How much writing in all subjects?

[Allearia]

For a strong student, say in seventh or eighth grade, how much writing when you consider writing, history, literature? I am struggling with not wanting to overwhelm, but at the same time keep up my expectations to what students on a rigorous college prep track are capable of. Is a writing assignment in each of these a week too much? It seems like a lot to me, but maybe it is typical.

[Narrow Gate Academy]

I'm planning on 1 per week for writing and 1 outline and 1 summary or essay per week for history. Literature will be 1 assignment per book. Depending on the month and length of books scheduled, probably 2-3 per month (I haven't actually scheduled these out yet. I'm still prereading.) HTH

[cjgrubbs]

I'm interested in more feedback on how others handle this, too!

 

I want to prepare my rising 7th grader but not overwhelm. Writing/grammar/spelling are his worst areas and we need to work on them but I want him to work towards quality and not be overwhelmed with the quantity.

 

We've used IEW for the past 2 years (only been homeschooling 2 years) and I've been pleased with the material but not thrilled about his attitude. I feel he can do higher quality work than what he's giving me now. He doesn't like and it's hard - therefore he rushes through it and doesn't do his best. I'm still trying to work through how to deal with this attitude. I'm hoping that seeing his SAT scores from this year where he was above average in every category except the grammar/spelling/mechanics ones might have been the motivation he needed. He scored at 5th/6th grade equivalent for mechanics and spellings and he was NOT happy about it.

Edited July 4, 2012 by cjgrubbs
wrong emoticon

[BFamily]

My DS11 will be going into 7th grade this year, and here is a peek of what I plan on having him do for writing.

 

1. He will complete Classical Writing Aesop and Homer for Older Beginners four days per week. I think I read somewhere that it amounts to about 30 minutes of writing per day.

2. He will be reading from a primary source every week for history, and he will be expected to complete a primary source evaluation each week according to TWTM. I would expect this would take 20-30 minutes once a week.

3. He will be reading two biographies of scientists he encounters this year. He will be expected to complete an evaluation of them per TWTM. He will also be expected to complete simple lab reports for science.

4. He will be expected to complete evaluations of books he reads for literature per TWTM.

5. On Fridays, I will have him working through Writing with Skill for an hour. The last few weeks of WWS will have him completing a major research paper.

 

He'll have most of his writing coming from Classical Writing and Writing with Skill, and light writing across the board for his other subjects.

[Allearia]

Thanks for the input, I'd love to hear more. Right now I am trying to mesh the history-lit-writing schedules so that weeks when there is a larger essay or report, the subjects are combined. So if there is a history report, we use that for writing, and for literature we just do reading/discussion or shorter summaries. But, are several paragraphs in each of the three subjects too much for a day, or a week? Or is that pretty much expected at this point? Or, should we be doing even more than that? I know I will get more of a feel once we are in it, but just in trying to plan out what to cover I am hitting a wall.

[Colleen in NS]

For a strong student, say in seventh or eighth grade, how much writing when you consider writing, history, literature? I am struggling with not wanting to overwhelm, but at the same time keep up my expectations to what students on a rigorous college prep track are capable of. Is a writing assignment in each of these a week too much? It seems like a lot to me, but maybe it is typical.

 

Thanks for the input, I'd love to hear more. Right now I am trying to mesh the history-lit-writing schedules so that weeks when there is a larger essay or report, the subjects are combined. So if there is a history report, we use that for writing, and for literature we just do reading/discussion or shorter summaries. But, are several paragraphs in each of the three subjects too much for a day, or a week? Or is that pretty much expected at this point? Or, should we be doing even more than that? I know I will get more of a feel once we are in it, but just in trying to plan out what to cover I am hitting a wall.

 

Will this student be doing WWS (I see it in your signature)? It's a great foundation for being able to write in content areas.

 

For my son's 7th and 8th grade years, I didn't have him do writing beyond his basic writing-skill practice each day. But this coming year for 9th, I may do so. Ideally it would have been great to have him doing that, but his writing-skill practice was done using his content reading anyway (I tried WWS with him for awhile, but dropped it simply because the series publication process doesn't keep up with his needs, so I went back to using WTM/audio lecture recommendations for teaching. I love WWS, though.). The other reason was that he had enough other work to do (a pretty detailed algebra program, Henle Latin, Traditional Logic, content-reading and activities such as timelining and mapwork) that I felt it would overload him during those years. This coming year, I am spreading out the work over more weeks (to make our days a little easier), so I am going to try to incorporate extra (one? two? three? not sure yet) content writing assignments (besides his regular skills work) each week.

 

Many people will vary, though, on their opinions about what is necessary for "rigourous." I know my son is slowly but surely learning the writing skills he will need for university, so I don't mind going at this pace. Others would rather their rising 9th graders already have certain skills in place and be able to write multi-page essays several times per week.

 

I tend to experiment with the recommendations in TWTM and on SWB's audio lectures, and that helps me figure out where each of my kids is in skills-work, which then helps me figure out a weekly study pattern.

 

hth

[Allearia]

Will this student be doing WWS (I see it in your signature)? It's a great foundation for being able to write in content areas.

 

For my son's 7th and 8th grade years, I didn't have him do writing beyond his basic writing-skill practice each day. But this coming year for 9th, I may do so. Ideally it would have been great to have him doing that, but his writing-skill practice was done using his content reading anyway (I tried WWS with him for awhile, but dropped it simply because the series publication process doesn't keep up with his needs, so I went back to using WTM/audio lecture recommendations for teaching. I love WWS, though.). The other reason was that he had enough other work to do (a pretty detailed algebra program, Henle Latin, Traditional Logic, content-reading and activities such as timelining and mapwork) that I felt it would overload him during those years. This coming year, I am spreading out the work over more weeks (to make our days a little easier), so I am going to try to incorporate extra (one? two? three? not sure yet) content writing assignments (besides his regular skills work) each week.

 

Many people will vary, though, on their opinions about what is necessary for "rigourous." I know my son is slowly but surely learning the writing skills he will need for university, so I don't mind going at this pace. Others would rather their rising 9th graders already have certain skills in place and be able to write multi-page essays several times per week.

 

I tend to experiment with the recommendations in TWTM and on SWB's audio lectures, and that helps me figure out where each of my kids is in skills-work, which then helps me figure out a weekly study pattern.

 

hth

Yes, we will be doing WWS, it looks perfect for him. What you mention about having a lot of other intense work is really helpful and why I want to keep my expectations reasonable. With AOPS, Latin, and Greek, I don't want to get bogged down in a bunch of writing that is not necessary. But I also don't want to neglect writing as it is one area he really needs some work on. So this is all very helpful. I think if we do some longer writing but space them out and spread them over a few weeks it will be enough to go with daily WWS work alternated with history outlining and short writing about literature. I think if I plan for WWS three days a week, we can spend one day each on writing for history and literature (along with all the other history and literature reading, discussion, mapping, etc. that he loves and isn't "work" for him).