annegables
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Posts posted by annegables
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I got to thinking about this... we all have areas as parents and/or homeschoolers that we are not good at and are striving to improve in. My current one is teaching writing. But we also have areas (at least I do) that we are not good at or have no interest in AND dont care to get better in, for whatever reason. Every now and then I feel some guilt for not providing my kids with all the things. What are yours?
Here are mine:
1. I strongly dislike crafts. Making them, storing them, supplying them, etc. I have zero desire to do educational crafts with the kids. We have some crafting stuff (<1000sqft house) but I avoid crafting activities. My kids still rummage through our recyclables and make all kinds of stuff with it. But I am not facilitating.
2. Outside activities. I live in an urban area and opportunities abound to spend one's time and money. And everything for kids here gets so competitive. We do none of it. We have friends, go hiking, swimming (for fun), play outside, but no scheduled activities.
3. Music lessons. I love silence. I know learning an instrument is super good for a person, yada yada, but I just cannot bring myself to live in a little house while a kid learns how to play the violin or something. I am not that saintly of a person.
4. outside classes (my kids are 6th, 4th, and 2nd, so still young). I really dont want to abide by someone else's deadlines and projects. I can develop my own stuff for far less hassle and to a high standard of learning. Not that outside classes are not to a high standard of learning, but just that I dont need someone else doing it for me. And my kids have no interest thus far.
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I have done some thinking and planning now. I read the last 11 weeks of WWS1 to get an idea of the skills taught. I am 80 pages in the Engaging Ideas, which is a formative book and I want to start a thread on when I am finished. Also, I installed Stayfocusd, to help me stop frittering away time on here, and it guilted me into only having 10 min a day! (I am writing this in a doc to copy into the forum).
Also, for those who asked, my limited experience with Killgallon is a drilling much deeper into some of the skills presented in TWR. So if you want more practice, Killgallon is great.
I wanted the kid’s writing assignments to teach skills, so I will be working closely with them on what follows.
For my 6th grader, he will start reading The Canterbury Tales retold by Geraldine McCaughrean. For his writing for the month (after we work on improving sentences), he will write a composition on this: “Argue which tale is the most Christian.” I chose this topic for several reasons (1. There are many different options, 2. Not super “my special thoughts and feelings” driven, 3. Forces a stance).
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By focusing on 1 tale, his scope is narrowed considerably.
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I want him to have some flexibility in developing a thesis. “Christian” will be allowed to be defined in several different ways, but he needs to settle on one (e.g. closely follows the pattern of one of Jesus’ parables; contains Christian doctrine; contains a Christian ethic; etc).
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We go on long walk-and-talks and we can discuss this then and flesh out ideas.
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He will incorporate into this the fact that the travellers are on a Christian pilgrimage, which is central to the book.
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I will teach him how to outline his composition like they do in TWR. (BTW, so far, “outlining” means different things in WWS and TWR. WWS uses it as a way to condense info from reading - like how I took notes in high school. TWR uses it more to mean how to organize ideas from sources to make writing easier)
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He will have to use 2 sources to defend his position, the Bible and Canterbury Tales. I wanted to start fairly small. I will teach him how to site sources (covered in WWS1).
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I will teach him about plagiarism (WWS1 lessons) and the difference between common knowledge and info you need to site.
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We will go through the outlining, draft, revising, editing, final draft stages.
We are in no hurry, so if this takes longer, that is not a problem. I will provide as much scaffolding as needed.
For my 4th grader, there are several topics he is interested in studying this spring, so for writing purposes, I will have him narrow it to one (he can study the rest without a writing component) and have him come up with a topic sentence to write individual paragraphs that we will then incorporate into a cohesive whole through revising, transition words, etc.
For my 2nd grader, we will use “because, but, so” exercises to discuss some of the science things he is into and then flesh some of those sentences out with interesting detail and word choice.
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I plan to take a month off of WWS (we are on week 24) to hone in on teaching quality sentences. Then I plan on going back to WWS and continuing TWR exercises with other subjects, notably The Big History Project.
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Here is my spring semester plan. My kids grades are 6th, 4th, and 2nd. My 6th grader is 2/3 of the way through WWS1 (we started in March of 5th grade). My 4th and 2nd have done some WWE and we do those types of assignments but self-created. My 4th grader spent the fall summarizing science info into a paragraph with a topic sentence, supporting details, and concluding sentence. He also does Killgallon daily. I consider myself a fairly good writer but I had limited skills in teaching how to write well.
The first week or so after break, I am going to teach all my kids how to actually write a quality topic sentence. I have taught them to write a topic sentence, but could never figure out what all needed to be included in it to make it a well-written one. My plan is to do this all together. I now know how to scaffold this.
Weeks 2-4 I am going to teach sentence-level quality writing, adjusting for writing level. We will focus on lots of because, but, so; question words, and transition words. We will also work on expanding kernel sentences.
After this, I will have my 6th grader finish out WWS1 using what we just learned.
My 4th grader will move on to writing single paragraphs using their outlining suggestions, rough draft, revise, edit, final draft. This will be writing across the curriculum with a focus on Ancient Rome, as per his request.
My 2nd grader will also move on to single paragraphs with a dominant focus on outlining what we know and coming up with strong topic and concluding sentences. The focus will probably be on rocks/fossils, as per his request.
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I think to be truly educated, a woman must be able to paint tables, cover screens, and net purses. And of course, she must be proficient in music, singing, dancing, and the modern languages.
“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”
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1 hour ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:
Lonesome Dove. Texas Rangers, cattle, treking to Montana- it's got it all (also prostitutes, so fair warning there). I read the covers off this book all through junior high and high school. It's one of the only westerns I've ever liked, much less Loved.
That is so funny to me. I thought the book was like this: 200 pages of nothing but talking, starving, and wandering. Then Blue Duck shows up and does something out of my nightmares. 200 more pages of nothing. Blue Duck!! Starving and wandering. More Blue Duck! The end.
I possibly got some of the details wrong. Like there might have been more wandering and less starving. Oh, and I think the wandering had a purpose, so it was just walking and not wandering. For me, it was the literary equivalent of watching a man walk a marathon with 30 sec commercial breaks for a horror movie.
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BUd and Me!!!!! It is a book about the Abernathy brothers and is a wonderful glimpse into that time. Their dad was the last US marshall for the Oklahoma Territory and is famous (Catch'em Alive Jack). Oh, it is a low level for high school. Oops.
Around the World in 80 Days takes place in the 1870s and the second part of the novel takes place in the American West.
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This might be getting off topic, but there is also a difference in "having been educated" and "educated". And we often conflate schooling with education. Let's take someone who has been out of formal schooling for 20 years. If they had a wonderful education full of great literature, comprehensive science, thorough history, etc, then they were educated well. But one can only rest on the laurels of past glory for so long. If there is no effort to continue reading, learning, discussing, and thinking deeply, then it is easy to get to 40yo and no longer be truly educated. I know people like this. There was much potential there, but their current education and conversations consist of soundbites from the news, romance novels, and pop culture.
One of the hidden blessings for me in homeschooling was it gave a purpose to my continuing education. Prior, I read loads of nonfiction on a variety of topics, but there was little continuity or use to what I was learning. I love that now I am learning a ton and it has a direct use. This knowledge is making me a better person. Not only am I learning content like history and literature that I missed the first time around, but I am learning skills such as teaching phonics or writing. It is enormously gratifying and empowering.
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2 minutes ago, Sarah0000 said:
I'm going to request the book as well.
I don't know what TWR advises but lately I've been wondering if it's a disservice to focus so much on tiny bits of writing such as staying at the sentence level for years. It's great to work on strong sentences, then strong paragraphs, then strong essays but I do wonder if the thinking/planning part of writing gets shortchanged before the student gets to the stage of improving paragraphs.
In other words, I wonder if it would be better to think/plan paragraphs or even longer stories/essays while still working on strengthening writing at the sentence level. Then when the student is ready to really focus on writing strong paragraphs the planning part doesn't seem like a huge jump, and meanwhile he or she could start learning to plan longer writing projects. It seems like oral narration helps with this, but not as much as someone sitting down and scribing a thought out plan for longer writings with a child occasionally.
The book talks about this. The authors start at the sentence level but it is partly because they are showing how writing a good sentence helps in writing a strong topic sentence to a paragraph. She talks about how to incorporate sentence-level activities while doing paragraph compositions.
I am not at this part of the book yet, but I think the author encourages spending more time at the paragraph level instead of moving on to longer compositions. This is because (from what I have gathered) that if one can write a coherent paragraph (and she discusses how to do paragraph outlining), those skills transfer to longer compositions. And she comes down strongly on the importance of being able to outline.
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I mentioned this a bit upthread, but this book is really helping me with knowing how much and what type of scaffolding/support to provide. There are examples of teachers saying things like "improve this paragraph" but having no real idea how to go about doing that. And then the author gives detailed instructions for exactly how to "improve a paragraph". And shows how much support to provide for different levels of writers. I think for that alone, the book is worth the money. I have struggled so much with this piece of teaching writing.
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16 minutes ago, Plum said:
APMReports and the related Educate podcasts have been covering the flaws in PS literacy policy for a few years now. It’s eye-opening. Hard To Read is the oldest podcast from 2017 and is about dyslexia and phonics. At a Loss For Words and the most recent podcast about the NAEP report are about the bad science of how they are teaching students to read.
https://www.apmreports.org/educate-podcast
The author of The Knowledge Gap, Natalie Wexler, was on several podcasts to promote the book. You can get the idea of what it’s about before you get the book.
I dont know whether to thank you or not for this podcast recommendation😁. To quote Willy Wonka, "So much time, so little to do. Strike that, reverse it."
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Something I have needed to learn with teaching writing is how much support to give. I have a hard time knowing what is supporting and scaffolding and what is doing the learning for my kid. TWR has been helping me get a handle on this. I have been throwing my young children into the deep end with less support than I could give them because I was afraid of helping them too much.
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17 minutes ago, maptime said:
*adds The Knowledge Gap to Amazon cart*
Check your library!!!
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16 minutes ago, Plum said:
I loved the ideas in WR so much I made my own WR-style curriculum that integrated writing and subjects we are currently learning.
I hate that there is no support for homeschoolers. It is all PS-centered with $1k workshops and a costly annual subscription to gain access to worksheets OTHER TEACHERS have created by subject. So yeah, the author is not homeschool friendly at all.
I do agree that homeschoolers could do a lot verbally which is a distinct advantage over PS. However, the point is to integrate writing into the subjects to help comprehension and improve writing skills. That’s lost if you only go verbal.
WR plus The Knowledge Gap really helped me see more clearly that what I had done in my homeschool children’s elementary years was vastly better than what ps has been doing. I have classical and WTM to thank for that.
Thank you for this; so many thoughts...
YES to the bolded!!!
The Knowledge Gap was so eye-opening to me (it is how I heard of TWR). I fully agree with your assessment of your homeschool vs what the ps is doing. I had no idea that there was so little actual knowledge content being taught in elementary schools, and this seems to be on purpose. It is a feature and not a bug???
I agree about not going only verbal and thanks for clarifying that for me. My point was that to get my kids comfortable with "because, but, so" and other types of writing cues, I can teach and re-enforce the concept verbally without tiring my kids out to help better prepare them for the written work.
That is annoying about no support for homeschoolers. I sometimes feel when I read books that critique the current state of affairs in conventional schools, that they are also unfriendly about people going rogue and homeschooling. Um, if the local schools had been able to do it better, I might still be there. It isnt my fault that teachers are not only not teaching much content at the elementary school level, they also apparently have little formal training in how to teach actual skills.
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Another resource I and my kids have found helpful is Banish Boring Words https://www.amazon.com/Banish-Boring-Words-Reproducible-Just-Right/dp/0545083036/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=37YAB9O2AF1FR&keywords=banish+boring+words+gr+4-8+book&qid=1577729999&sprefix=banish+boring+words%2Caps%2C208&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFPOU1aWllMNDVKQ1ImZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTA4NzU5ODAzVVZVM1dQVDlPQk42JmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTAyMjM4MDBTU0ZQWEM4WlhMVU8md2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGYmYWN0aW9uPWNsaWNrUmVkaXJlY3QmZG9Ob3RMb2dDbGljaz10cnVl
I know these lists are free on the interwebz somewhere, but I was having little luck searching (and I am on no social media or Pintrest, so that was a challenge). I love having an all-in-one resource that the kids can easily access that improves their writing and vocabulary with little effort. While this isnt a "teach writing" book, it helps reduce the "So-and-so is a good/kind/fun character." writing that I had been getting.
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Some of us were discussing The Writing Revolution and I wanted to dedicate a thread on it because I have found it so useful in thinking about teach writing strategies. I want to be very careful of copywrite and all of that. There is also plenty of info out there on this book/method if you google. A great place to start is thewritingrevolution.org. This is also referred to The Hochman Method. As a disclaimer, I am in no way affiliated with this company:).
I am only about 1/3 of the way through the book (80 pages in), but I have found the info really helpful. The first thing I noticed is how the strategies are easily adaptable for homeschoolers. In fact, I think that homeschoolers have the upper hand in incorporating the strategies, because they can be done through conversation. I love that the book highlights the importance of thinking as a "writing" activity.
The other thing the book does well is give ideas/strategies for "level one" vs "level two" writers, which just refers to writing ability and not necessarily to grade level. I think this book is used by some teachers trying to remediate poor writing in older kids.
I love how the authors footstomp the importance of being able to write well at the sentence level before rushing on to the paragraph. I hate how quantity of writing seems to be valued over quality of writing, and this book is a strong push-back against that trend. The authors have many strategies for improving sentence quality. Some of these strategies are found in Killgallon's books, and possibly IEW, although I am not familiar with that one.
I have used WWE and WWS1, and I think the strategies in this book provide a piece that I think is missing from those curricula (which I truly value).
I will be posting more as I continue reading, in part because, as TWR says, writing helps us process what we read:).
I will also say that I continue to be appalled at what is (not) taught in elementary ed majors, at least according to the different books I have read. I have read at least 5 "teaching phonics" books, and they all mention how few universities teach "how to teach kids to read" to el ed majors. And this book mentions "my undergraduate and graduate training hadn't included any preparation for teaching writing, as far as I can recall, nor had I been assigned to read any research on effective writing instruction." (p4) Good night. What in the blankety-blank are prospective teachers learning in college if not how to teach reading and writing??? Now that I think about it, this explains so much...
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I am off to start a new thread on TWR...
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2 hours ago, maptime said:
Yes!!!! The because/but/so exercise (or the “Because, Buttso”, as it shall forever be named in my mind- thanks for that) is the exercise I’m most excited to implement once we resume our studies after Christmas break. I love that I can just start that one small thing now, without having to wait until I’ve read and mastered the entire book.In the meantime, I find myself mentally constructing my own sentences from random sentence stems throughout the day.
”She loves chocolate cake because....”
That’s normal, right?😂
Well, it is normal for me🤣. I love writing exercises that are thinking exercises. And this seems like a great conversation starter exercise. I think it will really enhance our read aloud end-of-chapter conversations.
"Mom is annoyed Because, Buttso..."
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I think we should start a The Writing Revolution thread, but in the meantime...
For writing across the curriculum, they had this super easy suggestion called "because, but, so" (or, as I think of it, "Because, Butso"). Essentially, you take a start of a sentence from anything you are studying, and do this:
"Helium is a noble gas, because..."
"Helium is a noble gas, so..."
Helium is a noble gas, but..."
And the student needs to finish the sentences. This can be done orally.
"The one ring to rule them all needs to be destroyed, because..." (but... so...)
"Whales are mammals because/but/so..."
"Socrates was forced to drink poison because/but/so..."
"The angles of a triangle add up to 180deg because/but/so..."
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On 12/28/2019 at 8:55 AM, maptime said:
I’ve been on the hunt for the same type of thing, and recently saw The Writing Revolution by Judith Hochman recommended here. I’m only a couple of chapters in, but I am so excited about it. I love the author’s emphasis on writing across subjects, sentence-level writing exercises, and grammar instruction within the context of composition. And it is full of ideas to scaffold instruction for grades 1-8 (maybe higher).
I’ve been itching to move away from a dedicated writing curriculum and into a writing-across-the-curriculum approach, but my own ability and confidence (or lack thereof) to assign and assess appropriate tasks has been the limiting factor. This book provides a framework I’m excited to implement. Its ideas are concrete enough to give me true guidance, yet flexible enough to adapt to my student and what we’re doing in other subjects. Again, I’m only a few chapters in so can’t give a full review, but what I’ve learned so far has already been worth it🙂
I just got this book as well! I am several chapters in and I am so full of ideas from it. I highly recommend it. This book is really, really helpful. SOme of what it recommends are concepts found in Killgallon books, which I would also recommend. Killgallon takes some of what The writing Revolution recommends and turns it into a series of quick exercises for students to work through. Things such as practicing including appositives, noun phrases that describe the noun usually immediately prior (see what I did there?).
Please get TWR. I dont think you will be disappointed.
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I dont think this is what you are looking for, but wanted to put it out there... do you have access to a science museum near you? If you do, I would skip curriculum, buy a membership to the science museum (or natural history museum) and go there once a month. Then, whatever sparks interest follow up with a documentary found on youtube or Amazon prime or wherever.
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21 hours ago, WendyAndMilo said:
DS (who turns 13 in one week, 7th grade) thrives on assessments and it's good for him. He requests 3-4 judged music performance events a year and more often than not, he pushes it to the very last minute and goes into the room with a barely memorized piece with poor timing....and then knocks it out of the ballpark, playing perfectly and getting superior marks. It's because of this that I put him in a few online classes this year (all high school level). I'm quite pleased with the tests and homework in all the classes as they are a natural outpouring of what has been learned in class and if you've put in the normal amount of time and paid attention, it takes very little to get high marks. No trick questions or oddballs, like I remember having in school.
It reminds me of a quote I read in some homescshool magazine I get by So-and-So Grant, I believe: "True education is a form of repentance. It is a humble reminder that we have no yet learned all we need to learn, we have not read all that we need to read, and we have not become all that we need to become." I think good assessments are a way for a student to reflect: "Did I put good effort into this asssignment?" "Have I done completed this with excellence?" "What else do I need to work on?" "How am I becoming better through this?"
It's far too easy for students to delude themselves into thinking they are better than they are without *good* outside assessments, whether from mom or other teacher. So I agree with the PP that this is more about good vs bad assessments.
I agree. I am not anti-assessment, not at all. But I think the way conventional school uses assessment is often unhelpful at best. What you described sounds like a superior form of assessment, in part because the assessment is personalized.
Also, I think that conventional assessments allow people to delude themselves. Case in point. My kids' friend thinks she is a genius because she is the smartest person in her elementary school class of 25 kids. This is probably true, but, um... this is a very low bar. And she is completely unaware of how very low this bar is. I think it is appropriate to have an accurate understanding of things. It does not do a person any good to have an over-inflated sense of brilliance.
On the other hand, I also disagree with comparing people, especially children. I am conflicted!
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4 hours ago, mellifera33 said:
The first time I saw CiRCE mentioned my mind immediately went to, well, Circe, and I wondered if it were a radical feminist pagan classical curriculum. Nah, it's an acronym and more of the usual classical Christian stuff, but I still think that of all the character names that one could use for a classical Christian curriculum, Circe is an odd choice.
The reason behind the name is funny (I heard it on a close reads podcast episode) and I might get the details wrong. Basically, Andrew Kern was making acronyms out of Greek mythology characters and that is how the name CiRCE was born. It was the name of his "company" before he ever really had one. Then it became a real company and started growing, and now he was stuck with this name, that is effectively an enchantress who turns men into pigs. So Kern joked that Circe turns men into pigs and CiRCE is trying to turn pigs into men.
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8 hours ago, lewelma said:
Child-led vs interest-led has come up on the board just this week.
Yep. Which is where I realized that people seem to have different working definitions of the two, and there is a fair amount of overlap, like a Venn Diagram. Ohh! If I should make a giant Venn diagram of educational styles....
The Writing Revolution
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
This is where I wish there was an instructor's guide for WWS. I found it really useful to look at WWS1 to see what was covered and then modify my writing instruction to make sure that was covered. As I mentioned in the (for reasons unknown) ridiculously bolded post of mine from Jan 5, I saw that WWS1 is covering plagiarism and how to correctly reference sources. So I read those lessons, saw how WWS does it, and then planned it out for how to cover those topics within my writing assignments. Thus far, one week in:), this plan is working so much better. My son and I much prefer having writing incorporated into what we are already doing and learning, rather than as a totally separate activity.
I will join @lewelma in recommending Engaging Ideas as a great book to help teach writing. It gives specific examples and goes into more detail in certain places than TWR. Both books have been enormously helpful in helping me see the big picture to know where I am headed. On that note, @8FillTheHeart Homeschooling At The Helm, was another helpful resource to see how to weave it all together as a ...unit study? I am still fuzzy on some of those words😁. Essentially, I took 8's ideas about how to look for resources (books, etc) on topics my kid is interested in, and then develop a course of study around them. I then took ideas from TWR and Engaging Ideas to help fit it all together for a scope and sequence. So my Canterbury Tales writing assignment is a starting point for the skills I want to develop over the next few months.