4Real Forums: Written work

Oh, Dearest Mother, Sweetest Virgin of Altagracia, our Patroness. You are our Advocate and to you we recommend our needs. You are our Teacher and like disciples we come to learn from the example of your holy life. You are our Mother, and like children, we come to offer you all of the love of our hearts. Receive, dearest Mother, our offerings and listen attentively to our supplications. Amen.

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Language Arts Come Alive
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Topic: Written work - our weak area.

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Erin
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Posted: Feb 24 2006 at 10:16pm \| IP Logged

I am determined this year to concentrate on written work from my children. One mum wrote on the board recently that a major weak area for many homeschoolers is maths. I knew that from day one and set out to be otherwise. I believe I have achieved this.
I have focused so much more on maths at the price of our written work.

I have spent this past week's spare time compiling our children's written work into beautiful (But very thin) bound books dating back to the year 2000. When you can fit all your children's written work for a year into binders of 8mm you know its not much.

I read and am inspired by all your wonderful sharings of notebooks, lapbooks, narrations and brave writer. Unfortunately I guess my children aren't inspired. As a consequence they are not stong spellers and don't have much in the way of written work. They have sound grammatical structure and rich vocabularies but it is all oral.

I've realised over this past week whilst working on their books that this is simply a discipline that has to be achieved. In our case I've decided on baby steps, every week we will work on a notebook page that will be based on our weekly readings. Even if they photocopy a picture and write ONE sentence I'll be happy because this is a HABIT we are talking about.

Copywork for the younger children WON'T be skipped, you know those days where you say well as long as they have got their maths done, but in our case we need to focus deliberately on copywork as well. Dictation also will NOT be skipped, it will be achieved weekly.

Later once we are in a routine we will introduce ideas from Brave Writer for the older children. What age do most of your children start writting stories on a regular basis?

I guess its all about focus and where we put our energies and what we emphasis to our children. I'd love to hear others thoughts on this and whether anyone else has walked a similar path and one day suddenly woke up

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Erin
Faith Filled Days
Seven Little Australians

lapazfarm
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Joined: July 21 2005
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Posted: Feb 25 2006 at 8:23am \| IP Logged

I think what you are planning sounds very reasonable. You have obviously spent a good deal of time and energy evaluating different approaches and have found a solution that you judge will work for your family. That is what is wonderful about homeschooling!

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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
LaPaz Home Learning

Willa
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Posted: Feb 25 2006 at 11:33am \| IP Logged

I've had similar uneasiness about writing in our family. When I compile their "school writing" it doesn't make a very thick file at all.

SOmehow, the three older kids learned how to write, anyway.... in spite of our loose approach. I think perhaps the verbal conversations and the reading they did translated into decent writing abilities when they hit their teenage years.   Plus, I now realize that we did more than I thought at the time. Little fun writing projects, like transcribing movie scripts, or making up our own songs using familiar melodies, writing messages in Elvish code .... I didn't think of it as school or "Teaching writing" but it may have had some good effects in making them feel like writers in their identities.

I'm not so sure this will happen automatically with my fourth and fifth children. They didn't grow up in quite the same family culture as my first three kids did. As my family got larger and my time got tighter, I become more of a manager and less directly involved in the day to day things.   I would just assign things and then look them over, and so the writing they've done (still not much) hasn't really made them think of themselves as writers.

So I'm putting writing back on the front burner again, too. I like your ideas.   My 13yo son sort of likes to write letters to friends and family. At least, he likes writing letters better than almost any other writing project I plan for him. So I'm thinking maybe he's one of those writers who needs a bit of give and take in his writing and trying to think of ways to build on that.

Thanks for opening this topic. I seem to revisit the writing issue every year!

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AMDG
Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
Take Up and Read

Erin
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Posted: Feb 26 2006 at 12:55am \| IP Logged

WJFR wrote:

I've had similar uneasiness about writing in our family. When I compile their "school writing" it doesn't make a very thick file at all.

Willa,
It's good to know that I'm not the only one.

WJFR wrote:

I'm not so sure this will happen automatically with my fourth and fifth children. They didn't grow up in quite the same family culture as my first three kids did. As my family got larger and my time got tighter, I become more of a manager and less directly involved in the day to day things. I would just assign things and then look them over, and so the writing they've done (still not much) hasn't really made them think of themselves as writers.

I can relate to this totally! My older children used to write little notes, and stories, somehow they have lost this along the way and the younger ones haven't even had it to lose.

The other angle I'm looking at regards their notebooks is it is a good compilation of what we have learnt throughout the year. They look back through and I hear, "I remember that!" Also it gives Dad something to look at and praise, helps him have more imput and keep his finger on the pulse. I value that and I believe so do the children.

WJFR wrote:

So I'm putting writing back on the front burner again, too.

Maybe we need to form a support club. 'Mother's of children who are lucky to write four times a year.'

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Erin
Faith Filled Days
Seven Little Australians

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