Thank you so much! This is all hugely helpful. I really appreciate the many and very useful practical suggestions. I'll give the exercises/fun writing games a go. I also appreciate your informed opinion...my intuition is to really work on the oral expression this year...but then I worry about not doing enough. So far, I'm doing WWE and then oral narration across all other subjects in a more Charlotte Mason style. Even though there is so much material and information about language development...it's still disconcerting to be going such a drastically different direction than what public school was like. I mean, that's why I'm doing this, but it's still scary!

I'm also so curious about this -- just started homeschooling my 3rd grade daughter after pulling her out of Mandarin Dual Immersion. She does not love to write (hates putting pen to paper -- I'm trying several months of "lazy eights" exercises with her to see if that helps) but is a prolific English reader. Her problems may be different than your daughter, as her issue is more hesitancy regarding output than poor grammar or spelling. I'm starting her with WWE2 as our main writing curriculum. We are going through rather quickly and my tentative plan is to do WWE and most of WWE3 this year. I saw that you considered that for your eldest but ended up going a different direction, yet noticed you are still using WWE with your younger child. Why did you end up steering away from WWE for your 5th grader?

So I have a follow-up question to this... my third grade daughter also reads ALL the time. She primarily reads fiction, but really enjoys science as well. Right now, as part of her school I'm asking her to do the "pick a science book and read for 15 minutes each day" thing mentioned above. What I'm curious about is the best way to process that with her. Should I just have her narrate it back to me? We've tried that and I feel like she's not quite sure how to narrate something that is so factual and doesn't have a unifying storyline. Should I sit down with her and teach her how to pick out to the main points in these more informative science books? I'm nervous that would take the fun out of it for her, as well as the sense of control she enjoys in choosing it on her own. She enjoys the non-fiction science reading--I just can't quite tell what she's getting out of it.

Thank you so much! These are really helpful thoughts/resources.

I'll be homeschooling my rising 3rd grader next fall after a year of at-home, virtual learning. She's bright but young for her grade, reads voraciously (just read the LOTR trilogy last month after her dad suggested it), and seems to have a good grasp of both the surface and deeper levels of meanings in most of what she reads. She writes just fine for her grade at her public school, but is reluctant in her output. We have already been practicing oral narration for over a year now, and it's still a struggle for her, although I've seen significant improvement. She is hesitant to speak out, and struggles to express herself. She's able to tell a story chronologically, and we're working on orally summarizing the main idea and adding details. Because she is quite shy about her narrations, it's sometimes difficult to get her to speak in full sentences. Her 5 year old brother, by contrast, gives long and rambling (and sometimes out-of-left-field) narrations which have a lot more detail than she's willing to give. I feel like I see it within her, and when she does open up about her thoughts she has insightful things to say, but she's hesitant to let it out. Because she reads so much and thinks deeply about what she's reading, I believe she has the potential for strong writing. I want to encourage her to bloom--she's sensitive and shy about performing in any way--and help her gain the skills needed. I also don't want to bore her, because she shuts down very quickly if she's not challenged. I'm thinking I will use WWE with her next year to introduce some structure, but wonder if I should start with level 2 or 3? She has never done dictation, so even if I start with 3, I'll probably ease her into those over the course of the year. What would you do to support and engage a child like this? I think she could probably do fine with WWE3--but would it help her more to back up and do something a little slower and rack up an easy win? For what it's worth, I work part-time as an editor and writer, so overall I do feel equipped to help my kids in this area.