What SWB wrote about WWS1

[Murphy101]

About Writing with Skill 1 by SWB

I mined these from her sticky thread.  I keep wading through it and decided it would be easier to have these questions in one spot for my reference.  As long as I’m copying to Word, I might as well copy here in case someone else finds it helpful.  Her copied words are in red regular type and not bolded.  Since this is what I copied for my personal use, I didn't give credit for who asked which questions and it's not pretty, but rather my bullet point reference style. And there might be stuff in that pinned thread someone else needs to know, but this is what I keep going to it for.  So that's my disclaimer.  If this steps on toes or bothers SWB or mods, then please delete. :)

 

On Starting In Upper Grades

with a 9^th Grader

IMO these are the basic skills of organization and research that MUST be in place before students can move on to more advanced expository writing. This series is motivated in part by my sense of what my college freshmen missed in high school composition. Ideally, yes, students will move on to do at least SOME rhetoric before graduating, but if I had a freshman student who'd completed the skills WWS covers, I'd certainly feel they were adequately prepared for freshman comp.

I'm actually making DS3 (ninth grade) work through the lessons as I finish them, in part because this is a more organized and sequential version of the writing across the curriculum we did in grades 5-8.

[Q:  share with those of us using this with 7th, 8th or 9th graders, what we should be doing in addition to WWS in order to make sure our students are ready for college level writing since they will not get the full benefit of the high school levels of your writing program.]

Response:

While it would be ideal for students to have done two or more years of persuasive writing before entering college, I can tell you from experience that most of them haven't, and don't....and that your daughter will be as well-prepared as 90% of her class, and better-prepared than 60%.

If you want to boost her percentage here's what I would suggest.

In eleventh grade, have her start working through the Oxford Guide to Writing once per week in addition to WWS.

[The New Oxford Guide to Writing by Thomas S. Kane  ISBN: 0195090594 ]

In twelfth grade, have her work on the Oxford Guide to Writing 3x per week. If you want her EXTRAORDINARILY well prepared, add in THEY SAY, I SAY: THE MOVES THAT MATTER IN ACADEMIC WRITING, which is one of the clearest and most useful guides I've found to the peculiarities of university-level composition. (I'll be adding it into future editions of TWTM.)

["They Say / I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing with Readings by Graff, Birkenstein, & Durst ISBN: 0393912752 ]

[ Janice in NJ recommended that, if overwhelmed or short on time, skip to Part III:
“Part III covers paragraphs and is much easier to handle with smaller chunks of time. I would recommend that you re-read chapter 24 of TWTM; grab Kane, a spiral notebook, and a pencil; and just begin. If you are teaching middle schoolers and are using traditional materials, chances are your kids are attempting to write expository paragraphs; you can probably put your new knowledge to work immediately. Continue on with the sections on the sentence and diction. Just work through the book on your own. If your experience mirrors mine, this book will help you become a better teacher.†]

 

On What to Drop in High School:

If you need to drop something, jettison the vocabulary first; she'll get quite a lot of it just from her reading.

Second, drop the Elements of Style since it overlaps with Oxford Guide.

Third, don't do WWS and the Oxford Guide simultaneously...do one or the other.

drop the Material Logic unless he's particularly interested in the subject; it won't do much for his rhetoric skills (although it's good for problem-solving).

I'd always do Kane before Corbett. Corbett is difficult...closer to university than high school level.

 

Length of Lessons & General Implementation of Lessons:

The lessons are intentionally of different lengths, so that often a difficult assignment is followed by an easy one. They range from 20 to 45 minutes (ideally), although as you mention, mileage varies.

I wouldn't have a middle-grade student work for more than 45 minutes without breaking the lesson into two and finishing it the next day, and for many fifth and some sixth graders, 30 minutes of concentrated work is enough. An older student can work for longer periods.

The rubrics just assemble in one place all of the instructions the student has been given throughout the lesson. I wouldn't show the rubric to the student because it makes it too easy for them to NOT read the directions carefully and follow them closely--and that's one of the lessons WWS is intended to teach.

 

On History/Science Work

The outlining and narration in history combines history comprehension/review with building skills in writing. I've put together WWS, in part, because I hear from parents that they need more guidance and instruction in the "building skills in writing" part. So WWS will fill the skill-building function of your history work, but not the comprehension review.

Because of that, I wouldn't drop it entirely. But I would reduce it to once or twice a week, rather than three times, and I would be careful not to overdo the length.

What I've laid out, week by week, in WWS, is what *I* would do while having students outline and rewrite in history and science. It's a completely fleshed-out version of the writing lecture, just like the WWE workbooks are a completely fleshed-out version of the elementary grade recommendations.

Yes. [Weekly history/science narrations are basicly summaries.]

Yes.  [Should I still make my child do one weekly outline/narration in history and one weekly narration/outline in science?]

Yes, [The written narration I do in history is based on the outline the child  completed  first from what he has read.] 

Once he gets comfortable with outlining. I wouldn't introduce writing from the outline until he finds the outline itself relatively simple--otherwise he's likely to get discouraged.

 

On Scope & Sequence Outcomes:

The teaching of the topoi will lead students, by the last year, to doing original research and composition. Even the first level ends with an independent project--topics are suggested for the teacher, in case the kid comes up empty, but by the end of the first year students should already have tools to find topics.

WWS1 is the same as "The Complete Writer, Level 5"-- Writing With Ease is four levels, Writing With Skill is four...and far, far down the road, Writing With Style will be four.

A student who finishes Writing With Skill should be able to go into freshman composition and do just fine.

A student who finishes Writing With Style should be able to skip freshman comp and go straight to upper level writing courses.

Yes. [WWS will cover the expository essay but not begin the argumentative/persuasive essay.]

It is a full pre-rhetoric course, meaning that it teaches all of the basic organization, research skills, and composition skills that a student needs before going into a full-fledged persuasive writing course. In its final form, it will be three core years plus an optional fourth year for students who need a little more practice. Students who finish Levels 1-3 will be fully equipped to go into rhetoric.

Here's the other thing you need to know: Many students graduate high school without studying any rhetoric whatsoever.

Ideally (and take "ideally" literally--this is in a perfect world), a student would finish WWS by the end of eighth grade and have a full four years to study rhetoric. However, as a college composition teacher I can tell you that if one of my freshmen came into that first college composition class having ONLY completed the WWS core levels 1-3, that student would be perfectly well prepared to do freshman comp. Not knocking my socks off with brilliance, but completely capable of fulfilling the course requirements.

WWE4 is pretty much an optional year as well. It's increasingly clear, as students go through the progression, that by the end of WWE3 most of them are ready to go on to actual composition. WWE4 is a good option for kids who still need practice, or who don't yet have the maturity to go on to a middle-school program.

 

On Difficult Lessons in WWS1:

Week 23, Day 3.

What I think the Instructor Manual is telling me (at the beginning of Day 3) is that the final product (after step 3?) should be an essay of literary criticism, with two parts: a brief summary of the story and three paragraphs discussing the prot./ant./conflict

What I'm not sure of is how you go from Steps 1 and 2 to Step 3 to create that final product.

Step 3 of the student book tells the student to take the first sentence or two from the narrative paragraph, and make it/them the first line of the first paragraph of the final product (to tell who the main characters are). But, we are never told how to proceed from there.

Are we supposed to copy the rest of the narrative paragraph into the final essay? Leave it out? The Instructor Manual samples for step 3 seem to go right from the first "who" sentence(s) into the analysis, leaving out the rest of the previously written narration. Is the student to go right into the analysis in the first paragraph? ETA: I just read this on p. 307 of the Instructor Manual: "...in literary criticism, a brief overview of the story is given in two or three sentences...and the bulk of the composition is taken up with critical analysis." OK, now I understand this concept. But I still don't see how the student will understand this and practically apply it. I could assume so from the samples, but it seems some instructions to the student are missing.

Also, the beginning of the whole lesson states that the essay will have a brief summary of the story and three paragraphs discussing the prot./ant./conflict. Three paragraphs? ETA: I just discovered that the student book says "three," while the Instructor book says "two or three." Step 2 only tells the student to write two analytic paragraphs. We are not seeing how the final essay will have three (or is it four paragraphs - brief summary PLUS three discussion paragraphs).

The final essay isn't supposed to contain the full narrative summary because there would be so much repetition between the summary and the analysis--when you write the analysis about Nag, Nagina, and their wants, you end up explaining the action of the story. Putting in the full narrative summary would involve a lot of saying the same thing twice.

When you look at the examples of the narrations in Step One, you'll see that what the analysis is missing is just the first part of the narration--the part that says who Rikki-tikki-tavi is and how he got to BE in the bungalow. In the examples of the finished opening given in Step Three, you'll see that each one starts out with the first sentence of one of those narrations.

I'm trying to figure out how this could be clearer, but I'm not quite sure--the instructions *do* say to take the sentences because they have information that isn't in the summary. Maybe I should say, [Cosmos suggested wording:] Perhaps instead of saying, "Take that sentence and make it the first line of your first paragraph," the instruction could read, "Take that sentence and add it to the beginning of your first paragraph from Step 2."

[Zoo Keeper]

Martha, I think you are fabulous.  Thanks for weeding through that monster thread and coming up with all those lovely flowers.  You put them into a bouquet rather nicely.

 

And thanks to SWB for allowing all of us to benefit from her years of teaching poorly prepared freshmen.  Her pain=our gain. ;)

[warneral]

You rock!

[TarynB]

This is awesome!  Thank you for sharing your work.

[TCB]

Thanks!!

[nansk]

Thank you, Martha! This is very helpful.

 

ETA: Linking to the WWS scope-and-sequence thread.

[Nicholas_mom]

Another Thank you!!!!!!

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

Can anyone tell me how a student is to outline sources for a narrative or any other academic paper per SWB's instructions in order to prevent plagiarism?

 

I appreciate any help.

[redsquirrel]

I am not sure how outlining could lead to plagiarism? I am not understanding. Plagiarism is passing someone's words off as your own. I don't see how outlining leads to that. She does expect note taking and does instruct on keeping track of where the student gets his quotes and how to create proper footnotes and bibliography.

 

She does go into the dangers of plagiarism quite thoroughly in WWS1 and she always does instruct students in giving proper attribution etc. My son is very, very clear about why it is wrong and possible repercussions. He also understands that it is easy to do accidentally if he isn't vigilant about good note taking. SWB actually has the student do some research into some big name writers who got caught in plagiarism scandals.

 

So, I am not sure what "how a student is to outline sources for a narrative or any other academic paper per SWB's instructions in order to prevent plagiarism" means, but if you mean learning how to do it in such a way that plagiarism doesn't happen, then I think she covers that.

 

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

I guess I am wondering if a student makes their won outline of a source, should the outline be in their own words or does SWB to use exact words from source for outline? In WWS she has student not to use same words from the outlines supplied in WWS when writing narratives so this led me to think that she recommends outlines be done using exact words. I thought I also read a thread about outlines being done in exact words so it could be a ready reference for student to ensure that they do not copy other people's work when writing a their narrative from an outline.