Fun hand-holding writing program for 5th grade reluctant writer

[forty-two]

I haven't done a whole lot of writing with dd10 (been focusing more on improving her spelling, which has gone from truly horrific to garden-variety bad over the past year).  We're still slowly going through WWE2 (we're about halfway through after a year), which is about her speed, both in terms of summarizing ability and amount of writing involved.  Grammar-wise this year I've added FLL3 (which she's not really a fan of so far) and Story Grammar (which she likes).  I've modified the amount of writing required for both FLL and SG - writing 1/4 sentences for FLL and 2/4 for SG (doing the others orally).

 

Anyway, I'd like to add in some non-WWE writing, something with "fun-factor" but that's also laid out in a very step-by-step, hand-holding way (I love the open-and-go factor and step-by-step, no-leaps organization of the WWE workbooks).  In terms of what she finds fun, she loves the "sentences from real authors" aspect of Story Grammar, and loves stories in general (which is why she doesn't mind WWE despite it hitting weak areas).  She's a strong and prolific reader, reads above her grade level, but her ability to orally compose isn't strong and her physical writing ability is weak but improving.  She's overwhelmed by too-small spaces to write in (she loudly maintains that the writers of SM IP are stupid for not giving remotely enough space to write out the work for word problems - IP went so much better once I had her do the problems on graph paper instead of in the book).   And her willingness to write depends both on her interest in the topic and how fatigued she is - it can be all over the map, but even at it's best I think she's way behind would be expected in public school.  Which is why I want to gently increase the amount of writing we are doing, both in terms of handwriting and composing. 

 

In terms of things I already have laying around because of impulse buying for future use (but haven't really meaningfully looked at), I have:

*the main BW book,

*Classical Writing Aesop and Homer

*IEW's Blended Writing Through Structure and Style (the book precursor to the TWSS DVDs) and Bible-Based Writing Lessons

*Analyze, Organize, Write, by Whimbey & Johnson

Obviously, if any of those would be good choices, I'd prefer to be pointed to something I already have, kwim? 

 

But I really do strongly prefer something that is:

a) well laid out in terms of "do this on day 1, do this on day 2" (open-and-go, doesn't require a lot of advance planning or prep on my part - I'm not strong in teaching writing)

b) very clear and step-by-step and not overwhelming in terms of what it asks the student to do

c) involves stories and models - dd10 loves stories, and is taking well to the imitation in SG

d) but not so focused on straight copywork - I know dd10's not a strong writer in any sense, but we have so much copywork in what we have and I think dd10's getting a little tired of it - looking for a little more imitation-with-creativity than straight copywork, I think.

 

Any thoughts?

[HomeAgain]

I would try Writing Tales level 2.  They recommend Aesop & Homer after finishing (we didn't find it to be a good fit, but WWS was), but it's exactly what you're looking for other than possibly printing some things out (games, sentence strips).  There is copywork, but also vocabulary, grammar, and writing skills, and every lesson (weekly or fortnightly, I forget) focuses on a model story.