[ High School and Self-Education Board ]
Posted by Susie-Knits on 11:07 Sep 5
In Reply to: My son can be creative in writing, but telling him to "write short story" is too vague.... posted by StaceyL in Canada
I think your point is where I could possibly see a short coming in the LL program. We are suppose to reference the Writers Inc handbook to give us the directions for writing yet the book is not actually referenced in the LL guide.
So how I have handled this issue so far is to let him pick an assignment (the one doing LL8 is my creative writing child so I am always trying to balance creative with more analysis type work for him). Once the assignment is chosen , look in the Writers Inc book for appropriate sections to aid him in producing it. For example with the short - parts of a story: rising action, climax, resolution etc... then reading and discussing. In Treasure Island section, stressing the setting of the story - probably play with what ifs. What if story was set in ... how would that effect your story? What would be better location? Then let him "outline" of what his short story will basically have as far as plot parts. Then finally move on to the writing of the story - may have to reference Writers Inc again depending on how he does in the writing. For this son, I feel like I am repetitively addressing that writing is a process of writing and rewriting. He is alway "happy" with his work after the first draft! haha I am not! double haha So we would probably revisit the section in Writers Inc about rewriting or editing or the general writing process. I also signed up for a place to post LL8 work on website for others to see -so I am thinking that this will help him address the re-writing part.
As far as the worksheets - I am not a worksheet person but I have also found some of the exercises are beneficial. The ones about purpose of writing have greatly helped to re-inforce the idea. I would have thought it was set in concrete in ds' mind - was it? I am not concerned with crossword or word searches - feel like it okay - it not okay too. But I think that some of the grammar reminders have been nice review too. Use what you like and forget about the ones you don't. But like Janet, I too think ds has benefitted from some of it that I thought was not really needed.
Does that help in any way? I guess you could look at it in the diagnostic/prescriptive way - using the Writers Inc handbook/worksheets as needed for that student. Guess that is the hard part and the beauty of it too! At some point, my boys seem to be acquainted enough with the handbook to reference it on their own - yippy! But that is one of my teaching tech/styles - know how to look up what you need.
With older high school age son - 10th grade, he would just always prefer to write literature analysis papers. And if he really doesn't like the writing assignment selections (and I don't see any benefit to them for him) and he has a strong sense of a good thesis for a paper, I will let him go with that. I have been pretty delighted with some of his ideas and then to see them on paper in a very nice way. We did Smarr's Intro to Lit last year which was just literature analysis. He is now really able to think of pretty good thesis statements of what he would prefer to write an essay about. But on the other hand, sometimes it is good to stretch him into writing a bit of creative stuff and he has on occasion found out that he can do that too.
Balance I guess is the key - or at least my motto this year since I find myself repeating a lot as of late. We are seemingly able to make LL work for us this year. Really, I don't think we can just pick up a package of curriculum and all of us homeschool moms "work" it the same way.
If you want to discuss more- think we have boys the same ages/grades, I am willing to help if I can.
Susie