How did WWE go for you?

[EmilyGF]

DS 8 loves WWE 2. It is perfect for him.

 

DD *hates* WWE 1. We're into week 15 of WWE 1 and she thinks it is total busywork. She's the sort of kid who writes novels, upside down, in English and copies whole books in German while pretending to speak French with her sister. No need for "sweet, gentle" language arts for her. Now, she is only 6.

 

What has worked for you for super-verbal kids?

 

Emily

[brendag]

I see this happening with my kids. We won't be starting a formal writing program until Sept and I already have 3 different programs in mind (WWE, CW & BW). The beauty of homeschooling right? :)

[Five More Minutes]

When she's writing on her own, is she writing in complete sentences? Possibly even paragraphs? If so, then I think that the copywork in WWE probably is busywork for her. Can you just leave formal writing for a while and do a Brave Writer-ish approach where you work together to edit some of her shorter pieces of writing?

 

My words girl has enjoyed WWE, but she has only this year started to produce a lot of writing on her own. And she has loved the MCT writing exercises in Sentence Island.

[serendipitous journey]

Have you tried scootching her up to WWE2?

 

My super-verbal one is not yet at the WWE stage of things so perhaps my perspective will be ... well, useless ;) ... but the IEW's stuff targets the highly-verbal (often female) types as well as the highly writing-averse ones. You could look at their SWI-A if you don't want to do the full kit-and-caboodle, sight unseen, with TWSS.

 

What seems useful about this is that you can tack the style checklists onto nearly any assignment (though you might need to require more than 1 sentence). For example, you could require that each narration have an "-ly" word (ie adverb such as slowly, compellingly, gleefully, &c). Don't allow the same -ly words to be frequently used, of course. Then you can add the requirement for a who/which clause. & so on. This would prevent the exercises from being pointless.

 

I myself am watching the TWSS series right now (it is a drawn-our process due to Limited Time!) and there are several pointers specifically aimed at improving the writing & storytelling of wordy children.

[boscopup]

It worked great for my writing phobic 8 year old (though this year, we did some IEW as well, which was also great for him).

 

My younger kids are more apt to write, but the 6 year old isn't yet writing sentences on his own, so I think WWE will be perfect for him.

 

Does your DD do the oral narration part well? If it's just the copywork that is busywork, drop it and only do the narrations. I found that the hardest part of WWE was those comprehension questions. I look forward to seeing how DS2 does with them, as he seems to have better story telling skills than DS1. I'm wondering if he'll have an easier time with WWE (which I totally would not have predicted a year ago for this child, who has speech delay and tends to be a late bloomer overall).

 

I agree with maybe moving her up to WWE2, and yeah, she may need something different before she's ready for WWS.

[Momof3littles]

Narration and comprehension are okay for DS1 (newly 9). He despises the dictation. We never did WWE1; we went right to WWE2 last year and he's doing WWE3 right now. I'm undecided if we'll continue with WWE4. He dislikes writing in general, especially anything more "creative." He did really well with MCT when we worked on writing poetry, but for the most part he doesn't enjoy the process at ALL.

[EmilyGF]

Hmmm. So, DD some days retells the whole story in her own words (more like CM narration) and other days sums it up quite well in one or two sentences, so narration isn't tricky for her, but maybe I should do longer passages. I do always choose the short copywork because she gets sloppy otherwise. No dictation in WWE 1.

 

Other thoughts?

 

Emily

[cmarango]

Why don't you give the year end test to her? If she does well then move on.

 

My dd and I were going through WWE1 when I realized it was too easy. I gave her the test one week, she did well, and now we've started WWE2. Today I have been thinking about skipping every other week since she does great with copywork and dictation, but still needs a little help summarizing.

[mommylawyer]

My kids love the reading and summarizing section of WWE, but the dictation is something I scrapped a couple of years ago with my oldest. If I can't even do the WWE4 dictation, I don't think my children need to. Every now and then I make sure they can summarize the dictation or take notes on it, but verbatim dictation doesn't happen for us. Besides, I never took verbatim notes in college or law school (even when using my laptop and typing 110 wpm). However, WWS has been a fabulous success (no more dictation).

[Mukmuk]

DS tolerates WWE4 well. He's an advanced reader with good comprehension, but a very reluctant writer and has 2e issues pertaining to writing. He isn't writing outside of WWE (I'm hoping that science will be a good context for him to do this in a few months). In the meanwhile, the literary selections are perfect. He's not into fiction lately, and this is a good way to provide him with some intriguing fiction passages (although he doesn't want to read the entire book :glare: ). Dictation has been surprisingly good! But I don't know if I'm doing it the wrong way. I read about halfway of the passage and have him repeat it back to me before writing it down, and then follow up with the second half. He's good to go with 2 readings, sometimes 3, although he does get the odd word wrong here and there. I do remind him to visualize when I read the passage aloud. Well, he's not complaining :p. I plan to let him carry on with WWE because it helps him with the process of putting his thoughts on paper (as opposed to being scribed), which is what he needs at the moment.

[serendipitous journey]

Why don't you give the year end test to her? If she does well then move on.

 

My dd and I were going through WWE1 when I realized it was too easy. I gave her the test one week, she did well, and now we've started WWE2. Today I have been thinking about skipping every other week since she does great with copywork and dictation, but still needs a little help summarizing.

 

 

Yes, this. No point in the child being bored or unchallenged: just do the year-end thing. Though I can easily imagine you might not want to buy another workbook for this year; in which case, I bet folks on this board have tons of ideas for juicing up the assignments with the version of WWE you've already got!

[Tress]

I tried to do WWE for years with my oldest dd. I liked the systematic progression, but she resisted me big time. Apparently I'm a slow learner myself, because it took me ages to see that it was just too simple for her. :blush: Halfway through WWE3 we switched to CW Aesop.

 

We did CW Aesop A+B in one year, because it was still a bit easy. We started CW Homer A when she was 8, she turned 9 in October, and it is going very well. She likes what we are doing and learns a lot.

 

My second daughter isn't nearly as good with language as her sister, but even for her WWE1 was way to easy. I let her jump to WWE2, although I don't expect she will be ready for Classical Writing at the age her sister did.

 

BTW, I used the Instructor Text with WWE, because we do the program in Dutch, but for you it might be a good buy because you can really see the progression of skills within the years.