Aslana Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 Please humor me and help me. Please? :D I'm begging. I've had the thread on whether or not Rod and Staff contains enough writing. One person said it did. In looking online, I disagree a bit. What I need now, however, is this: If you are going to use the R&S grammar portion and the R&S writing portion as a jump off, what would you use to help further their writing skills that would also prepare them for IEW and advanced writing? I'm confident in my ability to teach both (this is using R&S 7th). What I'm not exactly confident in is preparing them for IEW or advanced. I have a couple of things planned. One, teach them how to take notes (this does help with writing skill). Two, utilize the group experience to have them do round-robin, or "complete your own" stories (one person starts, another does the next paragraph, another does the next, and so on). Three, I'm also using Sterling Stories, 12 Great Short Stories and How to Write Anything: A Guide and Reference as my spines for teaching writing. If your input was asked, what would YOU like your 6-8th grader taught as far as writing is concerned? I'm not asking curriculum wise. More so mechanics of writing wise. Thank you to all those that respond (and please don't tell me R&S is enough. I am the administration of the school have agreed that it is not, as far as writing is concerned) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
We Ten Sheep Posted April 23, 2013 Share Posted April 23, 2013 I think a 6th grader should learn how to construct a good paragraph, and know how to write a topic sentence. He should master end punctuation, most comma usage, dashes, semi-colons, colons, and quotation marks for dialogue. He should learn to plan and write a narrative essay, a descriptive essay, a process essay, an informative essay, and a compare and contrast essay, working up to the 5-paragraph model during the first semester. He should learn to write good introductory and concluding paragraphs, and to organize his thoughts. He should incorporate vivid word usage as he goes, becoming familiar with a thesaurus, and learn to write without passive verbs. He should learn to write a variety of sentence structures, and to vary his sentence openers. He should write several types of poetry. He should learn the writing process of planning, writing, revising, proofing, and editing. A finished essay every 3-4 weeks should be expected, and every 2-3 weeks in the second semester. Students should learn to review their peers' work in a supervised way, making 1-2 praises and 1-2 suggestions for improvement. They should become familiar with standard formatting for academic papers: font style and size, spacing, headings, margins, etc. An 8th grader should also learn all this, and should add in some literary analysis essays and author biographies. He could be expected to write with more mature subject matter, vocabulary, and syntax than a 6th grader. A more thorough exposure to MLA formatting would be appropriate, with an introduction to a short research paper and source citations. I think if you teach your 6th-8th graders all this, you should not need IEW. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aslana Posted April 23, 2013 Author Share Posted April 23, 2013 IEW is the next step after my class, should they choose it. :D But you've given me a great start with lots of awesome ideas! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aslana Posted April 23, 2013 Author Share Posted April 23, 2013 Oh and thank you for the help. I wish more chimed in. :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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