Writing for 10th grade

[happypamama]

DD, 9th grade, has worked through much of the first and second level of WWS and is a little tired of it.  She's also written some literature and history essays this year.  I think she mostly needs practice at this point, now that she understands the basics of writing.

 

My plan for her for next year is a lit analysis paper about once a month or so (I'm looking at using Excellence in Literature) and a history essay/short paper four times during the year plus a longer research paper plus some DBQs.  Plus lab reports and possibly a research paper in some aspect of fine arts.

 

I think that seems like plenty of writing across subjects.  I know they say an English credit is about half reading and half composition.  I wasn't planning to do any grammar/spelling/the like except on an as-needed basis within her writing.  But I don't think a history essay/paper can count as hours for both history and English, can it?  Do I really need to keep using a specific composition program?

 

On a slightly different note, she wants to do creative writing.  Should I count creative writing as part of English, or should I make it a separate (possibly 1/4 or 1/2 credit) elective (because it's a strong interest)?

 

Also, she read a couple of speeches from The World's Greatest Speeches for history this year, and since she found them interesting and because it's a nice big book that seems like a shame to use only a tiny bit of, I thought maybe I should incorporate that into English somehow.  Maybe read and study a few more of the speeches and practice a little speech-writing/making.  She technically doesn't need public speaking for her diploma, as it's only required sometime between seventh and twelfth in our state, and she covered it in seventh, but it wouldn't hurt to have a small unit on speeches.  Any thoughts or suggestions on that, and would that be something that would be included in the English credit?

Edited March 18, 2017 by happypamama

[Chrysalis Academy]

Re: Creative Writing. What I've done with dd is pull CW out as an elective, because it's a strong interest and dd spends a lot of time on it. It would completely overshadow the rest of the things that I want to cover in English - literature and academic writing - if I were to include it.  I'm including the Great Course Writing Great Fiction, books she reads about writing fiction, and the time she spends writing short stories and working on her novels. So far this year she's spent more time on that than on everything else in her English credit, so having it as a separate elective credit makes sense in her case. But I do think it is legit to include CW in an English class if it's just going to be a portion of the credit - a credit that would include literature and academic writing.

 

I will also say that dd's English credit is heavier on literature than on rhetoric & composition. I think this is because I do have her do writing in several other classes - lab reports in science, short essays in Theater Arts (elective) and History - so she is doing a lot of writing that gets counted elsewhere. The Rhetoric & Comp portion of her English credit is just the official study of how-to-write (i.e. rhetoric self-study plus Bravewriter classes) plus compositions she does about Literature.  More time ends up being spent reading and discussing lit than writing about it, and that seems appropriate to me.

 

Next year I expect will be similar - a CW credit as an elective, and an English credit that covers literature, rhetoric & comp (academic writing). FWIW.

[happypamama]

Re: Creative Writing. What I've done with dd is pull CW out as an elective, because it's a strong interest and dd spends a lot of time on it. It would completely overshadow the rest of the things that I want to cover in English - literature and academic writing - if I were to include it.  I'm including the Great Course Writing Great Fiction, books she reads about writing fiction, and the time she spends writing short stories and working on her novels. So far this year she's spent more time on that than on everything else in her English credit, so having it as a separate elective credit makes sense in her case. But I do think it is legit to include CW in an English class if it's just going to be a portion of the credit - a credit that would include literature and academic writing.

 

I will also say that dd's English credit is heavier on literature than on rhetoric & composition. I think this is because I do have her do writing in several other classes - lab reports in science, short essays in Theater Arts (elective) and History - so she is doing a lot of writing that gets counted elsewhere. The Rhetoric & Comp portion of her English credit is just the official study of how-to-write (i.e. rhetoric self-study plus Bravewriter classes) plus compositions she does about Literature.  More time ends up being spent reading and discussing lit than writing about it, and that seems appropriate to me.

 

Next year I expect will be similar - a CW credit as an elective, and an English credit that covers literature, rhetoric & comp (academic writing). FWIW.

Thank you!  This makes SO much sense and is in line with what I was thinking as well.  I guess I kind of figure that the point of non-fiction writing instruction is to teach them how to make the arguments and do the research and everything so they can write coherent compositions in history and other subjects, so once they have the basics of how-to, it makes more sense to have them writing across the curriculum.

 

If a student spends X number of hours writing a paper for history, it seems reasonable that some portion of those hours could count as English instead of history.  Not double counting the hours, but splitting them.  I'd give two grades for the paper.  One grade would be for how well the student made the argument for the history premise, and one grade would be for the mechanics/spelling/bibliography/citations/etc.  You can easily have a paper that makes a good argument but is rife with poor English, incorrectly done bibliography, etc., and you can also have a paper that is full of good spelling and proper sentences but which wanders around and doesn't really answer the history question sufficiently.  I think that approach satisfies my thoughts.

 

DD's eyes lit up at the idea of creative writing as an elective, so perhaps we will just have to see how it actually shakes out.  It may well end up being a full or half credit elective, depending on how much time she spends on it.  I think I'm going to schedule it as a separate credit and see how it goes.

 

I love the idea of GC, and DD tends to like those -- great idea!  Do you have any favorite books about fiction writing that you could recommend?  We have used a little of SWB's The Creative Writer and have the whole series, so we'd likely use those as a framework.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Shannon has really enjoyed The Fantasy Fiction Formula, that's been her main go-to book this year.  The Great Course has been awesome, too.  I've used some portions of Reading Like a Writer with her, and I like the looks of Ursula LeGuin's Steering the Craft and What If: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers which we've used for inspiration, but not worked through systematically.  In the past she's used Adventures in Fantasy and liked it, but says it's written to a younger audience. She has also found a lot of inspiration in the 642 Things to Write About books - she has both the one I linked, and the Young Writer's Edition.

 

[happypamama]

Shannon has really enjoyed The Fantasy Fiction Formula, that's been her main go-to book this year.  The Great Course has been awesome, too.  I've used some portions of Reading Like a Writer with her, and I like the looks of Ursula LeGuin's Steering the Craft and What If: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers which we've used for inspiration, but not worked through systematically.  In the past she's used Adventures in Fantasy and liked it, but says it's written to a younger audience. She has also found a lot of inspiration in the 642 Things to Write About books - she has both the one I linked, and the Young Writer's Edition.

Thank you!  I will check all of those out, especially the fantasy fiction ones; those sound like things DD would love!

[HollyDay]

We have tried quite a few writing programs.  Our favorites have been the ones by Sharon Watson.  Beside Jump In, she has a creative writing book and a research paper writing book.  All were excellent. 

[RootAnn]

I think if you do the writing in/with EiL, you can count that as covering the composition portion of your English credit. I certainly did - when we used portions of EiL (Am Lit) last year. Depending on how much time she spends on the speech book, you could either roll that into her English credit, or break it out as a 1/2 credit English elective.

 

I personally don't think you need to split the other papers in order to count some for English. I think you will have plenty for the composition portion of English with just the EiL writing. I agree that once you have the mechanics down of how to write certain types of compositions, the big need is for practice (and seeing good writing modeled in what you read).

 

Good luck as you ride this road along with the rest of us.  :driving:

[madteaparty]

Shannon has really enjoyed The Fantasy Fiction Formula, that's been her main go-to book this year. The Great Course has been awesome, too. I've used some portions of Reading Like a Writer with her, and I like the looks of Ursula LeGuin's Steering the Craft and What If: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers which we've used for inspiration, but not worked through systematically. In the past she's used Adventures in Fantasy and liked it, but says it's written to a younger audience. She has also found a lot of inspiration in the 642 Things to Write About books - she has both the one I linked, and the Young Writer's Edition.

Butting in-- is this the Writing Great Fiction great course?

I have the audio for that but I wonder if actually watching the video (vs listing while driving around) would be more engaging. Any thoughts?

DS has been reading the Stephen King On Writing and enjoying it. I haven't formalized anything though but we will need to next year I guess. I don't know how one assigns a grade for creative writing elective...

[Chrysalis Academy]

Butting in-- is this the Writing Great Fiction great course?

I have the audio for that but I wonder if actually watching the video (vs listing while driving around) would be more engaging. Any thoughts?

DS has been reading the Stephen King On Writing and enjoying it. I haven't formalized anything though but we will need to next year I guess. I don't know how one assigns a grade for creative writing elective...

 

Yep, that's the one. We're listening to it also, but not while driving around! I haven't found that to work out to well for us. We just listen to it on the laptop on our comfy couch.