Classical Writing Aesop questions

[peacefully]

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[boscopup]

I don't know what the writing product should be for CW, but WWE's philosophy is very well laid out in the audio lecture on teaching writing in the elementary years (and middle grades and high school - there are 3 lectures total). I believe SWB expects a 2nd grader to be able to write their own 2-3 sentence summary narration by the end of the year. In first grade and the beginning of 2nd grade, the student orally narrates, while the parent acts as scribe.

 

Highly, highly, highly recommend listening to that lecture if you can.

[Pata]

Yes, I feel the same way, CW's imitation looks like retelling style narration in Aesop and WWE looks like summary style narrations. I do think that CW Homer goes into more detail about teaching the kids to summarize, at least that's what I gather from the website and various other things I have read about the program. Just wanted to let you know, your not alone :).

 

WWE wants your 2nd grader to be able to take on 12-15 word sentence from dictation, give a 2-3 sentence narration and take one of those sentences narrations from dictation. You can look at the diagnostic evals to get an idea of where the student should be by the end of each level.

 

CW has samples of writing projects from several ages of students in the back of the core book. They also go over how the two authors structured their week. It was very helpful for me to read these, really helped me to see where we were going with it all. Also if you read the progym article on CW's website, you'll see where their overall philosophy is going.

 

Hope something in there helps :)!

Edited May 30, 2011 by Pata
ds helped me type :)

[Narrow Gate Academy]

I just received my CW Aesop. After looking at the student models at the back of the book, it seemed to me that what they are calling "imitation" looks a whole lot like narration. And after looking at WWE yet another time, SWB's version of "narration" seems like summary to me—a highly condensed version of important points. What am I missing here?

 

I would say your assessment is correct. Charlotte Mason style narrations encourage children to tell back a story with as much detail as they remember. This is the type of narration encouraged by CW Aesop. The goal of the first writing exercises is to get the child comfortable narrating, to help them put the story in the proper sequence, and to get it written down. Aesop then moves on to encourage dialogue in the story and then increasing description in the final section.

 

I've always considered SWB's version of narration to be more like summarizing. We prefer the CM style in elementary and work on summarizing later (CW Homer covers this and telling the kids to write their own history narrations usually results in dramatically more succinct output as well:lol:).

 

The reason I'm asking is that I'm having some difficulty in getting the "big picture" of primary grade writing here. It would help me tremendously to figure out what the writing products should be. What is a 7yo supposed to be able to produce?

 

BTW, I know that I'm overthinking this, but just consider me very, very dense. :confused1: Can someone just hold my hand and walk me through this? Pretty please?

 

As far as output, I would work toward the following:

1. Being able to properly orally narrate the sequence of events in a short story. Different children will naturally do this in different amounts of detail. Some will retell the story almost word for word. Some you have to ask questions like what happened next? to get through the story.

2. Being able to translate their oral narration into a written one. This involves handwriting, spelling, grammar, and a certain degree of focus to get the information from their brain to the paper.

 

The sample narrations in the back of the Aesop core should give you a good idea of what type of output to look for. The goal of Aesop is basically that by the end of the program, the child should be able to write written narrations (stories) with dialogue and description. Generally the narrations will get longer over the course of the program from 2-3 sentences to more like 1/2 to 3/4 of a page. HTH

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[Guest]

I would say your assessment is correct. Charlotte Mason style narrations encourage children to tell back a story with as much detail as they remember. This is the type of narration encouraged by CW Aesop. The goal of the first writing exercises is to get the child comfortable narrating, to help them put the story in the proper sequence, and to get it written down. Aesop then moves on to encourage dialogue in the story and then increasing description in the final section.

 

I've always considered SWB's version of narration to be more like summarizing. We prefer the CM style in elementary and work on summarizing later (CW Homer covers this and telling the kids to write their own history narrations usually results in dramatically more succinct output as well:lol:).

 

As far as output, I would work toward the following:

1. Being able to properly orally narrate the sequence of events in a short story. Different children will naturally do this in different amounts of detail. Some will retell the story almost word for word. Some you have to ask questions like what happened next? to get through the story.

2. Being able to translate their oral narration into a written one. This involves handwriting, spelling, grammar, and a certain degree of focus to get the information from their brain to the paper.

 

The sample narrations in the back of the Aesop core should give you a good idea of what type of output to look for. The goal of Aesop is basically that by the end of the program, the child should be able to write written narrations (stories) with dialogue and description. Generally the narrations will get longer over the course of the program from 2-3 sentences to more like 1/2 to 3/4 of a page. HTH

 

Thank you for your post. I have read the CM approach to narration and prefer it. We have a couple of lessons to go in WWE 1 and then we are switching to CW Aesop for next year. Looking at CW I got the impression it looked more CM but until we have it in our hands I could not be sure. I am glad you are confirming this impression. I am about to place my order as soon as our funding is approved from our school some time this coming week :).

[Guest]

I have to say that the WWE guidelines for narrations have not really struck a chord with me. I'm still too new on this homeschooling journey to have formed much of an opinion, but like Deanna, I feel more drawn to a CM-style narration (with more detail) and think that summarizing is a skill that can be learned later. I'm really happy to hear that Homer covers this.

 

:iagree: I was going to use WWE 2 with our TOG reading next year or with CHOW but I think I will just drop it altogether and focus on CW Aesop only for now. Between CW, some writing from Shurley English and some of the TOG writing we are more than covered. Thank you for starting this thread :). Filed it for future reference.