Need writing suggestions for 8yo

[Jen500]

I am at a loss how to guide my ds, 8, with writing. Does anyone have any suggestions for strategies to try, etc? We've tried journal writing (like pulling teeth to get him to write one page), Writing Strands (no one in our house really liked this), reading Ralph Fletcher books (enjoyed his books but the enthusiasm didn't carry over to writing), and writing reports on his favorite topics (did lots of reading but ended up w/less than half a page typed). Also, he constantly makes capitalization errors and I'm not sure why. He is highly gifted and excels in math, art, building things, coming up with creative solutions. Maybe I am expecting too much of him in this area? He was in ps for 2 1/2 years and his writing skills improved the first 2 years, and went downhill the last 1/2 year at school. I'd love to hear anyone's suggestions!!!

Jen

[East Coast Sue]

Have you looked at Excellence in Writing? Teaching Writing, Style and Structure... It can be returned at any time for a full refund- it is pricey but it covers everything you need for writing for all years. It is actually a course for you as a teacher to learn how to help your kids write well. It might be worth looking into. I just purchased it recently and I am pleased with it so far.

 

Sue

[JennW in SoCal]

You know, 8 is still pretty young, and lots of boys, even a few girls, struggle with writing at this age. You've got 10 years until college -- slow down a bit and work on the basics, and trust that someone who reads a lot will become a good writer. And trust that an 8 year old who writes half a page will be able to write so much more as the years go by.

 

Have you read the Well Trained Mind? Read any of the articles Susan Wise Bauer has written about writing? She has pointed out that there are many skills that go into writing, and you can't expect it to fall into place, fully formed. There are the mechanics of hand writing, there is the need for something to write about, and there is the skill of writing things down with correct spelling and punctuation. All of those things are separate skills, they may not develop at the same pace so it may take another couple of years before writing flows naturally.

 

I have never used a writing program, but have followed the basic advice from the WTM -- copywork, dictation and narration. Doing dictations of sentences or passages in books, or copying favorite poems or sentences from books is a great way to cement both handwriting and the skills of writing with correct spelling and puncutation. It leaves out that pesky business of needing something to write about. My kids at age 8 did narrations orally, and we have always just talked and discussed everything so they have learned how to think through and articulate their thoughts. By the time they were 10-12, they were able to write nice narrations, even started with short research papers. Their writing flows easily.

 

My older son benefitted from learning to type when he was 7, as the act of writing long hand inhibited everything else.

 

Jennifer

[Jen500]

I don't think I'm up for any pricey purchases right now-unless I absolutely knew it would help.

Jennifer, thank you so much for the perspective. I did read some parts of TWTM awhile ago, before I started homeschooling. I think I'll find it at the library again. Copywork, etc. has always been something I've never considered as useful. But I'm always willing to try something new when our current 'way' isn't working.

Thanks again.

Jen

[earthmother]

My son really likes to write, but one thing is to create 1 sentence prompts or find them online. Type them up and cut into pieces and then place in a container. Each day or 1x a week (whatever works) have him pull out a prompt. You can also have story enders which might inspire him.

Here are some examples that are fun:

The storm was getting worse. Lightning flashed and thunder shook the house. Suddenly the lights went out. I heard....

 

A man stopped me on my way home. He said, "Here's $1000 dollars in fifty dollar bills. Use it to make others happy." I think that I will...

 

He was the most unusual patient Dr. Hart had ever seen. He was covered with orange polka dots from head to toe.

 

If you google expository, narrative, persuasive prompts you could find a ton of them. I feel that kids this age still need to write from a totally creative angle.

earthmother

[joannqn]

My 8 year old did the same thing. When given something to write about, she would write the bare minimum to answer the assignment. Most assignments would produce a single sentence or two.

 

I backed off and didn't do any formal writing this year. Instead, I gave her reasons to write. I gave her an email address and approved contacts (family friends and kids we know with email addresses). Our family friends have been very nice to humor her. I set up a blog for her and taught her how to upload photos. At first, emails were very short. Now, she writes more. She recently started taking creative photos (we gave her our old digital camera) with toys set up doing something. She uploads those and writes about them.

 

Completely on her own, she's also started writing stories so she could post them to her blog. Occasionally, when she posts something particularly good, I email everyone we know and ask them to visit her blog and leave her a comment. The feedback motivates her. She started out writing a few paragraphs and has moved to writing pages. I think she needed to mature a little, have a reason to write that she could relate to, and be given the freedom to write what she's interested in.

 

We just started IEW SWI to teach her to write more formally for school. She enjoyed the first lesson. She happily typed up her final draft and asked if she could email it to her teacher. (We homeschool through a virtual academy.)

 

My 6 year old also writes email and has a blog. He's recently started trying to write stories a few sentences long to be like his sister.

 

This is what has worked for us.

[nitascool]

My 8yo "can" write full page narrations on a section of SOTW. Last year he was writing well thought out, very good narrations... this year, not so much. This year he has gone with the least he can get away with. So we started using a new tool to help him get it down on the page.

 

First dh will read the story to him. Then ds will read the story. Then he will listen to the story on CD. Last he will answer orally the questions in the AG.

 

We record his answers and then have him tell a short narration into his tape recorder. He will play it back and see if he has answered the questions. We have a checklist; "did I answer the AG questions in my narration?" "Did my narration make since?" "Can I expand on it?"... (We have a similar list for each area of writing.)

 

After he has answered these questions he records his narration again. Finally he listens to a sentence at a time and writes what he's narrated orally. It takes a lot longer to do it this way, but his writing has improved a great deal.

 

We have used Writing Strands 1 & 2. I found (for level 2) that I had to modify the lessons a lot, deleting quite a few steps that my ds had already learned form reading. We did it in Kindergarten and I still had to do this. This year we decided to go with a more visually stimulating approach with Write Source. Ds did Write on Track... there's so much in the book that we were only able to (formally)get to page 42 of the 391 pages. (I've caught him sneaking peeks at other sections of the book.) Even still his creative and essay writing have improved a great deal this year due to the "Six Traits of Writing" that he's been exploring through this book. Meanwhile we are still working on the "recall" skills in History and Science.

[Jen500]

Wow, thank you soooo much for all the ideas. I was hoping for suggestions like these because my mind seems to have gone blank on the writing issue. The email and blog sounds like something he'd love. Sometimes he'll write a family newsletter on the computer, we print it, and he illustrates. I just never see any improvement (I'm the editor). Sometimes he'll write a letter to an author too.

Today and yesterday he copied some poems from Shel Silverstein in his writing book-he enjoyed it, and he actually used proper capitalization, etc.

I'm making a list of all these ideas to try. Thanks so much everyone!

Jen

[Storm Bay]

My plan for my ds, who will be 8 by summer, is not to do any writing program with him when he's 8. I didn't do that with my 10 yo & she's turning into a good writer anyway. I think that there are other skills we need to work on first, and don't see a need to do this yet. The only one of my 3 dc I made do a writing program at 8 was my eldest. It merely made her loathe writing anything other than fiction or letters to her penpal.

[Pepper]

My girls did English For the Thoughtful Child.

 

I thought it was nice, because they were at a point where they didn't want to do anything that was prompted by me, personally,so they just used the book.

Thankfully, we are over that -- I think it was just a pre-teen phase.

Anyway, it had descriptive writing exercises, that my girls responded well to.

 

8 IS young. Something else I did when they were on the younger side,is a little Charlotte Mason-y. I had them dictate stories into a tape recorder. Two of my kids loved it. I gave them prompts when they needed it. The could read prompts/transitions from a page, and learned to think their ideas through and state them in an order that made sense. It was fun. Not a huge component of what we did, but we did it for a while.

[Lori]

I think dictation is good. I am going to try IEW this year with my 9 year old. I think she is ready but I know in our homeschool group there a some 9 yr olds that aren't ready for that type of writing program

[Jen500]

Just because he is gifted in arts and math doesn't necessarily translate into being gifted in writing. I would stick to narration and dictation at this point with some copywork. If you do the writing and/or typing is he more prolific?

 

I guess what surprised me was that his twin brother has made a lot of progress in writing, and this ds seems to have made no progress in the last year. We just started hs in Jan, and at ps they always appeared to be at the same level in all subjects-now I realize hs has allowed them to move forward more quickly in their strong areas so I see their differences more easily.

This ds does have a lot to say if I'm doing the writing for him. Just today he got frustrated (for the first time) because his writing "doesn't look neat". It really is sloppy and I've talked to him about putting capitals in the middle of words etc. but this is the first time he brought it up himself. Usually he just gets a bit annoyed.