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Outlining with younger learners


Pegs
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DS is still working very hard at his pen-to-paper skills, but his oral narrations are coming very easily, and I'm wondering whether we might start some outlining from history and science, with me scribing for him.

 

Has anyone else here done this as a way of scaffolding budding writers? Could you tell me about it please?

 

Or even just give me the validation I need to give it a go?

Edited by Pegs
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By all means, give it a go.

 

Last summer, when DD was getting ready to take her first Athena's class, I wanted to get her up to speed on being able to write a simple paragraph. She was intimidated, and also couldn't hold all the info in her head while she slowly typed it out (handwriting would have been even slower). She would have a topic, give me her information/talking points orally, I would jot them down into an outline format on a small white board as she talked, and she would then use that for her paragraph writing. It worked. She had short, coherent paragraphs that she wrote herself.

 

We also do NaNoWriMo's story planning sheets from their YWP workbook, which is another form of outlining. It's been really useful.

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By all means, give it a go.

 

Last summer, when DD was getting ready to take her first Athena's class, I wanted to get her up to speed on being able to write a simple paragraph. She was intimidated, and also couldn't hold all the info in her head while she slowly typed it out (handwriting would have been even slower). She would have a topic, give me her information/talking points orally, I would jot them down into an outline format on a small white board as she talked, and she would then use that for her paragraph writing. It worked. She had short, coherent paragraphs that she wrote herself.

 

We also do NaNoWriMo's story planning sheets from their YWP workbook, which is another form of outlining. It's been really useful.

Your description of how you scaffolded her paragraph writing has really helped. Thanks a lot. Anything else you'd care to share would be much appreciated - we're nearing the end of MCT's island level, to give you an indication of where we're at. DS does copywork 1x/wk for punctuation rules, and takes 5 short sentences from dictation 4x/wk via AAS. Edited by Pegs
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Give it a go, Pegs. 

 

I've done plenty of this with A. I found it particularly helpful when she was beginning to write paragraphs and essays and was struggling to get the words from her head onto a page.

 

I had her sister come in and then ask A to speak to her about the topic or sub-topic. She found that she'd automatically start with a nice, broad, overarching statement - and then I'd say 'there's your topic sentence, I'll jot it down".

 

At first she was worried that this was cheating. I assured her that the words were hers and I was just helping to get them onto paper. 

 

The process gradually shifted to less and less scaffolding from me (over years - it didn't happen quickly), and now at age 11 she's really very independent with essay writing.

 

 

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Your description of how you scaffolded her paragraph writing has really helped. Thanks a lot. Anything else you'd care to share would be much appreciated - we're nearing the end of MCT's island level, to give you an indication of where we're at. DS does copywork 1x/wk for punctuation rules, and takes 5 short sentences from dictation 4x/wk via AAS.

Well, today I feel like a total imposter because we're both beating our heads against a wall with the current MCT assignment. (I knew this one would be a stretch for her, but she's shutting down, I've scaffolded it to death, and I think it's time to cry uncle. Or simply declare it "good enough" since all she is struggling with now is a minimum length.)

 

At the beginning of last summer, we were about at the level you describe your son as being at now. Her big leaps at that time came because she was motivated to take the Athena's class and I told her she needed typing skills and paragraph writing skills as a prerequisite. She threw herself into learning both. Paragraphs turned out to be much easier than expected. The kid has plenty to say, she just couldn't remember it to write it down. We then spent a year with MCT Town minus the writing assignments, and this year I'm putting the focus on writing so another pass through Town with some other resources to break up the "seriousness" of MCT. So we're not that far ahead of you.

 

The only other thing I can think of is that I make an effort to keep the skills separate. We work on handwriting with copywork; punctuation and capitalization with MCT and a workbook; vocabulary with MCT, literature, games. For now, she can really only focus on one goal at a time, and writing (ultimately) includes so. many. pieces. and so we work on each piece separately until she is ready to put it together. I define what I'm looking for - if the assignment's purpose is organizing sentences in a paragraph, then the only thing I give feedback on is sentence organization. If the goal is to write something informative without using first person, then that's what the feedback goes along with.

 

I can see her slowly becoming more automatic at some of the pieces. Her current assignment has all basic punctuation in it. A year ago, I would have to remind her to include any punctuation at all. Only about half the sentences start with a capital letter, but that's half more than a year ago, and there's no need for me to mention the other half. Her spelling is much better. Occasionally, it drives me nuts to see her repeatedly make mistakes when I know that the skills are *somewhere* in her brain, but it's not going to help to point that out.

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These are such great ideas. I tend to forget that I shouldn't necc expect my kiddo to write well even if he's reading advanced and complex stuff. Writing is just hard for him. He works so hard, and yet it's slow and painful for him to write out even 2-3 sentences (and takes him at least 30 minutes). Recently, I've been having him do it anyway because I've just had my hands full with three younger siblings, but this thread has been a great reminder to me that it's ok if he can't write well yet. Yesterday I sat down and did a reading log project with him (he likes to keep track of the books he finishes, and we found a really fun reading log program that has dozens of different ideas for projects he can do to interact with the book a bit at the end, and he really enjoys them) and it was so great for both of us. When the pressure of writing is off, he just thinks so much better. Part of me wishes he could just do it on his own, but then I remind myself that 8 is still so young... I'm ok with him staying little for just a little longer... lol.

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The only other thing I can think of is that I make an effort to keep the skills separate. We work on handwriting with copywork; punctuation and capitalization with MCT and a workbook; vocabulary with MCT, literature, games.

May I ask which workbook/s you're using for punctuation?

 

I totally agree with regard to keeping skills separate for now, by the way.

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May I ask which workbook/s you're using for punctuation?

 

I totally agree with regard to keeping skills separate for now, by the way.

Editor in Chief from Critical Thinking Company. Punctuation is only a part of it; it's working on cleaning up a lot of the stuff that we sort of missed by not doing the more typical elementary LA - punctuation, capital letters, a/an/the, well/good, and several other topics are introduced with their rules and then there are several paragraphs in which to correct the mistakes. I can't say it's beloved or inspiring, but I have her do 1-2 pages/week and it seems to get the job done in just a few minutes.

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Editor in Chief from Critical Thinking Company. Punctuation is only a part of it; it's working on cleaning up a lot of the stuff that we sort of missed by not doing the more typical elementary LA - punctuation, capital letters, a/an/the, well/good, and several other topics are introduced with their rules and then there are several paragraphs in which to correct the mistakes. I can't say it's beloved or inspiring, but I have her do 1-2 pages/week and it seems to get the job done in just a few minutes.

Thank you. :)

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