Considering skipping from WWE 3 to WWS.

[Catherine]

My ds is a 10 yo fifth grader, and struggles with writing. I am going to finish WWE 3 with him this year. He is able to handle 2 lessons a week. Generally, his narrations are pretty good, but he cannot do the dictations after three repeats. Usually, he can do them, with 0-2 corrections as he writes, after 4 repeats, though sometimes it takes 5 (or more! Ack!). He simply does not have the working memory to do them without some extra assistance.

 

Since he is almost 11, I'm considering attempting WWS in the fall, and simply skipping WWE 4. Has anyone done this? Can you comment on how well it worked?

[Chrysalis Academy]

That is what we have done just recently. Dd9 is a strong writer, and was getting bored with narrations, so we jumped into WWS. The first couple of weeks have been easy, just adjusting to working independently mostly, and learning how to outline. Learning to use the thesaurus was a little challenging - turns out she has terrible dictionary skills, who knew - but she enjoyed it once she figured out how it works. Next week is her first experience with the topoi, and that's when we'll really see . . . it looks like things really ramp up from here. Too soon to tell, but I'm confident she will be able to do it as long as I adjust the pace, if needed. I know some people give their student extra time/days on the topoi exercises. We'll do that too as needed.

 

This was a really good move for us, though, even if we end up having to go slow - learning to outline is really helping her organize her thoughts for other writing projects. She was really ready for this skill.

[Dana]

We plan to make the skip from WWE3 to WWS next year. As we finish out this year, I've been doing the WWE4 textbook exercises... although I'm considering skipping the dictation at this point.

 

I'd say give it a shot, see if it works, and if it doesn't, you can always drop back to WWE4.

[melmichigan]

It can't hurt to try, even SWB says some kids might do fine skipping WWE4. We made it to week 12/13 in WWS with my DD before dropping back to WWE4 to focus on the narrations, doing four narrations a week. We are just getting ready to move back to WWS. :)

[Mom-ninja.]

We finished WWE 3 and are doing 4. The dictations in 4 are proving to be too hard for ds.

 

I just posted about this in the Special Needs forum because my ds is dyslexic. I've decided to skip the narration selections from level 4 and come up with my own. I'll continue with the narrations because he needs the practice. It's still hard for him. I've started having him write key words while he is reading the passage selections to help him with his narrations.

 

Here's my thread if you want to read it.

[Chrysalis Academy]

You know, what I should have explained is that although we were doing WWE3 (because that is the workbook I owned) we were doing it WWE4-style - that is, dd had been writing her own dictations entirely all along. So in that sense, though we did leapfrong WWE4, she was doing 5 sentence narration writing on her own before we started WWS. I do think this is important, students should be really solidly able to write their own narrations before you start WWS.

[Catherine]

Thanks so much for this idea. I haven't been having him write his own narrations. We also do not spend nearly enough time on writing, I don't think. I'm changing our method for the rest of this year at the end of spring break!

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

You know, what I should have explained is that although we were doing WWE3 (because that is the workbook I owned) we were doing it WWE4-style - that is, dd had been writing her own dictations entirely all along. So in that sense, though we did leapfrong WWE4, she was doing 5 sentence narration writing on her own before we started WWS. I do think this is important, students should be really solidly able to write their own narrations before you start WWS.

 

My ds is able to write the narrations on his own from WWE 3 on his own no sweat but I use the questions to guide his summary before he writes it in order to keep him focused.

 

 

Is it a problem to always use the questions provided to guide his summary for the time being? He is perfectly capable of writing a summary without the questions but he has a tendency to narrate (write) the whole story in his own words since he has very good recall:)

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

We finished WWE 3 and are doing 4. The dictations in 4 are proving to be too hard for ds.

 

I just posted about this in the Special Needs forum because my ds is dyslexic. I've decided to skip the narration selections from level 4 and come up with my own. I'll continue with the narrations because he needs the practice. It's still hard for him. I've started having him write key words while he is reading the passage selections to help him with his narrations.

 

Here's my thread if you want to read it.

 

I have thought about the dictations and we are doing them but for more complicated ones from WWE 4 I have him copy them in order to study them. I figure we can go back and try dictating at a later point when we actually are working through WWE 4 since we are actually working on WWE 3. Hopefully, I am not messing thing up:tongue_smilie:.

[Chrysalis Academy]

My ds is able to write the narrations on his own from WWE 3 on his own no sweat but I use the questions to guide his summary before he writes it in order to keep him focused.

 

 

Is it a problem to always use the questions provided to guide his summary for the time being? He is perfectly capable of writing a summary without the questions but he has a tendency to narrate (write) the whole story in his own words since he has very good recall:)

 

I hear you! Cutting out the details is hard for my dd too. I did spend some time focusing on that, and with the WWS assignments I have been making her stick to the max number of sentences. I'm telling her that the skill she's working on is discrimination - picking out the most important points, without which the summary won't make sense, and that including too much detail is *not* a virtue when the assignment is to summarize! Outlining is actually helping with this - it forces them to pick the one most important thing from each paragraph.

 

I don't use the questions every time, but I do if she is having trouble narrowing things down, or if she has left out something critical. So for the more complex passages, yes. In the TM of WWS it includes "How to help your student with step 2 (or 3) and includes this kind of questioning that you can use if your student is having a hard time with the passage. So I don't think it's expected that they never need this kind of prompting before starting WWS. If I were you I might try weaning him off the questions, gradually. Maybe if he puts in too much detail, ask him to go through his narration sentence by sentence, and see if he can leave any out with it still making sense? Guide him toward discriminating between the critical points and the extraneous details . . .

 

I'm no expert, but that's probably what I'd do! HTH.

[melmichigan]

I'm telling her that the skill she's working on is discrimination - picking out the most important points, without which the summary won't make sense, and that including too much detail is *not* a virtue when the assignment is to summarize! Outlining is actually helping with this - it forces them to pick the one most important thing from each paragraph.

 

This is the problem my DD had. Now I am focusing with my youngers on both retelling and summarizing and the differences between the two, it's as if they are seperate skills.