Please help me find the right writing curriculum (or create one)

[carla1971]

Dear all,

After having spent (too much) money on lots of different writing curricula, I'm at my wits' end. My DD is in second grade and hates writing with a passion. She has plenty of ideas and a good sense of story structure (beginning, middle and end and all that) but her spelling and punctuation are appalling---and by appalling I mean no periods, no capital letters and mixing up words like there and their. She has no problem with spelling when it's done separately, by the way, and also does rather well in grammar exercises. It's when she needs to pull it all together in a written narrative that we have a problem.

She has some specific learning issues (dysgraphia plus auditory processing problems) which hold her back and make the process more painful for her. We live abroad too, and that makes things rather more complex because she needs to meet some very specific and challenging targets to meet, which she currently falls very short of.

I have tried Bravewriter with mixed results (she minds it less than other writing programs, but it hasn't helped improve her weak spots at all); IEW (better at addressing her punctuation and spelling weaknesses but she finds it boring); WWE (she loves narration, hates copy work, but fundamentally the program is too slow to get us to the targets we need to meet) and Writing Aids from Tapestry of Grace (she just finds it unbearable boring).

I'm now checking Writing A-Z, Writing Tales and W&R, but none seems to fit the bill. I suppose what I need but can't find is a program that will fires up her enthusiasm (she loves telling stories) while helping her develop the rigorous approach to spelling and punctuation which she needs to take her writing to the next level (and to meet those pesky targets). Is there any program you have tried that could help? Or should I just try to mix and match elements from different programs (e.g. Free write BE style but edit IEW style, while doing copy work and narration WWE style to create sound foundations)?

Any suggestions s would be most gratefully received!

[Aurelia]

Could you do WWE with just the main text instead of the workbooks? It accelerates the pace if you just do the examples in the book, since it's meant to cover levels 1-4, but only gives about a quarter of the practice you get in the leveled workbooks. If your child needs more, you'd have to find your own copy work and narration passages. 

 

Have you looked into Treasured Conversations? It will help with some of her weaknesses, I think, though you will likely need to do additional work on editing for spelling and punctuation.

[MerryAtHope]

Dear all,

After having spent (too much) money on lots of different writing curricula, I'm at my wits' end. My DD is in second grade and hates writing with a passion. She has plenty of ideas and a good sense of story structure (beginning, middle and end and all that) but her spelling and punctuation are appalling---and by appalling I mean no periods, no capital letters and mixing up words like there and their. She has no problem with spelling when it's done separately, by the way, and also does rather well in grammar exercises. It's when she needs to pull it all together in a written narrative that we have a problem.

 

Many kids are not ready to pull it all together until about junior high age. (If you read on Bravewriter enough, you'll find that Julie says this). There is a lot to think about at once--creativity, ideas, correct answers, syntax, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, handwriting, neatness, audience... 2nd graders are baby writers--expect their writing to be comparable to a baby's speech. Cute and missing lots of letters and words. I would continue to separate out these subjects--let her work on spelling independently, grammar and punctuation independently--and don't expect her to put it all together yet. She isn't automatic in those skills separately yet--so they are even harder in a piece of writing. Let her enjoy telling stories and any writing for fun, without the stress and pressure of having to revise anything. 

 

Once she has mastered about a thousand spelling words, begin to work on incorporating those skills in copywork and dictation. Teach her how to read and edit her work through that--making sure that the passage you use for cw or dictation uses words she has studied and knows how to spell, or that you preteach any new words (should be very few new words). Once she gets the hang of editing dictations, then you can gradually have her start to edit her own work. Start with short things, and don't make her edit everything. Let a lot of writing just be fun and working out ideas--not everything needs to be a polished paper, but when something does need to be polished, walk her through step by step. Praise her for what she can find to fix, and then "mop up" the rest for her. Make it doable and not insurmountable. Look for progress over time instead of perfection every time. That one took me awhile to realize, but it's so important. 

[FO4UR]

Copywork is key whether she likes it or not.  Look at the passage together first.  What is the first word in the sentence? What letter is capitalized?  Why?  What sort of punctuation do you see?  (And talk through it just like this before she copies.)

 

 

You could have her use Dragon Naturally Speaking for her stories.  She could print out and illustrate and bind her own books.  She is young enough that her ability to create a story isn't going to match her mechanical abilities.  That is developmentally on target...if not a bit precocious with the story telling.  Let her storytelling remain FUN by not tying it to mechanics just yet.

 

 

Also, I've got a 2nd grade spelling program linked in my siggie. You can download a free sample and see if that's something that might fit.  Apples & Pears spelling takes a faster pace,, but it's a lot-of-writing!!! for a 2nd grader. 

 

 

[SilverMoon]

No periods, capitals, and mixing up homophones would be appalling if she was in middle school, but it's developmentally appropriate for a second grader.

 

 

Most of my second graders only did copywork for their composition lessons. DD/4th, who was practically born with a pencil in her hand, did some 3rd grade progymnasmata books for second grade (Classical Writing, Writing & Rhetoric), and just typed random stories into the laptop at her leisure. Afterward I'd help her fix mechanics. When she was second grade level she used With Pencil and Pen. My first grader who is operating on a second grade level in all her language arts materials just began Primary Lessons in Language and Composition.

[carla1971]

Thanks, everyone! Your views on what my DD should be doing pretty much chime with what Julie Bogart says in Bravewriter but, sadly, not with what the our local statutory targets expect her to do.

By the end of this school year she is supposed to be able to spell all common words, use more unusual prefixes and suffixes and common homophones; draft and write organising paragraphs around a theme; in narratives, creating settings, characters and plot; in non-narrative material, using simple organisational devices such as headings and sub-headings; evaluate and edit their work; plus lots of other stuff including using commas after fronted adverbials and using and punctuating direct speech, plus of course have a decent command of basic punctuation (periods, exclamation and question marks and commas in list). She is nowhere near that and I’m panicking!

I will insist on the copywork but maybe walk her faster through WWE and mix in some Bravewriter style freewrites every now and again to make it more fun. Treasured Conversations sounds amazing but unfortunately is not available outside the US, which is a real shame. And several other people have mentioned Dragon Naturally Speaking as a way to help with her dysgraphia so I’ll look into that.

Thank you so much!

 

[Kiara.I]

I'm not sure where you statutory targets are coming from, but it's important to know a few things about them:

- are you *required* to achieve them?

- if so, what would demonstrate that achievement?

- what is the consequence if you do not?  (Either achieve them or demonstrate that she has done so.)

- are they mastery-based or exposure-based?

- what percentage of them are you required to address?

 

For instance, in my area, the targets are:

- exposure-based, not mastery-based.  So I could SHOW my child those common words, and words that are  homophones, and talk to them about writing paragraphs and how editing could be helpful, and call it done.  ;)

- only required to be met to 80%--that's all the schools are responsible for.  So I could just look at those targets and cut out the 20% that I consider to be completely age-inappropriate and not even address them at all!

 

Next, you said she IS spelling, as long as it's spelling on its own, not in a narrative.  Fine.  She spells.  Done.

Also, most of those things that are targets?  You can hold her by the hand and walk her through them and call it good.  I cannot IMAGINE a second-grade classroom where the teacher just tells them a topic and expects all that done independently.  No way.  It would be done as a classroom exercise.  Okay, group, let's read a book about squirrels.  Okay, lets write some facts about squirrels.  Okay, how would we group those facts together?  Look, this one, this one, and this one are about eating.  Let's call one group, "Food."  Oh, look at this, we have two facts about where squirrels live.  Let's call that group "Habitat."  Who remembers what "Habitat" means?  Very good, Billy!   Okay, now let's write about squirrels.  First, we'll start with a simple statement about squirrels that doesn't fall into one of our groups.  That will be our introduction.  Okay, everbody copy that down.  Now, let's do our first section, called "Food."   Etc.

[SilverMoon]

:iagree: Just because it's on the list doesn't mean mastery is expected. It's just the spelling words and affixes second graders are likely to run into, not ALL of them. My sixth grader is still working on affixes in his meaty, rules-based spelling book.

 

 

Frankly I'd start a thread based on your specific country/province to ask how others dealt with those laws. Or drop a link to them for help decoding the educational gobbledygook.