abrightmom Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 (edited) It seems that copywork is the majority of a child's early writing. At what point does or should copywork phase out? Is it always integral to the overall writing plan or does "structured" or "explicit" writing instruction replace copywork? I have to go back and check SWB's recommendations in WTM. I do remember dictation being a regular part of the weekly plan in grammar stage with the addition of a formal writing program at some point in there. I don't remember copywork at that point. Help me flesh out the copywork question. I think it must be a part of the CM philosophy and perhaps CM keeps copywork integral for longer than a SWB approach would. I am very flustered with this question right now. :confused: and :lol: If my questions don't make sense will you tell me whether or not your 4th or 5th grader does copywork? If so, how often and how much and why? Thank-you. Edited July 3, 2012 by abrightmom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kristinannie Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 My son is 6 and in 1st grade. He spends about 5 minutes on copywork. Sometimes (like today), the sentence will be slightly longer so I will tell him he only has to do half. He usually ends up doing the whole thing though since he loves handwriting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duckens Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 What an excellent question! Here's where we are at: Dd is 5.5, and officially starting K this year. Last year, we worked through most of "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons." At the end of each lesson, the child is instructed to write two different letters (random, but assigned). I always instructed dd to write 3 capitals and 3 lowercase for each letter. We used "learning to write paper" with the dashes in the middle. I circle and star the ones that are the best looking. There was also a lot of letter practice in Saxon Phonics K, which we just finished, so dd is very competent in writing letters. -------------------------------- This year we are hoping to do more copywork of sentences. We are using "Primary Arts of Language Writing" from IEW. Since dd is already a competent reader and writer of letters, we did not purchase the entire recommended set from IEW; just "Primary Arts of Language Teacher's Manual" and the Writing DVD-ROM that goes with it. Section 1: Writing Letters: 31 lessons We will skip to lesson 24 when they start writing words. Section 2: Copy Work and Style: 40 lessons "The daily practice will help make printing automatic in preparation for composition." We will do this. Section 3: Composition with Style: 16 weeks of lessons By this section, copywork has ended, and writing begins. As you can see, copywork has a very brief life in this program. Unrelated comment: I wish I had purchased the spelling program from IEW. I am nervous that dd does not have a traditional spelling curriculum for the next year. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Perhaps the question is, "What do you want out of copywork"? If your goal, like in the bolded quote above, is to "make printing automatic," then you may not need a lot of copywork......or you may need to do extra until you feel your child has reached that goal. If your child enjoys copywork, and other necessary subjects like math or phonics or [fill in the blank] are still getting done, then you may want to do extra copywork. If you want to link copywork with spiritual training (bible verses) or philosophical thought (motivational or famous quotes), or memorization, you may do more copywork; or your copywork may have a different personality. Isn't is awesome that we can each tailor a specific education around our own child's and our own family's needs??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heidi Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 It seems that copywork is the majority of a child's early writing. At what point does or should copywork phase out? Is it always integral to the overall writing plan or does "structured" or "explicit" writing instruction replace copywork? I have to go back and check SWB's recommendations in WTM. I do remember dictation being a regular part of the weekly plan in grammar stage with the addition of a formal writing program at some point in there. I don't remember copywork at that point. Help me flesh out the copywork question. I think it must be a part of the CM philosophy and perhaps CM keeps copywork integral for longer than a SWB approach would. I am very flustered with this question right now. :confused: and :lol: If my questions don't make sense will you tell me whether or not your 4th or 5th grader does copywork? If so, how often and how much and why? Thank-you. My dd8 is going in to 3rd grade and I am dropping copywork this year for her. She will do dictation daily and will be writing in so many other subjects that I don't see a point in asking her to copy something. WWE 3 does not include copywork in it, if that helps. CM keeps copywork through 8th grade, if I remember correctly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smgwynn Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 We are using copy work for multiple functions this year. I copy a dictation/copy work based spelling program into the Getty dubay cursive font. I use that for spelling, handwriting, and we also use it for capitalization/punctuation instruction since Mct doesn't cover that very well. Kills three birds with one stone...I'm trying to simplify this year, going back to the old school way of doing some things. Oh, I'm doing that with my ds12, dd9, and in the print font with my ds6. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nansk Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 My dd8 is going in to 3rd grade and I am dropping copywork this year for her. She will do dictation daily and will be writing in so many other subjects that I don't see a point in asking her to copy something. WWE 3 does not include copywork in it, if that helps. CM keeps copywork through 8th grade, if I remember correctly. I agree with this. I may keep up cursive copywork just to ensure cursive becomes second nature. But otherwise, dd is already able to take dictation, so I am dictating the WWE copywork sentences now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Narrow Gate Academy Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 My 3rd grader will still be doing copywork this year to solidify writing in cursive. I generally drop copywork after 3rd and switch to dictation and a writing program. HTH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sleeplessnights Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 We do printing copywork in K and part of 1st grade to help with accuracy and to build up writing endurance. Then we do cursive copywork the second half of 1st and 2nd for cursive writing fluency. We also start AAS in 1st grade, which starts with phrase dictation and moves to short sentence dictation in level 2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vida Winter Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 My 7yo has been doing around 8 short dictation sentences a day but no copywork. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abrightmom Posted July 3, 2012 Author Share Posted July 3, 2012 My 3rd grader will still be doing copywork this year to solidify writing in cursive. I generally drop copywork after 3rd and switch to dictation and a writing program. HTH Thank-you for all of the contributions. THIS (Narrow Gate Academy) is my thinking. I guess that I lean more "classical" than CM in the copywork realm then. This is helpful because it's narrowing down some curricula choices for me :001_smile:. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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