Do you supplement WWE with other writing programs, with an "older" student?

[irizarry4]

Hello!

 

This is our first year homeschooling. This question relates specifically to my 10yo 5th grader. As a former PS student, he had no formal education in grammar or writing. Absolutely no experience with dictation, copywork, narrations, etc. We live in Texas, home of the TAKS test. Language instruction is mostly aimed at teaching kiddos reading comprehension, selecting the "best" answer among a set of confusingly similar choices, and the proper shading of impossibly small ovals.:rolleyes:

 

So we have chosen FLL to introduce him to formal grammar. We are using FLL 4 and he is loving it. He is a visual-spatial, and loves to diagram. He had never done any narration, copywork, dictation or summarizing, so I started him on WWE 2. We are working along in WWE quite nicely. Ds struggles with identifying the main ideas, so I think the work we are doing in WWE is valuable and needed.

 

My question (I do have one) is that I keep feeling/thinking that he should already be writing, at his age/level. Do you agree? Shouldn't he know how to put a paragraph together? And shouldn't I be making him do some of that? :confused: The problem is that he lacks knowledge/practice in basic skills needed for basic writing. What have you out there done in a situation like this? When does WWE get to a point where the student is taught how to compose his own writing? Or do you think I should supplement with another program where he can get a gentle introduction to writing?

 

Help!! :bigear:

[maryibug]

I recently saw someone on here recommend "Paragraph Writing Made Easy" for this age group...so I looked it up on amazon.com. It looks pretty good, very pragmatic and useful, and got good reviews (and only $10 !) So that may be an option?

[irizarry4]

bump

[Colleen in NS]

As a former PS student, he had no formal education in grammar or writing.

 

I started him on WWE 2. We are working along in WWE quite nicely. Ds struggles with identifying the main ideas, so I think the work we are doing in WWE is valuable and needed.

 

Do you agree? Shouldn't he know how to put a paragraph together? And shouldn't I be making him do some of that? :confused: The problem is that he lacks knowledge/practice in basic skills needed for basic writing. What have you out there done in a situation like this? When does WWE get to a point where the student is taught how to compose his own writing? Or do you think I should supplement with another program where he can get a gentle introduction to writing?

 

If he lacks knowledge and basic skills needed for writing, I would guess he would struggle with learning to put a paragraph together. WWE will prepare him VERY well to do this later. WWE *is* his gentle introduction to writing. When he is done with WWE 4, you can either find another writing program to teach him to develop paragraphs and so on, or hope that the sequel to WWE is published (2010 is what I've read on the PHP site). WWE 3 and 4 will gradually teach him to think up his own sentences AND get them written down on his own. By the time he finishes level 4, he will be able to read a chapter or two of a book, figure out the most important facts or the storyline, think up his own grammatically correct sentences (3 or 4), and write them down properly (grammar, spelling, punctuation, spacing). If he's got these skills, learning about paragraphs will be MUCH easier. If you want him to move ahead faster, you can always double up on WWE lessons, IF he is able to handle it. But don't rush it if he isn't able.

[razorbackmama]

hope that the sequel to WWE is published (2010 is what I've read on the PHP site).

 

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh! Where????????????????

[nukeswife]

I'm in the same boat, my son was in PS for K and 1st and when I brought him home my focus was on fixing the look/say way of reading he was introduced so we spent the past 2 years focusing on phonics and getting his reading level up to par. Now I'm wondering what do I do to get him to form a coherent thought and put it down on paper.

 

We're also using WWE2, and once we come back from holiday break I may double up the lessons and then move on to WWE3 as soon as we finish 2. It may seem that WWE is deceptively simple, but it does work. We're 11 weeks into it and my son suddenly decided to write his own story. It was full of grammatic and usage/mechanics errors, but I was so happy that he decided to write on his own. Now I know that I need to focus on grammar and mechanics a bit more too.

 

I have Classical Writing Aesop on it's way but I'm not sure if I'll use it or not. We tried IEW but it didn't make him want to write, he finds WWE more enjoyable so I'm just going to hope that SWB can get the next levels out by the time we finish with the grammar stage ones.

[rafiki]

.

[Colleen in NS]

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh! Where????????????????

 

here in the product description

 

But there are two conflicting sentences there, so I'm not sure. I did notify PHP about that, and it was changed, but now it's back to the way it was.