Explain Writing across the curriculum to me.....

[daughterofsarah77]

Can you tell me what this looks like in your  homeschool? I am planning to use WWE and also the writing exercises in R&S, but feel we should be doing more actual writing.

[8filltheheart]

Well, we don't use a writing curriculum's assignments (actually, we don't use a writing curriculum, but that is really irrelevant. ;) )   My kids take what they would be learning from a writing curriculum (but instead I am simply teaching them) and apply it to writing assignments from different subjects like science or history.

[regentrude]

Well, we don't use a writing curriculum's assignments (actually, we don't use a writing curriculum, but that is really irrelevant. ;) )   My kids take what they would be learning from a writing curriculum (but instead I am simply teaching them) and apply it to writing assignments from different subjects like science or history.

 

We do the same: no writing curriculum, writing topics come from their science, history and literature studies. I believe that having a meaningful content for a writing assignment benefits the writing while at the same time reinforcing the content subject.

[julikins]

I'm reading the Writing With Ease synopsis book (The Complete Writer?) and am learning how to do this, but my question is, how do you know you are covering the bases?  I've never been trained to write and don't know the terminology, but I write okay, at least I did in college. 

 

So I guess my question is, do you use a certain text that helps you make sure you are covering the bases of good writing skills, teaching them the skills that build one upon the other? 

[threedogfarm]

 

 

So I guess my question is, do you use a certain text that helps you make sure you are covering the bases of good writing skills, teaching them the skills that build one upon the other? 

 

I use WWE and FLL with my children to make sure I am covering those bases.  They're relatively inexpensive, easy to use (open and go), straight forward, and comprehensive.  Did I mention that the lessons do not take a lot of time?  I am really pleased with WWE3 this year because now the children are reading the passage to themselves and I'm asking the comprehension questions and telling them to go back and re-read a certain paragraph if they did not know the answer.  This is working out great and will be great for reading comprehension standardized testing in the future.  

 

I am all for being efficient and effective--these two programs help me do that.

[ScoutTN]

My DD is and 8 yo and we are using FLL 3 and WWE 3. At this point I still do the physical writing of her narrations, though she takes sentences from her own work as dictation. 

 

In addition, she narrates from 3 other subjects weekly. History always and usually science. Sometimes art, music, geography, literature or a field trip or other event. This is our "across the curriculum" part for now. 

 

So I take the things I see FLL and WWE teaching and also other things I know as good writing skills and help her incorporate them into her narrations/dictations from content subjects or experiences.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Chrysalis Academy]

For us, the way this works is that I have a writing curriculum to help me know what I need to be teaching, to feel more secure, and to make sure I don't leave anything out, because this is the first time I'm teaching a student how to write.  Also, I don't remember ever being "taught" to write, I've always been what some people call a natural writer, so the curriculum helps me see the steps that a learner needs to go through, that I don't even see anymore because I just do them.

 

So, the writing curriculum is kind of a spine.  Then we write across the curriculum:  my student is assigned writing in her content subject areas: history, literature, and science.  For example, we are studying the early 20th century.  She read chapters from a couple of books, and took notes on them (basically, 1 level outlines).  Then, she  read a biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Her assignment for the week is to write a biographical sketch of Stanton, using the tools she learned in WWS.  In addition to this, at another time, we are working on WWS, week 27, which is learning to write a 2-level outline.  Once she learns this skill, she'll be doing 2-level outlines of her history chapters.  Meanwhile, she's also reading some historical fiction books from this time period, and her next writing assignment will be to choose one of them and do a literary analysis.  

 

No big writing assignments in science right now, because the history/lit writing is heavy.  In a couple of weeks, she'll be writing a report on one of the planets; the week she's working on that, she won't have an additional history or lit paper, but we'll keep working with WWS.

 

In WWS, my plan is to do each of the lessons, but if the topic isn't interesting, I'll let her choose her own topic to apply the lesson.  We did this last year, instead of writing about Daniel Boone, she chose to write about Sacajawea.

 

Writing across the curriculum accomplishes two things: it gives her a chance to practice the writing lessons she's learning, so that it becomes real and concrete to her, not just this disconnected "part" of the writing process - it gives her an understanding of the whole, the context, and why she's learning all these parts.  But, importantly,  it's also helping her learn her content areas: the level of reading you must do to do a good 2-level outline, biographical sketch, report, or literary analysis is deeper than if you just read something with no output.  So I see it as an integral part of writing instruction, for sure, but also as an integral part of learning history, and learning about literature, and learning science.  

 

In the past, I've assessed the level of reading comprehension via discussion, but now that I'm teaching 2 students, I can't just drop everything to discuss everything dd10 reads.  It's also part of the process of transitioning her into being an independent learner, as well.  So even if I could discuss everything right on the spot, I'd still be assigning more writing for 6th grade, because it's time.

 

Before 5th grade, though, I don't think it's necessary to do both a writing program (like WWE) and to write across the curriculum.  My 2nd grader is doing WWE2, and that's enough for now.  At some point this year, I'll start having her do narrations of some of the books we read, but not on top of WWE.  If she does some other kind of writing, she won't do WWE that day.  I think you could "write across the curriculum" in the elementary years easily by just having students do narrations & dictations from their reading, but WWE makes it easy & open and go, so that it gets done on a daily basis.  In the elementary years the goals are different, you want your student to easily get words down on paper, and to comfortably summarize and narrate, and maybe to write nice paragraphs, but you aren't expecting them to "read to learn" at the same level that you are with a middle grade student.

[Mom0012]

In the most recent edition of TWTM, in the sections where SWB discusses in detail how to outline in the logic stage, she suggests outlining from history topics and then writing papers from the outlines.  I'm sure she probably suggests doing this with science somewhere as well.  I'm sure there's a lot more to it, but that's where I'm going to start with my struggling writer next year.  I want to heavily focus on outlining skills because he cannot write anything without an outline.  We will probably also continue to work on summarizing because he sometimes has trouble finding the central idea, though the outlining should help with that as well.  I am going to have him use whatever we are reading in history or science and then write from it.  We are going to use AG this year, and I am going to try to make sure he is implementing what he has learned from that as we go.  I may also have him do some writing from current events since he loves to read the paper.

[serendipitous journey]

The nicest exposition of this I have seen -- in terms of being detailed, comprehensive, and user-friendly to the homeschool mama -- is 8FilltheHeart's posts 33 and 34 in this writing thread.

 

I should say that I myself do not use this method, mainly because I have an unusually temperamental/intense child and we do best with specific instructions for things like writing.  So I've been using some Winning With Writing, some IEW, some WWE.