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Writing, fitting it in
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I’ve basically done CM from the beginning, but I feel like the writing portions (copywork, narration) have gotten dropped more often then not. Copywork has gotten dropped so many times because the kids are using handwriting books. And as I’ve had more kids, I’ve moved to more get-r-done options. This year science and history, the areas the kids could narrate, are frequently dropped because all my time is taken with covering the three R’s with three kids. My oldest is 10 and should be starting written narrations. How do I add these things in without overwhelming my kids?
Ideally, my 10yo should be doing:
copywork and studied dictation
beginning grammar
oral narration
one written narration per week
instead, he’s doing
hwot cursive workbook (I can’t see dropping this, this is how he’s learning cursive)
all about spelling (this includes dictation, but it’s not great literature. He learned to read with only the most basic of phonics instruction. So I’m using AAS to fill in any holes. He will do levels 3-4 this year. This is not independent, I’ve been considering switching him to R&S spelling instead.)
climbing to good English (I am using this behind grade level. This is only one page per day and independent. I’m using it to cover grammar.)
oral narration on science/history 0-2x a week
oral narration on his personal reading… I try to remember to ask him about this, but often forget
written narration once in the first two months, it was only three sentences
I think adding more of the CM LA on top of what he’s already doing would be too much, but have a hard time knowing what to drop/what to add.
My 8yo is doing:
hwot
all about reading 2 (she has been my most difficult to teach to read (out of three kids taught so far) and AAR is working for her)
all about spelling 1. I added this in to reinforce what she’s learning in AAR. She enjoys it so far.
climbing t good English 1. I actually dropped copywork for her and switched her to this because while she would copy it nicely, it was more of a drawing exercise for her, she had no idea what she just wrote. Even, when done in cursive, no idea of what letters she had written. Climbing to good English 1 requires her to copy words and sentences, but she must read them in order to copy the correct one.
oral narration of science and history 0-2x per week
oral narration of personal reading, I’ve recently begun casually asking her what she’s read. More because I was curious about her reading comprehension then for narrations, she has always narrated well.
i didn’t think of I before, but they also do narrating in our bible studies several times a week.
Rebekah-Yes, you would probably overwhelm your children if you added CM language arts to your current language arts program. CM language arts are meant to take the place of those other programs. I would definitely choose one or the other-not both.
CM language arts really do work, but they work over the long haul. The fruit is not immediate. It takes time to see the results but they are wonderful when you do see them! My daughter was a very poor speller in elementary school, for instance. I became more consistent with copywork and dictation and, after a year, I saw great improvement. By 7th grade she had become a very competent speller and now, in 8th grade, I would even say she is a good speller, if not a natural one.
As for handwriting, once a child knows proper letter formation, he/she only needs lots of practice forming those letters. Copywork is the perfect answer.
I would add in written narrations very gradually, starting with just one a week and not correcting it at all for a year. This gives the students time to become familiar with the process of getting their words down on paper. Then I would slowly focus on one editing issue at a time. For example, you might work on punctuation for a month, run on sentences the next month and so on.
CM language arts are gentle but effective!
CM language arts – what a challenge to trust the process! And sometimes our kids need more help in an area and that’s ok too. Or a different pace.
So here is what my 10 year old does, a boy, just so you can see:
– Copywork a few days per week. This practices his handwriting, reinforces spelling.
– Prepared dictation once a week. This has been his copywork sentence or passage for the week, giving him lots of practice and exposure to the spelling and punctuation, so on Friday he does the actual dictation.
– Oral Narration of most things (science, history, literature, etc). It just takes getting into the habit of saying, “So what was ______ about today?” or “What did you think of ______?”
– Written narration or a writing prompt for fun. Once a week. I don’t correct. When we are ready to begin corrections I start by asking the child to look at a past narration (the week before) and see if there is anything they notice might need changed. They can often see that a word is spelled wrong but don’t know what the right spelling is, or see that they forgot punctuation, or realize upon rereading it that they forgot or changed some detail. Then we talk about that one thing.
For the learning cursive – does HWOT take all year? If not, get the basic grounding of how to form the letters and begin using copywork in cursive as soon as that is done. Drop HWOT then. (Or not! Freedom! Do what works for you, and if that is no copywork but yes to HWOT cursive then embrace it.)
Oh, and we work on a writing project with Brave Writer all month. Usually 1-2 days per week. So on those days if he’s writing down notes or anything I’m sure not to have his one written narration that day. For example, this month the kids are making dust jackets for their favorite book. Week 1 they illustrated the cover and added title, author, and spine info. Week 2 they did reviews on the back cover. Week 3 is drafting their summary of the book for the inside left flap. Week 4 is drafting the author bio for the inside right flap. 2 days per week max, and if we end up taking longer on a week’s work so be it, we’ll stretch the project out to 6 weeks etc.
You definitely don’t want to double up on any LA areas. If you have something that is working, I wouldn’t change it. However, if you are overwhelmed with it, CM methods are very simple and effective.
Here is what my 10yo does:
copywork–Right now he’s going through Print to Cursive Proverbs. We spend 5 minutes, 3x per week on this. Once he finishes this, we’ll work on just cursive copywork for the same amount of time. For your DS, I’d continue with HWOT until he learns his cursive letters, then switch to cursive copywork. We focus on the quality and not on how much is done. If they only get one line of writing (and it looks good), I’m happy.
dictation–We use Spelling Wisdom 2x per week. I allow 15 minutes because I have 2 DC using this program. I think it normally takes about 10 minutes.
Reading aloud–My DC read a few verses of the Bible reading for read aloud practice. I like that we aren’t adding an extra subject, but they still get in some oral reading practice.
Oral narration–I like to have each child narrate at least one subject per day. They often start on these before I ask for a narration! lol This has been an area they’ve struggled with in the past, but has been going well this year. I think consistency has been a key. They usually narrate history readings, literature readings, history, science, or Bible.
Written narrations–We’ve been using ELTL for grammar and writing. They have a written narration every other week. ELTL gives them a short story to use specifically for this (like Red Riding Hood or an Aesop’s Fable). I also like to schedule a writing assignment of some sort on the other week. Often I just give them a notebook page for history or science. I’m good with just a few sentences at the moment since this is a new area. I’m not correcting anything on these, unless it’s a blank page. 😉 If they are stuck with a blank page, I may change the narration passage or talk them through it…sometimes they just need a more inspiring passage. My goal now is to get them comfortable with putting their ideas on paper.
I’ve heard other moms say this (and I’m beginning to believe it): CM methods work, but take time to see results. Now I’m looking at my younger DC and seeing how copywork helps with spelling and grammar. I’m seeing how narrations are going to help with writing later on. It’s pretty amazing!
Ok, wth narration I just need to get back to doing it. This week I made sure we did history and science, and they narrated. I’ve dreaded adding written narration, because I knew he’d hate having to fix everything. But if I don’t worry about correcting them for this year, then it would be ok. I’ll try to remember the suggestion to work on just one thing at a time -that’s such a good idea!
HWOT workbook will not take all year, in fact he should finish he letter formation instruction within two weeks. It goes on to copywork after that, As well as a few other exercises, I will pick and choose on those and then move him to copy work.
climbing to go English… I think this is ok to keep? It’s what I’m using for grammar, and used behind like I am, it will cover grammar about when CM recommends. And it’s not an overwhelming amount of work, just one page a day (later it drops to three days a week). It does include some other stuff too… Like dictionary skills and letter writing. Later on it does cover other types of writing, but i think by the time we reach those, it would be a fine time to add those in.
I guess my biggest problem/change would be spelling. I have not done much spelling till now. I did AAS 1 thru the first half of 3 very sporadically over K thru 3rd. This year, being 4th grade, I felt like it was time for him to really do spelling. And I committed myself to actually doing AAS this year. Lol. So I kind of hate to drop AAS AGAIN… But. While my kids are liking it, I am feeling very overwhelmed trying to get all these lessons done! Which is why I’ve been looking at R&S spelling. Independent, the exercises are in some ways similar to CM word building. But I suppose copywork would be independent too. And once a week dictation wouldn’t be bad. I could give it a try next week and see how it goes. I’m torn on the whole rules for spelling thing. I think some are good and useful, but AAS is rather overkill.
The thing with copy work… Is having to find and print it. Lol. So simple, but so hard. What passages? How long should they be? Should I be thinking about picking passages with city names, quotations, commas, etc?
I just remembered I have simply spelling. Has anyone used this? Do you really have your child copy the same thing for four days in a row?
I remember why I shelved and forgot simply selling, it sort of have rules, but doesn’t. They are so vaguely worded and includes the dumb when two vowels go walking one…
I believe R&S spelling is just two days a week and would cover spelling rules. Not as extensively as AAS, but enough. Maybe if I did that 2x a week and copywork 3x?
i struggle with the quality over quantity thing in handwriting. I focused on that for years. And it got my oldest nowhere. Other than continuing bad habits in his personal writing and hating all things writing. I ended up totally switching handwriting hands (from italic to vertical cursive) and lowering my standards on the ‘perfect’ letters and requiring more, much more. Instead of a single sentence of copywork he has one page in HWOT and one page in CTGE. And he’s finally overcoming his bad habits and gaining stamina and slowly hating writing less. There’s stuff in CTGE that is probably busy work and totally un-CM, but all the practice is helping him. My second child, a girl, did beautiful cursive last year. But had no idea what she was writing, and continued to think she couldn’t write simple CVC words.
For copywork, I have purchased from currclick. It is a download so I print what I need for each child each year. I also have Presidential Penmanship, which goes nicely when studying modern American History. Last year I used Kind Kids from Currclick. For me, the passages are about beautiful words and thoughts well-written in a beautiful way so it gives my child something worthy to ponder and a good example to follow to learn what good writing is.
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