Writing with multiple boys

We do our prepared dictation passage as copywork earlier in the week, so I would say you could do both with the oldest.  Copywork it for a few days while studying the spelling of the words and then do it as dictation for the last day.

Another idea – have him start a writing journal where most days you hand him a writing prompt or a whole page of them to choose from.  On those days he sets a timer and writes for 5 minutes. The next time he writes he can pick up where he left off with that prompt or start a new one.  When 5 minutes becomes easy increase his writing time to 7 minutes, etc.  We usually do this writing journal idea for a month each year, just to get the kids in the swing of writing for a certain amount of time.  And DON’T correct anything in this.  It’s just for getting ideas out and getting the hand muscles used to working on writing for concentrated spans of time.

For spelling, we use SW for dictation with the 11 yo and Sequential Spelling with my 8 yo.  They both do some copywork too.  So I suggest your 11 yo do both.  My 11 ds had slow writing last year.  I gave him a gel ink pen, Pentel Energel Deluxe .7 mm metal tip, to use this year.  You cannot erase it, so he learned to struck through it once for a mistake and write it again.  We sometimes use every other line to write on to leave room to fix mistakes.  But I think before this, he was spending too much time erasing to make it look perfect.  He always pressed real hard, too, because he likes it to appear dark on the page.  The pen he uses has dark ink, with a light touch of the hand.  He still uses pencil for math and his journal though.