Writing advice needed

[momto2Cs]

Writing with my ds11 just is not getting done. I love Brave Writer/The Writer's Jungle, but we just aren't doing it, besides some Friday Freewrites. He can write fairly decently thanks to years of reading good books. We're working on grammar and spelling, just not writing so much.

 

So, would you:

Buckle down, make a plan for actually implementing BWL, and follow it?

OR

Break out the copy of Igniting Your Writing that I have somewhere, so that he's getting some writing instruction and practice?

OR

Just insist that he start doing written narrations?

[PeterPan]

Narrations suck. Why do bright kids want to sit around regurgitating stuff they already know? They don't. Dictation is fine for that age. Have you tried having him outline and later outline/rewrite little articles on topics that interest him? Muse is good if he likes science or quirky things. It's a magazine from the makers of Cobblestone, etc. Anything he LIKES would do. Then in a couple years put him into WWS. I think WWS is fabulous. Dd couldn't have done it when she was younger and certainly not at the ages it seems to be suggested for (5th grade???). But now, age 13 and 8th, she's doing swimmingly with it. Somehow she has blossomed in this process and she has been doing a lot of LotR fan fiction writing on the side. She spent a couple hours today working on it in fact. This is only ironic if you realize HOW MUCH she was pencil phobic all these years. We're talking she did OT and would sweat blood before getting stuff on paper pencil phobic, blah blah.

 

If you can't make formal writing happen like you think you ought to at age 11, it's really not the end of the world. Make sure he can type. Talk about books. (plot line, etc.) Outline something he likes. It will be enough to tide him through, honest. :)

[TarynB]

For us IEW seems to be the solution after trials of BJU G&W,Brave Writer,Galore Park English, WWS...

 

 

:iagree:

 

Totally agree with the above suggestion of IEW - Institute for Excellence in Writing. After doing WWE, and writing being the most dreaded subject around here, we decided to try IEW's Student Writing Intensive for 5th grade, before jumping in to WWS. I'm now a believer in the IEW process. Writing gets done easily now with no fuss. We watch the DVD lessons together and then DS happily works independently on the assignments and then brings me the drafts. Quite a turnaround for my DS. He no longer hates writing and believes he is good at it, which is really saying something, and I'm very pleased with the output.

Edited October 16, 2012 by Kay_ks

[SilverMoon]

Writing with my ds11 just is not getting done. I love Brave Writer/The Writer's Jungle, but we just aren't doing it, besides some Friday Freewrites. He can write fairly decently thanks to years of reading good books. We're working on grammar and spelling, just not writing so much.

 

So, would you:

Buckle down, make a plan for actually implementing BWL, and follow it?

OR

Break out the copy of Igniting Your Writing that I have somewhere, so that he's getting some writing instruction and practice?

OR

Just insist that he start doing written narrations?

 

I'd probably do a combination of your last two. Assuming he still needs some help and instruction for written narrations/summaries, outlines, and such, decide which days you'll do that with him, and put Igniting Your Writing on the other days.

 

If he can do narrations, outlines and such on his own, I'd just go with the last one.

 

Either way, I had mine writing something every day, even it was just one paragraph on squids.

[KathyBC]

That's kind of how BW/WJ ended up for us as well. I just needed more hand holding. We found using something else (Wordsmith Apprentice, later IEW) and then doing Friday Freewrites is a good fit at our house.