Incorporating writing into other subjects for a fifth grader

[amyrobynne]

For 4th grade last year, my son did some of WWE 3 and all of MCT Practice Island. I assigned him lots of books to read, both literature and for history, and sometimes had him narrate them but usually just let him read them.

 

For fifth grade, I feel like I should expect more. He'll be doing MCT Practice Town but not WWE 4. If he doesn't have much writing to do for MCT in a particular day, would it be reasonable to ask him to write up a paragraph summarizing a chapter he read for either literature or history or both? As Practice Town goes more in depth, I'd assume he'd be able to move from writing a collection of sentences to more of a functional paragraph. But how many of those is a good number over the course of a week? I believe this is the point where the WTM book starts suggesting a lot of outlining but that seems really dull to me and not as applicable to novels.

[EndOfOrdinary]

We spent a full year working on the parts of an essay (or the parts of a story because they are very similar in many ways), more than even writing all that much.

 

Once my son could not only tell me what was supposed to be in a thesis statement, but give me a really quick thesis about anything, then it was no longer daunting to construct that part of the paper. (Two months of coming up with quick five minute thesis statements about anything: MineCraft, eating candy for breakfast, why thesis are stupid and should not have to be done, anything)

 

Once he could take that thesis and realize his reasons for his opinion were the scaffolding for his three-ish paragraphs, then he had most of his outline done. Filling in four or five sentences for each thought was not difficult and now it really looked like some paragraphs on a page. Initially some very crappy paragraphs, but still paragraphs which flowed with organization and reason. (Two months of coming up with topic sentences for each if his supporting thesis points without using bland, non descriptive words like good, nice, stuff, things, bad, wrong, or right)

 

Once he could easily understand his conclusion was merely a quick restatement of his thesis, then it was relatively easy to do. He could wrap it all up nicely without stress. (Two months of conclusion summaries)

 

By stacking the topics, it meant in eight months he could outline his ideas in less than fifteen minutes. The next day he could flesh out each paragraph in less than a half hour because the majority was already written. These were not award winning compositions, but it got him over his writing issues.

 

For a novel or story you do the exact same process, only the student has an opinion about the book. You can also outline the story using the elements of a story (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement) then have the student mimic the story with their own narrative following similar structure.

 

This year (fifth grade) DS has to write one piece of writing each week about anything learned the previous week. Two weeks each month have to be essays and the other two weeks it can be creative writing. Since the construction of the writing is no longer a problem, he is completely open to write about any of his academic subjects. We no longer need to have specific writing topics.

[MinivanMom]

At this point, you have to be doing some writing outside of summary-type paragraphs. I think the whole idea of switching to outlining in 5th is based on the assumption that kids will be following some type of writing program in addition to the outlining. We use and love MCT, but there aren't a whole lot of writing assignments there. We have a "writing block" everyday where my kids are expected to simply write. They are free to choose anything they want, though I like to see a mixture of fiction and nonfiction over the course of the year, and I act in a tutor/supervisor-type role. We use Writers Inc as a reference and guide for this. On average, my kids are completing 6-10 writing projects each year, usually 2-3 reports, some stories, and a poem or two. We don't do any writing related to literature. At this point I let them enjoy their reading, and we keep writing as a separate skill.

 

If you need to start back at paragraphs, then definitely start there, but now is the time when there needs to be an increase in writing output. Not to a crazy degree, but a 5th grader should be working toward doing a bit more. I don't think MCT alone is really enough writing for 5th; you have to be applying what you learn in MCT somewhere else. Rather than writing history summaries, maybe he could be outlining his history chapters, but then writing a history report each semester. If he does the occasional science report on whatever he's learning, then that would give him several areas where he can apply the MCT skills to authentic writing assignments.

 

Right now for writing my 5th grader is doing:

Daily 30 min writing block (using Writers Inc)

MCT Town (though I'm selective in which written assignments we do)

Outlining 3 chapters per week (2 from K12 Human Odyssey & 1 from Story of Science)

Science report every third week (based on additional science readings - This is not a big research report, but the simpler type suggested in WTM.)

Incidental writing in other subjects (French translations, answering questions in her geography workbook, etc)

[Chrysalis Academy]

I would definitely check out SWB's Middle Grade writing lectures.  There is more expected than WWE, but it's not all  outlining.  She lays it out along with the rationale very clearly.

 

One exercise that we did in 5th grade that was really valuable was to write about a whole novel, in this way:  each day, she would read and then summarize several chapters - 3ish, but it depends on the chapter length.  Lots of practice with summarizing there.  Then, at the end, she'd have a stack of short summaries.  Her next job was to put them together, and read them for logical flow:  is everything important in there? anything that turns out to be not so important you could leave out?  Next, create transitions between them - this was a great exercise.  Finally, once the whole summary is put together, the last job would be to write a simple analysis - using one or more of the questions in the WTM Literary Analysis discussion, or SWB's lecture (the writing one, or the Literary Analysis one).  Nothing too deep at first, but some kind of basic analysis of the characters and what they wanted, the conflict, the themes, etc.

 

So this way one book led to a lot of practice on all the different writing skills - summarizing, editing, creating transitions, analysis, intros & conclusions.  It might take a few weeks, but every writing exercise was meaningful.  She did this for several books - not constantly, and not all the books she read - but if I remember right she did it for The Prince and the Pauper and Across Five Aprils.  She also wrote LA essays about books we did together as read-alouds - Twenty Thousand Leagues and Huck Finn.