had NO effective writing instruction at all.  I read a lot (not always great literature) and I’d had one semester of formal grammar (in the ninth grade).  But I sure had a lot to say!  (I’ve changed so much )  A kind teacher spent a little time with me polishing up my pieces and I did well, in high school, college, grad school, and beyond into real life. 

I am so glad I chose another way for my sons.  I just had the funniest time today going over a writing piece with my 15yo.  He wrote the FUNNIEST account of a summer hiking trip he took in Colorado.  He had a GREAT paper.  We spent about twenty minutes fixing a few technical problems and he has a very nice piece.  He’s still not doing great at paragraphing.  But that is so easy to discuss with him.  He and I both simultaneously “paragraphed” his paper to see if we did it the same, and decide how to do it.  (he wrote one big paragraph.)  THAT was easy.  I’m glad I have a kid with a great sense of humor, who can read an essay (he read one by James Fenimore Cooper, based on Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler) and then find something from his own life to say about it.  We’ve done short courses on grammar and on essay form in junior high, and we continue now (he’s a sophomore) to go over further issues as they come up, like the paragraphing.  He didn’t need to have it banged into his head at 10.  In fact, if I’d have spent those years banging in grammar and writing rules, maybe he wouldn’t have the fund of vocabulary, experiences, humor, and previous models that he drew on to write this paper.  Just something to think about!

Bookworm, this has me laughing out loud… “(I’ve changed so much )”

I for one want to thank you for everything you have said here on this thread. You were gracious in your comments about SWB, and I appreciate that. But you were very persuasive in your arguments against what she says. That is important to me because I have been somewhat swayed by her in the past. Now I feel I have clear, sound reasoning for WHY we choose do language arts the CM way, not the SWB way. I know it must have taken some time to write it all out. I’m grateful to you. 🙂

~Jenn

Just wanted to thank you all for your very helpful posts! This is the subject area which gives me the most angst. Very encouraging.

Thanks again,

Olivia

Thank you, Bookworm, and everyone else for your insight into this area.  I’m feeling a shift to maybe jump the writing program boat.  It feels freeing, if I can get the full confidence to do it:)

Bookworm, what do you use to teach essay form in Jr. Hi.?  Any insights into what to use in h.s. for essays, persuasive papers, style?  Thanks for any input.  I’d sure love to start next week without so much grammar/writing stress….and so would my daughter, I’m sure:)  Blessings to you all, Gina

Thanks, Michelle….that’s very helpful.  I have a lot to think and pray about now!  Blessings, and thanks for all your time:)  Gina

I’m chimming in after reading and enjoying this thread! I want to say thank you as well for all the wisdom that has been shared! My dd is only in first grade, but I have rolled around the whole “writing program” thing for a while and this thread has definetly helped me out!! 

LOL, Heather, if it makes you feel any better, when  my ds had just turned eleven, I was using a program emphasizing writing about what interested the child. We went to the Omaha Zoo, and ds was over the moon with joy.  He chattered ALL the way home (4+ HOURS) about what we saw and did and what he thought.  This’ll be easy, I thought–he’ll LOVE to write about what he saw!  Monday morning, I hand him a sheet of paper.  We title it “Our Trip to the Zoo” and he goes downstairs, comes back twenty minutes later with this:  We went to the zoo.  (Picture the look on my face here.)  So I explain that I want him to tell all about what we DID at the zoo.  Twenty  minutes or so later, he comes back with this:  We went to the zoo.  We saw some animals.  (Grrrr!)  So I emphasize that I want him to tell me all about how he FELT.  Thirty minutes later he comes back with :  We went to the zoo.  We saw some animals.  It was fun. (If you heard some strange knocking sounds one day back in 2004, it would have been my head hitting the wall after that one.)  That same kid eventually turned in a persuasive paper that convinced me to ditch The Age of Fable, wrote a children’s guide to keeping reptiles as pets, wrote an impassioned history of the Linux movement, and gave me a paper last year evaluating Thanatopsis that was better than one I did in college.  He’s currently put aside a research project trying to convince me that Pearl Harbor was intended by they US.  He’s working on admissions essays now.  As Janell mentioned–they DO grow.  They change.  You may think they are impossibly shallow, just “not getting it” and terribly behind, and then one day you get this flash and you think “This is my kid?”