[ High School and Self-Education Board ]
Posted by momof7 on 19:02 Sep 15
In Reply to: Question for momof7 regarding your writing strategy post below.. posted by Heather in VA
For the early elementary years, I do not use a formal curricula. I select paragraphs from their reading or other materials that I use for copywork. I teach from their copywork. We talk about topic sentences, subjects, strong verbs, order, not including extra info, etc.
You can type up the paragraph and divide it into sentences and cut them apart. Add an extra sentence that doesn't belong. Have them arrange the sentences in a logical order, see if they can find the sentence that doesn't belong. (A simple example would be something like a paragraph about an animal stealing food from a picnic basket and adding the sentence "I like (whatever food was stolen.) Hopefully they would be able to tell that it would not belong in a descriptive paragraph about the animal.)
As they get older, I use Voyages in English as a guide, but we do not do their writing exercises. I use the textbook to reinforce concepts that I am teaching them in their own writing. (Ideas like combining sentences, varying sentence length, transition words, active voice verbs, adding prepositional phrases or clauses, etc) My children's writing assignments are always from their other subjects and never just for the purpose of writing for an English textbook (atleast for elementary school.)
I am using PTIW with my 7th grade daughter right now. She is my weakest writer. It really breaks writing down step by step (maybe too simply for some kids) I like the stylistic points that it is teaching her. My 12th grader is using it as well (more superficially and quickly) Both of them are incorporating the ideas.
My daughter just walked up and I asked her if she was learning from it....she said definitely yes, though she doesn't like it ;)
I do not believe you need much background in writing at all in order to use PTIW. I think the most important point is that children must write. I have tried to approach writing incrementally with my children so that I am never expecting too much of an increase in skill. It has worked well for our family. I would say that 4th or 5th grade is probably the hardest transition on our schedule.
My kids have not had that much trouble with high school level writing, especially with research papers since they have been doing something similar for so many years. The biggest hurdle I have with the older children is simply getting them to apply what they know versus sitting down and writing their papers in 15 minutes. 8P (They just have better things to do!!)
I typed that all very quickly and don't have time to even read if it made any sense. I hope it helps. If not, write again, and I will try to respond sometime tomorrow evening.