Classical Writing question for you users of CW

[noashmam]

I have two school age children and a preschooler, ds soon to be 11, dd just turned 8, and dd almost 4. Next year, my school age children will be in 5th and 3rd grades. I would like to place them together in CW for ease in teaching. But I'm thinking Aesop A will be too easy for my 11 year old, and Aesop B too hard for my 8 year old. Have any of you taught Aesop A to your 11 year old? He just finished Rod and Staff Grammar 4 this year. He seemed to do pretty well except for diagramming. We have been hit and miss with dictation/copywork. His writing definitely needs improvement although he seems to really enjoy writing in his daily journal. His history narrations are anything but short. So he could use help in learning how to summarize as well as forming paragraphs. Would Aesop A be too remedial for him?

 

Any one have experience teaching separate levels to multiple children? How do you juggle it? How much time does it take each day? I'm thinking of spreading out each lesson over two weeks so that we are only doing CW 4 days a week (since there are only 18 lessons). Is this reasonable?

 

Thanks.

Kim

[Julie in GA]

The Aesop lessons don't take very long, so you could do Aesop A with one dc and Aesop B with another. The other thing you could do is begin with Aesop B for both dc, but tailor the A&I work and the writing project for your younger child. The copywork and dictation is always up to you anyway, so you can choose whatever fits for your younger one. If you start with Aesop B, then your older ds will get the workbook. For you younger one, you'll need to do CW the way we had to do it before the workbooks came out, which isn't that hard at this level. Here's what you'll do:

 

Read the model together with both dc, and have them take turns reading it back, or choose one child to read it out loud, and the other one to narrate. If you 8yo does the narration, that can be the basis for the first draft of the writing project. Do the "Day 1" discussion together, as described in the Core Manual.

 

For the rest of the A&I work, your older one will work from the workbook, and for your dd8, you'll need to do the following: Make an extra copy of the model, and:

 

Day 2 - choose 5-10 words from the model to work with (See Core Manual). Make a little worksheet based on her skill level as described in the Core. You'll be doing things like analyzing the spelling, alphabetizing them, finding similar words (synonyms, rhyming words, or words with the same phonograms).

 

Day 3 - Work with sentences, using activites from the Core. Use the model to find different kinds of sentences. Count the # of sentences in the model, and look for end punctuation, etc. You'll also begin with grammar (find the nouns, etc.) at some point, but maybe not until level B (can't remember).

 

Day 4 - do copywork from the model, and move to dictation when ready.

 

Second week - work on writing project.

 

Does this make sense? If you want to see samples of worksheets I've made up to go with Aesop, I can email them to you. They're for Aesop A, but you could do the same thing with models from Aesop B.

 

HTH,

[Mama Lynx]

I did this exact same thing for awhile, with my two oldest boys. It worked very well.

[Alana in Canada]

Julie's approach is interesting. It would all depend on the maturity of your students.

 

I tried to keep my two together--and they have the same age spread. It just did not work. My son was bored and underchallenged by Aesop A-- (He had just turned 11 when we began) but it was a perfect fit for my daughter (8.)

 

Today, my daughter started Aesop B--and she was thrilled. My son is in the third week of Homer (we skipped Aesop B completely. Not entrirely wise, perhaps, but we had to get moving.)

 

So, in spite of my very best efforts to keep them together, it just didn't work.

 

However: you could, if you felt capable of it, give them the same model and have each work at his or her own level. I thought about it and realised that for me it would be more work than just using whatever their particular books called for that week.

 

If you do do them separately, then try to stagger the first day. It is always incredibly intensive with each child--analysing the models and getting each set up to either outline or write the first draft. We have other stuff to discuss in Homer, too...so I've been thinking of doing Day 1 with one child on Monday and Day 1 with the other on Tuesday. That might help.

 

By the by--I think your son will be fine with the grammar in Homer if he has completed R&S4. My son is only half way through R&S4 and I don't anticipate any problems (though we've had grammar through our Latin, too.)

[Mama Lynx]

I ended up only combining my two students for a semester. After that ... I can't remember exactly why we stopped, but for whatever reason that method was no longer serving us. For that semester, though, it worked very well.

 

In the beginning, that is how the Classical Writing authors worked with their own kids: they used one model, and had each child work with it at their own level. If you skip the work books and use the core books, progressing in the levels for each individual student, it can work. Eventually one child will be ready for much more mature work than the other, as you're saying, Alana. I think at the time we used Aesop B models for both students.

 

And no, I don't think it's at all awful to skip Aesop B. I think a good bit of Aesop and Homer is overkill for many students. My oldest skipped most of Homer B, my 2nd son skipped some Aesop (can't really remember what), and I think will end up doing only about half each of Homer A and B. Even so, that's a lot of work, and it's good work. And in between we work on CW Poetry, and take some time to do written narrations, ala WTM.

[noashmam]

Thank you ladies. I'm hoping to make this as easy to teach as possible since I also have my 3 year old to distract us (LOL) so I am looking forward to using the workbooks. I think I will go ahead and teach them separate, for that reason only. Also, if I started my 8 year old in Aesop-B wouldn't she hit Homer way too early for her age?

 

My son who will be 11-so do you think Homer is a good fit for him even though we haven't worked on writing that much? We did not do most of the writing in R & S. I was using Writing Strands with him, but that didn't seem to be a good fit either, which is why I think Classical Writing will help us. So with that in mind, do you still think it okay to start in Homer for him, rather than Aesop-B? I"m concerned it would be way too advanced.

 

I really appreciate your help!

 

Kim

[Julie in GA]

I skipped Aesop B also, with my first two dc, and they were fine. This was during the pre-workbook era.