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Bookswithtea
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Is it enough to do regular studied dictation, copywork and written narrations for the middle school years? Do you feel like you *need* something like Lingua Mater or Seton's paragraph training/book reports in addition? Do you think a certain number of essays/polished papers are necessary, too?
If you use Bravewriter, do you just follow the prompts, perhaps use the Arrow/Slingshot/Boomerang? Or are you using other things too?
I've never taught this age group before. I'm having a difficult time discerning how much writing is necessary to prepare a child for high school level work. If you've traversed these waters already, I'd be so grateful for some wisdom.
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mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and  due 9/10
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MicheleQ
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Books,
It really depends on the child. Some of my children haven't needed an extra something and some have.
How well do you feel your middleschooler is writing? Do you think he has the necessary skills and just needs to hone those skills or is he clearly not understanding some important things? For us this is really the basic criteria we use to judge what's needed.
I don't know how helpful that is. Maybe you can be more specific and we can offer more detailed ideas.
God bless!
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Michele Quigley
wife to my prince charming and mom of 10 in Lancaster County, PA USA
http://michelequigley.com
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Bookswithtea
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MicheleQ wrote:
Books,
It really depends on the child. Some of my children haven't needed an extra something and some have.
How well do you feel your middleschooler is writing? Do you think he has the necessary skills and just needs to hone those skills or is he clearly not understanding some important things? For us this is really the basic criteria we use to judge what's needed.
I don't know how helpful that is. Maybe you can be more specific and we can offer more detailed ideas.
God bless! |
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I don't know, either.  I don't know how well a middle schooler should be able to write. I can say that he doesn't write for fun like I hear some hsed children do.
In the 5th grade he focused on occasional dictations, a lot of journaling and a lot of copywork (we moved across the country and I had a baby that year).
Last year (6th grade) he took a 12 week course called Lit and Composition at our local coop. In that 12 weeks he was required to write an expository essay related to the theme of the book My Brother Sam is Dead (Rev. War related) and a book analysis on The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Both of these formats were entirely new to him and I spent *hours* and *hours* teaching him format writing. We did the papers somewhat "partnership writing" and somewhat "struggling ownership" a la Bravewriter's categories. He had a hard time with the analysis required so we talked a lot about the issues first. Then he wrote (each was about 3 pages typed). Then we talked about polishing and grammar a lot. I was happy with the final results and he received good grades. They weren't stellar, but they weren't bad, either.
After that, we were both kind of burned out. We spent the rest of the year working on Easy Grammar and the first 9 weeks of Lingua Mater.
He has not done much in the way of studied dictations. He isn't even remotely fond of LM, but then he hates it when I make him write on *anything* so I don't know that that matters, much. I gave him an assignment that I thought he would enjoy (tell me what these lyrics mean in a song you like) and he still grumbled immensely. I can post a few examples of the writing he did last Spring if that would help??
I'm trying to discern what he still needs to know. I'm also trying to discern if it would be better to focus on writer's voice (Bravewriter) or writing as a skill that he will be expected to know(LM). I waffle a lot between expecting too much and not expecting enough. I have a terrible time with balance when it comes to this subject in particular.
Did I just make the issue clearer or more confusing???
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Blessings,
~Books
mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and due 9/10
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lapazfarm
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I think these are very valid concerns.
It sounds as if you have The Writers Jungle. Have you re-read the section on "The Dreaded Elementary Report"? I think it gives great insight on what to expect in this area. Remember Julie advises taking one project through all the stages to completion per month. (Her monday reminders help me to remember where we are on a project). I would think that some, but not all of these pieces could be reports. Perhaps alternating these more constricted pieces with more creative pieces would help balance it out for your dc.
My ds will be in 6th grade this year and our writing focus will be expository writing, so that is the plan we will be following. I figure this way we will get in about 4 good essays and 3 of more creative pieces. Plus all the little writing bits he does for his notebooks and timeline, etc.
When I taught 7th grade in public and Catholic schools, there was such a wide range of writing abilities that we had to assume no knowledge and teach essay writing from the ground up and still it was a struggle for many of them to come up with more than a page or so. So, don't think that you are behind the norm in any way.
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Bookswithtea
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lapazfarm wrote:
It sounds as if you have The Writers Jungle. Have you re-read the section on "The Dreaded Elementary Report"? I think it gives great insight on what to expect in this area. Remember Julie advises taking one project through all the stages to completion per month. (Her monday reminders help me to remember where we are on a project). I would think that some, but not all of these pieces could be reports. Perhaps alternating these more constricted pieces with more creative pieces would help balance it out for your dc.
My ds will be in 6th grade this year and our writing focus will be expository writing, so that is the plan we will be following. I figure this way we will get in about 4 good essays and 3 of more creative pieces. Plus all the little writing bits he does for his notebooks and timeline, etc.
When I taught 7th grade in public and Catholic schools, there was such a wide range of writing abilities that we had to assume no knowledge and teach essay writing from the ground up and still it was a struggle for many of them to come up with more than a page or so. So, don't think that you are behind the norm in any way. |
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Yeah...I have the Writer's Jungle, and I've read through most of it more than once. I will read over the Dreaded Elem. Report this afternoon. I haven't read that section in awhile. One thing that confuses me...when a child is working on a project like this from start to finish, should they *also* be doing dictation/copywork/written or oral narrations? If one stops everything in order to do a finished project once a month, then the other stuff rarely/never happens. Copywork is not really a chore or difficult, imho. But other written narrations and studied dictation...I don't know...This is where my brain starts to hurt again.
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Blessings,
~Books
mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and due 9/10
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lapazfarm
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The monthly project is in addition to the regular weekly stuff. For instance in Julie's emails she advises copywork/dictation twice weekly, friday freewrites, tueday tea poetry study (could be copywork), plus occasional grammar games (Madlibs and such). She also advises a short intensive grammar study once in middle school and again in high school. Sounds like you have addressed that with Easy grammar.
The friday freewrites are the fodder for the monthly projects. Ideally you would have 4 freewrites a month and you would choose one of these to go through the entire process. Sometimes we have picked from freewrites and sometimes from other ideas we've gotten from our unit-studies (a report on scurvy during our pirate unit, a mini report on his favorite breed of dog, a report on the three fairies he would least like to run into, etc).
The thing that is nice about this approach is that ds doesn't feel like every bit of writing he does will be processed to death. This has encouraged him to write more because he knows I won't be going over it with a fine-toothed comb (only one a month!). It has helped him to relax and enjoy writing more so that he actually comes to me now and asks for imput on how he can make his writing better.
Now, this doesn't mean he particularly enjoys writing reports, but at least writing in general is not the dreaded task it used to be.
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ALmom
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Books:
I think what you are experiencing is very common - both in terms of mom/teacher anxiety and student response. I don't know if any of my experiences can help - but here goes.
I always seem to hit panic around middle school and suddenly all my confidence in what we've been doing vanishes. These are the years I greet my dh with - "where is the nearest school, you need to fire me!" I have to take a deep breath and try to focus a bit on what we have accomplished. Then I can step back a bit from the panic (never a good place from which to make a decision) and try to access where we need to go from here - which includes a fair look at the students weaknesses and prayer.
Typically, in my house, my dc are still avoiding that dreaded report writing task and I have found that simply requiring it does a lot. But I have to know exactly what I am expecting from each assignment so my dc don't feel so lost. Otherwise there is a certain angst and a lack of confidence in me as a teacher that leaves them perpetually on edge! That being said - I still find myself being unclear at times, etc. so you don't have to be perfect - just recognize the signs and adjust. The best thing I did was realize that our dc are resilient and they can recover from our mistakes so not to keep beating myself over the head with our failures! Funny - when I was less panicky, my dc settled in and felt more secure, even if I was making the same stupid mistakes again.
However, it is hard for me to require and specify assignments when I wasn't completely sure how to express what I wanted. I knew I'd recognize a good report when I saw it - but how to help them not feel like they were having to be mindreaders. That whole insecurity just made things worse. My oldest was a cut and dry type of person - tell me what you want and I'll give it to you but there were confidence issues that would make her shut down (avoid the task, break down in tears over it, say she was stupid, etc. if she didn't feel successful pretty quickly). Now how do you set her up for success while stretching her to improve - that became my challenge as a teacher and any technique that worked a possibility, regardless of any preconceived notions I had about what "school" was supposed to be.
There was a lot of trial and error. Mistakes one year can be corrected another year - keep the focus on steady progress not comparing what his buddy is doing or some other child on the message board, etc. (that is really hard sometimes because we feel so lost and I identify with being unsure how much to expect. I finally settled on - the child has to give me his best effort, and they have to be improving and I stopped hyperventiliating on whether or not this was typical for this age, etc. - it really doesn't matter if he is behind - you've got to start where he is anyways! I find it easier if I just cut off the panic at the start and figure - here is where we are. Here is where we are going). Knowing that there will be imperfections in how you do things, and permission to be less than perfect, really frees from stagnating in panic mode.
Is your goal essay writing or report writing? Is he comfortable with various personal essays, but struggling with writing in content area? Our dd wrote all kinds of creative things on her own - stories, etc. but only on her own time, never for an assignment. She managed to avoid most writing till we were in high school - then it was pretty tough for a year or two while she got used to it. We were with Seton one year - not perfect, and I felt that in some ways they took away some of her natural way with words - but by making her write consistently, she did gain confidence and could crank out reports rather quickly after that. I could address the finer tuning later when she wasn't paniced and dragging her feet.
The other issue we had was that she tended to be cut and dry - so analyzing literature didn't come easily for her. Here is where we really had to work - then the papers came much easier. We found that finding comprehension type questions - but ones that went deeper than the obvious helped, so did discussion. She didn't have a lot of background to draw from, so I had to try and get that in too. It was very important that I discuss historical background of the work of literature as this was something she wouldn't even think to consider at first. But also discussion of other things - hints in the way the author said things or the inferences that she should get but wasn't.
However, discussion wasn't a natural for the two of us. She tended to be more reticent and I have lousy skills for drawing out other people's ideas. She wanted to get down to business and be done with it, and viewed discussion as mom dragging out the school day. So those schoolish looking exercises were a blessing for us. They gave me a clue into where she was missing a point and what we should discuss in our limited time and I didn't have to bother her with discussion on areas she was obviously understanding - she, of course, could always volunteer it and some of this came out more naturally with dad at dinnertime but she felt less like I was dragging out her workload. It also meant that I wasn't totally preoccupied with the oldest when I had a housefull of other dc to attend to.
She had an assignment with a start and finish point that I could check - and we would discuss. That really made her happy as one of her biggest complaints against me as a teacher is that she never quite knew what I wanted and she never knew the stop point. These workbookishy type assignments were ungraded so that she didn't break down over things and had an open enough mind to discuss with me. She saw them as timesavers and if she did them well, she was done faster as mom didn't have to discuss as much! We did do some watching of books after she read them as incentive - but also to help fill in the comprehension gap. Eventually from doing this, she learned and is fully capable of analyzing a piece of literature and writing about it. There were times I wasn't sure this would happen with this child. Making her do some of these things even though she balked at them, was a real key for us. I thought Kolbe would be pretty tough for her in terms of comprehension and it was - we did the exercises though, and it helped us in the long run. The books were not all of our favorites, we did not do every single one on the list, but we made progress and accomplished what we needed to do.
I also knew that if I had an opportunity for coop classes in Lit that I felt were morally not harmful to her, we jumped at it. We signed up for Seton initially because I thought they would help her analyze literature. I was especially annoyed at Seton here as the questions were all repeat what is in the book - so we did go elsewhere after the first year. I wish now that we had signed up for maybe the freshman composition class instead and found some of the Kolbe or hillside study guides for the inference type things. But at the time I also needed someone that would make us both stay on target to do a minimal amount of writing, so we gained some things from Seton and moved on. I didn't know about Bravewriter (still don't know much about it) but did find Kolbe helped me here - so that is what we sort of went with.
I also used a very format driven book for teaching various kinds of writing - Format Writing. Our dd loved this while I cringed as it was written like a recipe book - step one, .... Well for my cut and dry dd, this was perfect. She raced through this text, did more essays than ever before and was so confident by the end. This dd hated the re-write stage. She reacted like she had been a failure if anything had to be rewritten so I had to be somewhat careful of excessive criticism with this child. The other dd, just took off once I seriously required writing. She still takes months to write something, but she is re-writing it a thousand times because she wants it just so. I've learned to let her be - but still require a certain number of essays to keep us in practice. This second dd would have balked with being boxed in to what to write about. She wants more free reign, the other wanted things spelled out. I can adjust to each using the same books, etc. Except with 2nd dd, I'd never hand her Format Writing, she'd feel boxed in by it. My oldest felt freed by it - she finally knew what was expected.
Janet
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Leonie
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Bookswithtea wrote:
| One thing that confuses me...when a child is working on a project like this from start to finish, should they *also* be doing dictation/copywork/written or oral narrations? If one stops everything in order to do a finished project once a month, then the other stuff rarely/never happens. Copywork is not really a chore or difficult, imho. But other written narrations and studied dictation...I don't know...This is where my brain starts to hurt again. |
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We tend to drop other things when we are working on a project or a writing piece.
For us, it works better to have our minds around one major piece at a time.
And then, when the dc have finished the writing project or need a change of pace, we go back to journalling or copy work and so on. At least, this is what seems to happen here,once they are past the beginning reading and writing stage. 
For example, Alexander is writing a small book on Middle Ages architecture. That is his writing focus at this point. When he finishes, I can see that he will probably do a few weeks of "incidental bits and pieces" lannguage arts - narrations, five fun fast facts, letterwriting, copywork, journals.
ETA - We use writing guides as reference books rather than as a text to follow through. I have several, but not Writer's Jungle - and I like Julie's email prompts.
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Leonie in Sydney
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Karen T
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I know many people here at Real Learning use and like Bravewriter. It does seem like a great way to write. My ds tried one of her online beginning classes last spring (05) when he was 12 and just didn't like it at all. He had a hard time starting broad and narrowing down; he would begin with a somewhat narrow topic and couldn't do much with it. Examples posted by other kids in the class were way better than his, and the kids seemed to enjoy the process, too. I gave up on writing instruction for awhile, but still required narrations of history books we read, etc. and had copywork/dictation weekly.
This past spring we started Pudewa's IEW
and he likes it much better. He still complains about writing but much less so, and he doesn't feel lost as to what to write. Yes, it's somewhat scripted in the beginning and may not be for everyone, but he and I both like the structured part of it. It follows the type of education that Ben Franklin, etc. used to learn to write - imitating good writers. It helps b/c he doesn't have to be creative about the whole process at once, he can be creative about his language, etc but follow the original story or report. Gradually he can branch out more.
As I said, he would never say he's wild about writing now, but this summer, on his own, he's begun writing a fact-type book on raising aquarium fish (his hobby). I think he feels more confidence in his writing AND understands the process better now. He's never written anything voluntarily before.
Institute for Excellence in Writing
Karen
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Bookswithtea
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I appreciate hearing everyone's experiences. I'm starting to get the sense that there is no one *way* to do Jr. high language arts, or even elements that are absolutely necessary.
Maybe that's a good thing? Maybe I have more freedom than I thought I did?
I've read lots of threads on Bravewriter vs. IEW over the years. One thing I noticed about the IEW families is that their children want more guidance in what to write and how to write. They are kids who aren't naturally motivated to write about what they love because it feels like mom is turning their passions into school when they suggest it.
I love Julie's emphasis on creating a "lush jungle" with lots of literature, read alouds, copywork and dictation. I don't own IEW, although I've heard wonderful things about it. Its expensive and I've always been hesitant to plunk down the money without seeing it first.
I dunno. I think that if I think *just* about my child, without any thought of outside standards or objectives, what I would like to see him do is something like this:
4 x week copywork for 10 minutes a day.
1ce a month studied dictation.
2ce a month lessons in Lingua Mater, pulling out the ones that seem to be best for him.
1ce a month read a current event article and do a written narration.
Maybe 3 times over the schoolyear, work on something larger (3 pgs, max?) that would include revision/polishing.
1--a history 5 question paper like CHC has in their middle school plans.
2--a response type paper to a poem or song lyrics or a saint's quote.
3--some kind of creative writing piece. He did a great job with last year's LM assignment to retell the Town Mouse Country Mouse fable. He seems to be better at that kind of creative writing than in coming up with his own stories.
When I think about how we are as a family, it seems likely to me that when we are working on a larger paper, the copywork would still get done, but perhaps not the creative writing or LM.
I guess I just don't trust my own judgment on what is "near grade level" when it comes to writing.
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Blessings,
~Books
mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and due 9/10
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TracyQ
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Books,
Trust yourself. You know your child better than anyone, and know what they need. God will *prod* you as to what they need, so trust your instincts, because most times, that's God's way of guiding you in your homeschool.
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Blessings and Peace,
Tracy Q.
wife of Marty for 20 years, mom of 3 wonderful children (1 homeschool graduate, 1 12th grader, and a 9th grader),
homeschooling in 15th year in Buffalo, NY
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Bookswithtea
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TracyQ wrote:
Books,
Trust yourself. You know your child better than anyone, and know what they need. God will *prod* you as to what they need, so trust your instincts, because most times, that's God's way of guiding you in your homeschool. |
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I just read your post about homeschooling for high school and how that nervous feeling never goes away. Well, at least I know I'm not the only one!  
I waffle a lot between the idea of meeting objective standards and that of looking at my child and asking God what I should do with him or her for the schoolyear. Actually, "waffling" is putting it mildly. Making myself sick about it and then hunting through the house, desperate for a bit of chocolate is more like it!
Thank you for the reminder to trust God and my instincts. I think I am going to try to get to Adoration this weekend. Something's got to give or I am going to eat way too much chocolate this summer...
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Blessings,
~Books
mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and due 9/10
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Karen T
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Bookswithtea wrote:
I've read lots of threads on Bravewriter vs. IEW over the years. One thing I noticed about the IEW families is that their children want more guidance in what to write and how to write. They are kids who aren't naturally motivated to write about what they love because it feels like mom is turning their passions into school when they suggest it.
I love Julie's emphasis on creating a "lush jungle" with lots of literature, read alouds, copywork and dictation. I don't own IEW, although I've heard wonderful things about it. Its expensive and I've always been hesitant to plunk down the money without seeing it first.
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Even though we use IEW for writing, we still do lots of literature, read alouds, copywork and dictation. It's not either/or for us. I, too, was hesitant at first about IEW, not only the cost, but also what i perceived to be a rigid, forced method of writing. It's not that at all (although I guess you could make it like that). In fact, what you describe about your son re-writing the Town Mouse/ Country Mouse story is exactly the kinds of writing IEW uses.
I found it not only helped "unfreeze" my son (the old "oh, no, what do I write about?") it has also taught him how to find the most important parts of what he's reading and he naturally retains more. For example, for history or science, I might have him read a chapter and do the key word outline, then using his outline, tell it back to me orally. Just the act of choosing what words to include and writing them down causes him to retain so much more of what he's read. It's just narration, but it's *teaching* him to narrate, vs. just asking for it with no guidance.
I have not read The Writer's Jungle (also a very expensive book, with no chance to preview around here); I like what I've seen on Julie's website, but it just didn't work for this ds.
IEW does offer money-back guarantee on any product, at any time. You could get the TWSS DVD's, view the whole set and change your mind, and get a full refund.
Not trying to advertise for them; I'm sure it's not for everyone, just want you to know you could try it with little risk.
Karen
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Leonie
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Bookswithtea wrote:
| I guess I just don't trust my own judgment on what is "near grade level" when it comes to writing. |
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Trust yourself and your ds. Really.
I think that is how our language arts approach developed - working on major things in between bits and pieces of stuff. It developed over time through knowing myself and my dc and our family.
The ideas you outlined sound really good. And you can always change things around or adapt when and if it seems necessary. That is how it works around here!
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Leonie in Sydney
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lapazfarm
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I think what you have outlined looks very reasonable. As others have said, trust yourself.
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Theresa
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Shari in NY
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Dear Books,
I can't add to all this great writing advice (and I gleaned alot!) but I would like to add that the middle school years are also the rapid growing years and without exception my children slacked off in the effort department during these years and then bounced back during the highschool years. Especially in the case of my son, it came down to no writing, he just refused, for about three years. Meanwhile, he studied history and science and math and this year (11th) even literature with contentment. And now, believe it or not, he is writing a novel!
Shari
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Erin
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Books,
The questions you ask I am also asking myself. So pleased you brought this up.
Shari in NY wrote:
| I would like to add that the middle school years are also the rapid growing years and without exception my children slacked off in the effort department during these years and then bounced back during the highschool years. |
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Shari,
This is fascinating to read. I would be very interested to know if this is the experience of others also.
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Erin
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hereinantwerp
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how much is enough--
that is really a good question, I am interested in responses too. My 11 yo ds tends to balk when I give him "assignments" for writing (I had been using Sonlight), but if I leave it alone he will write creatively and well on his own projects. The trouble is, his ideas tend to be very BIG, and he doesn't finish them. He is gifted with writing and I want him to have a good feel for it. When I was attempting to do the Sonlight assignments it was, "I HATE writing." So I really backed off and let it go for a long time. I do require one or two page summaries of his history readings (sometimes a creative approach, more often not), "written narration" as described by CM, but that's it. We are going through the Easy Grammar purple book, and I dropped spelling midway through last year b/c it just didn't seem fruitful.
For this year, I bought him "Learning to Write the Novel Way", which I showed to him and he expressed GREAT interest in. We'll see how it goes!
I have done a little teaching of writing and I have the opinion that kids fall into two categories: Those that really want and thrive with a given structure (it frees them to write), and those that don't (it stops them up). Totally different approaches work with these different kinds of kids. Some kids need the parameters: Write a topic sentence and then three descriptive ones, now write a transitional sentence, now drop to the next paragraph, etc. Others hate them. Some kids want to be given a clear topic, others balk. My approach has just been to try around with different ideas, and go with what they respond well to--but I hope that's enough!
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Angela Nelson
Mother to Simon (13), Calvin (9), and Lyddie Rose (3)
my blog: live and learn
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Bookswithtea
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| Posted: Aug 09 2006 at 8:27am | IP Logged
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Well, after praying and musing on this thread for weeks, I've decided to just *not* worry too much about what everyone's kids are doing. I'm going to continue with the kinds of things we've always done. I'm going to continue with Lingua Mater because I think the material is excellent and although ds is not excited about it, he is definitely learning.
I'm going to spend the next few months looking at 9th grade level language arts programs and what they need to know to move into them. I'm going to try to pick one and then for the rest of the middle school years, try to make sure he is ready for whatever program I pick.
I don't know if that helps at all. I've made myself sick over curriculum choices this summer, and I didn't really get myself any further for it.
Let us know how it goes with the program you've chosen, please?
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Blessings,
~Books
mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and due 9/10
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Willa
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| Posted: Aug 09 2006 at 10:22am | IP Logged
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Shari in NY wrote:
| I can't add to all this great writing advice (and I gleaned alot!) but I would like to add that the middle school years are also the rapid growing years and without exception my children slacked off in the effort department during these years and then bounced back during the highschool years. |
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Also true of all four of mine so far. My fourth is still right in that stage.
I've decided that the effort doesn't slack off but instead that it's channelled into invisible rivers
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AMDG
Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
Take Up and Read
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: How much is Enough ?(middle school)
