kymom we’ve only done 2 lessons so far in Writing with skill 1. The whole first “week” of lessons was narrative summeries. We skipped to the last one. He did well with that one. I was not strict on sentence count, but I did make sure he wasn’t too wordy or detailed. He is good at this so his oral summery was clear. I helped him par it further down and then he went off and wrote it.
Week 2 is 1 level outlines. We did day 1 on Friday. He finally understood that outlines don’t have to flow together like a paragraph and you don’t need full sentences….I didn’t realize this was where he was stuck till then. I’ve tried to teach him outlining before but must never have been clear enough. Additionally there was no actual pencil work on this day. 2 wins for him;)
I do appreciate that she helps them find the topic of a paragraph and stresses that all paragraphs have 1 topic or theme without teaching the artificial contrivence of a “topic sentence” at the beginning of each paragraph.
I also like her examples of writing so far. I can update later if you like.
I am not using this with my 11 yr old as she is doing Writing Skills for Today B. She wanted more fiction and fun writing. She will do 1 written narration a week for history. I may teach her writing more organically after I go through this with my son. I’m not pushing her right now into more academic type writing. She likes to write and I’m trying to keep it that way;)
