Suggestions for creating own writing program?

[freethinkermama]

I've been really disappointed with the writing program I've tried so far. Writing Strands last year. Booooring.

 

I'm going to try something different this year, and I'd love to hear suggestions.

 

I'm thinking about having my 10-year-old try a writing exercise every day, something different, but then also creating longer assignments.

 

Once a week we'll do a letter to a friend or family member.

Once week I'll have her do some free fun writing, whatever she likes, as long as she writes for 15 minutes. Then, we'll go over grammar, punctuation, spelling together.

Once a week she'll do some writing on whatever novel she's reading: character analysis, plot overview, discussion of story conflict, etc.

We'll also do a short dictation everyday.

 

As for longer assignments, we'll do several types of papers:

Book report

Summary/response of newspaper article

Argument essay

Probably one of these per month.

 

Any other suggestions here? Every day she'll do some sort of narrative summary on history or another subject, so I think we'll be fine for narration.

 

Thanks for much for suggestions!

 

T.

[angela in ohio]

What will you use for instruction? If you are comfortable with writing and can teach her method on your own, I think this would work well. If not, you may need more help. Just the act of practicing writing is not enough by itself to develop skills; there needs to be specific skill instruction and correction/ guidance.

 

If you are pulling it together yourself, I think the WriteSource books are great. They have short instructional bits (a page to a few pages usually) on many different types of writing.

 

Does she find free writing easy? Sometimes it is hard to write on "anything." You might want to have some prompts ready in case; you could pull them out of a hat or let her pick from a list.

 

Some other ideas:

 

This year we are focusing on different ways to structure a paragraph.

 

You could work on different types of sentences: compound or complex, starting with a preposition, etc.

 

Other random writing projects: autobiography, biography, report on a country to state, lap book or minibook project, script/play, poetry.

[freethinkermama]

What will you use for instruction? If you are comfortable with writing and can teach her method on your own, I think this would work well. If not, you may need more help. Just the act of practicing writing is not enough by itself to develop skills; there needs to be specific skill instruction and correction/ guidance.

 

If you are pulling it together yourself, I think the WriteSource books are great. They have short instructional bits (a page to a few pages usually) on many different types of writing.

 

Does she find free writing easy? Sometimes it is hard to write on "anything." You might want to have some prompts ready in case; you could pull them out of a hat or let her pick from a list.

 

Some other ideas:

 

This year we are focusing on different ways to structure a paragraph.

 

You could work on different types of sentences: compound or complex, starting with a preposition, etc.

 

Other random writing projects: autobiography, biography, report on a country to state, lap book or minibook project, script/play, poetry.

 

Oh, those are great ideas. I'll look into them, thanks. I feel pretty comfortable teaching writing; it's what I used to teach at uni, but it's different developing for a kiddo.

 

Terrific thoughts!

T.

[angela in ohio]

Oh, those are great ideas. I'll look into them, thanks. I feel pretty comfortable teaching writing; it's what I used to teach at uni, but it's different developing for a kiddo.

 

Terrific thoughts!

T.

 

It doesn't have to be. :D I skipped all the elementary school cutesy writing stuff and just got serious about with dc from a young age. It's been great. :001_smile: My 14 yo writes better than the students in dh's grad school classes. ;)