Do you require your dc to write papers in other subjects than english?

[Gamom3]

Dc only write papers in english or for their online writing class. They do need more writing...not that I am a good teacher at writing, but I feel like we need to be writing more.

 

I was thinking the other day that dc could write about something in their science that they are studying.

 

I just started having them write a book reports for every other book that they read. At what age do you stop book reports?

 

I am not creative enough to come up with ideas for papers. If you are like me where do you get your ideas?

[lllll]

If you look at the "Across the Curriculum" points on SWB's outlines here:

 

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/writing-without-fear-producing-good-writers-k-12/

 

you'll see some good ideas. This is pretty much what our dc have done over the years. Their papers have gradually lengthened as they've gotten older - and once they got used to the idea of writing all the time. ;)

 

HTH

Kathy

[KAR120C]

I don't know how other science books are, but the Singapore Biology we're using has a couple little topical sidebars per chapter that make good writing assignments. A recent one was "Enzymes in Industry" or something like that... Most of them require a little internet research, so they're not big projects, just a day's work of finding out a little background and writing a page about it. He's currently working on some background research for a few marine biology projects we're adding in -- a couple pages each on five different locations and a species or two in each of them. Oh and the science fair project. That's a formal written report about 15 pages with annotated bibliography, the lab notebook, research notebook, display board, and notecards for an oral presentation.

 

And research + writing is almost all we do in history - but this year we're doing a topical history, which lends itself rather well to that. He just did a paper on an old (pre-revolutionary) house a friend of his used to live in, tracking down the different changes in ownership, who built the original house, what importance he had in the community... His next one is to be on a "famous fake" but he hasn't decided which one (faked artwork, or the Piltdown Man, or something...) We aim for a paper every two weeks, and he writes a page a week for our History of Science co-op group.

 

We've actually never done book reports per se.... but he does write about literature - more often picking a theme or a favorite aspect and writing either about how it ties into the major themes of the work or how the whole work is related to others of the same genre, era, author, etc. We just saw a production of The Importance of Being Earnest where Lady Bracknell was played by a man, so his paper is about gender in the play and how the casting fits into the other gender themes. We've been reading Victorian English Lit this year, so I'm hoping for some ties to gender themes in other works too.

 

For all this he does virtually no fiction writing. It's all reports and essays here!

[Chris in VA]

Another vote for writing tied to history.

Giving lots of essay questions on tests is a good idea, too, imo. It was a skill I actually had to teach ds, which was just not on my radar, since I was just a natural writer in high school.

 

As far as book reports, I'd say high school is the time to go deeper than merely summarizing the plot in a book. There are lots of programs out there that teach literary analysis. You can even do some of the questions at the back of SparkNotes and such.

[MommyThrice]

We do very few "English" writing assignments. Ds writes a few 10-minute speeches at the beginning of the year for speech/debate. Most of our writing assignments are straight from Notgrass American History. Each week it lists a few assignments to choose from that are directly related to the weeks history readings.

 

I have also found the SWB link in the post above very helpful.

 

What about current events? For a while I had my son choose a news article every week and write a short, argumentative essay in response; or, sometimes, just a paragraph. He had to run his thesis statement by me, first, to make sure he was actually taking a position and not just summarizing the article. He loves to argue!

[EKS]

I have my son write papers for geography, history, science, and literature. He has also been writing book reports for the supplemental books he reads for geography. I don't have him write book reports for the books he reads that aren't assigned and books for literature are dealt with differently as well.

[Jane in NC]

Does your foreign language curriculum have any writing on cultural aspects of the language? My son has studied Latin since 8th grade. He has always had writing assignments on Roman history, Latin literature, and mythology--assignments in English, I will note.

 

His work in French required writing in French but I could see extending lessons to include writing about some cultural aspect.

 

Regarding written work in history, see TWTM.

 

And I second including writing in science work.

[jld]

Dd is going to do a travel plan in Spanish for a trip to Spain we would like to take. She will do the research in English, but the paper will be written in Spanish.

 

She needs to do more writing in French. She sometimes writes in her diary in French, but not always. Really, her dad ought to be asking her to write more, and correcting it, but he's here so seldom, and it's one more thing to do, so it just doesn't happen.

[Karenciavo]

Yes. He does essay questions for history and in addition to essays has written position papers for science.

ETA: I think I'll add position paper to history as well, especially since we are entering the latter part of the 20th century in our studies.

Edited March 13, 2010 by Karenciavo

[Colleen in NS]

Dc only write papers in english or for their online writing class. They do need more writing...not that I am a good teacher at writing, but I feel like we need to be writing more.

 

I was thinking the other day that dc could write about something in their science that they are studying.

 

I just started having them write a book reports for every other book that they read. At what age do you stop book reports?

 

I am not creative enough to come up with ideas for papers. If you are like me where do you get your ideas?

 

This lecture about high school writing, by SWB, has a lot of good ideas in it.

[QueenCat]

Essays for history, along with the English/literature.

[mcconnellboys]

LOL, I was envisioning everyone's children writing papers in Latin or Spanish!

 

Yes, I have my son do writing related to literature, history, and science studies.

 

I vary what I have him do. He wrote a lot of papers on various topics I assigned last year. This year, I've had him doing more online research with questions to be answered about the subject under study; various types of Venn diagrams and other such comparisons of topics; literary genre assignments; short answers and essay questions in history, etc.

 

Where do I get my ideas? Ummmmm, I'm not sure. It seems that they just sort of evolve. When I do something that seems good, I tend to look for opportunities to do more of it.

 

Because I do not use texts or study guides for literature, science, or history, I tend to go through some of the books they'll be using and make up tests (which could also be used as worksheets or review sheets) to go along with those. I made up some things to use with How Nature Works last year, for example. I made up review questions and a lengthy test to go along with study of the Early Middle Ages this year. I pulled together online worksheets for geology studies this year and several of those were online scavenger hunts or research of particular websites to glean information on various topics from those.

 

I've also started using some lapbooking and notebooking ideas for writing associated with our literature and history studies this year. I plan on using some of those along with Chemistry studies for next year, too.

 

Rather than book reports this year, I've had my son do some longer research papers related to personalities he read about in books. For instance, he read a historical fiction called Brian Boru, Emperor of the Irish. He then researched the real person of Brian Boru and wrote a paper about him.

[tex-mex]

Science Fair Projects and Reports are always fun! :)