Penguin Posted February 11, 2014 Share Posted February 11, 2014 I'm starting a thread for teaching writing without a curriculum. It is in this forum so that it will apply to all grade and ability levels. It would be great to know your projects, strategies, tips, processes, and so forth. I will keep a running list of links here at the top. A Plan for Teaching Writing: SWB's Audio Lectures This is a three-part series that spans all grades. PREVIOUS THREADS So many have so generously shared much wisdom on this topic. I just want to say THANK YOU!! A special thanks to 8FilltheHeart, Angela in Ohio, Lori D. and Nan in Mass :) Incremental Writing Part 1 Pre-Independent Writing Skills, Paragraphs for Copywork, Independent how-tos, re-tells, or parallel writing Incremental Writing Part 2 Independent writing across the curriculum, Analysis and Essay Writing Interest driven education and *real* tea time Scope and Sequence Discussion for 2nd-8th grades Weekly or Biweekly Reports A Mega Writing Thread Do you agree? Can you raise a writer without a writing curriculum? Essay Writing How to Teach Lab Report Write-Ups (Logic Stage) Writing Essays ErinD's correlations: https://drive.google...dit?usp=sharing https://drive.google...dit?usp=sharing https://drive.google...dit?usp=sharing https://drive.google...dit?usp=sharing TEACHING WRITING WITHOUT A CURRICULUM (outside links) Editing Writing Instead of Curriculum WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM (outside links) IEW's Teaching Writing: Structure & Style DVD Seminar Bravewriter: The Writer's Jungle Bravewriter Podcasts GREAT PLACES (besides WTM :001_wub: ) ONLINE TO LEARN ABOUT WRITING University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) Professor Cohen's 39 Picky Rules of Writing About.com Paragraphs and Essays LITERARY ANALYSIS The Monsters and the Critics, Tolkein Politics and the English Language by Orwell Mapping the World of The Sorcerer's Apprentice Poetic Principle by Poe Reading Like a Writer How to Read Literature Like a Professor How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids Student Examples (sourced from Central Oregon Community College) Exemplar (Dana Gioia) Figuratively Speaking The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers Norton Critical Editions: A good source of literary essays BOOKS TO INSPIRE On Writing Well by William Zinsser Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty The Nature of Life: Readings in Biology What's The Matter? Readings in Physics Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly Spilling Ink: A Young Writer's Handbook Pizza, Pigs & Poetry A Writer's Notebook ANTHOLOGIES & BOOKS WITH LESSONS, SAMPLES AND/OR ANALYSIS 6+1 Traits of Writing Thinking in Threes Twisting Arms Teaching Powerful Writing Don't Forget to Write: 50 Enthralling and Effective Writing Lessons (ages 11 and up) - Dave Eggers Writing Extraordinary Essays: Every Middle Schooler Can - David Lee Finkle The Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student Corbett Lively Art of Writing Warriner's Advanced Models and Composition The Norton Field Guide To Writing The Brief Bedford Reader –Kennedy 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology – Samuel Cohen The Language of Composition – Shea - Everything’s An Argument – Lunsford - Unjournaling HANDBOOKS / STYLE GUIDES / GRAMMAR Grammar-Land (this one you can also find free on google books, and there are free worksheets that a homeschooling mom made) Grammar Lesson & Strategies The Elements of Style MLA Style APA Style Chicago Manual of Style The Art of Styling Sentences They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter In Academic Writing PERIODICALS Economist National Geographic WSJ Saturday Essay New York Times (Room for Debate, Book Reviews, Science Essays) Scientific American LITERARY JOURNALS (university libraries usually have a good selection) American Scholar Poets and Writers Creative Nonfiction PROMPTS SAT prompt exemplars http://www.majortest...say-sample1.phpprompt archetypes: http://talk.collegec...chetypes-5.html500 examples of HS student's responses to prompts http://www.englishda..._essays.php?302 This is just a start:) Continually editing...please be patient :) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosepetal Posted February 11, 2014 Share Posted February 11, 2014 Great!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiramisu Posted February 11, 2014 Share Posted February 11, 2014 You'll want to search for 8Fil's posts about this. There have been many long threads in the past years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapiti Posted February 11, 2014 Share Posted February 11, 2014 http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/173293-interest-driven-education-and-real-tea-time/ http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/490467-critique-my-scope-and-sequence-for-writing-instruction-2nd-8th-grades/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted February 11, 2014 Share Posted February 11, 2014 Ironically, I think something that must be mentioned here is SWB's writing lectures - her pre-WWS writing lectures for middle and high school outline a method for teaching writing without a curriculum, as do her Literary Analysis lectures. I find her descriptions of how to teach writing much more inspiring and doable than the actual writing curricula! http://peacehillpress.com/audio-lectures/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 11, 2014 Author Share Posted February 11, 2014 Ironically, I think something that must be mentioned here is SWB's writing lectures - her pre-WWS writing lectures for middle and high school outline a method for teaching writing without a curriculum, as do her Literary Analysis lectures. I find her descriptions of how to teach writing much more inspiring and doable than the actual writing curricula! http://peacehillpress.com/audio-lectures/ Good point. They are now at the tippy-top of the list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scrapbabe Posted February 11, 2014 Share Posted February 11, 2014 What a great idea! I have nothing to add right now but thanks for this thread! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 11, 2014 Author Share Posted February 11, 2014 I am only in my 2nd year of homeschooling, so I am certainly no expert. Last year, we used a curriculum and this year we are not. This certainly does not keep me from buying and reading curriculum, however :) Right now, he is working on a compare-and-and-contrast essay. He is comparing a book and a movie. I did something new (for us) this time. I took his first draft and used the Add Comment feature of MS Word to make my comments. That worked out great for both of us. Today, we spent twenty minutes on the thesis statement. I posted about some of my current concerns the other day. I won't quote myself, LOL, You can see them in Post #11. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosepetal Posted February 11, 2014 Share Posted February 11, 2014 In the board before this one, I tagged several posts with 'how to write a...' It contains several - well written- posts about how to write a paragraph, a lab report, a.... So if you tag this thread that way, you should find them back... Super!!! If anyone can write here the direct links for those posts HOW TO WRITE A.....I would be grateful........... Thanks for starting this cool thread...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brownie Posted February 11, 2014 Share Posted February 11, 2014 I am getting ready to start teaching "without a curriculum" as well for my ds11. My thought is that I would like him to assess and model quality writing. The issue is that I am not looking for quality fiction, which is easy enough to find, but for quality non-fictional short works. He is likely to never write fiction again after 6th grade so I would like to focus in on essay writing, and thus I would like the models to also be super short...partly because it is less material to get through, but also because it is a greater challenge to effectively convey an arguement in fewer words. I have been seeking out such examples on the internet and throwing them in a binder. I'm not sure if this is going to work, but I thought we'd start with the narrative essay and try to do a few of them while also studying examples (if I can find any appropriate ones!) My greatest objection to the curriculum is that they seem to address the pieces of writing..grammar, sentence variety, quality words, even organization and structure of an essay, but there is no way to address developing the voice of the author. Writing is not my thing and this is where I need hand holding, but this seems to be more of a task for a mentor than a curriculum. Nonetheless, I would take a curriculum that walked the student through assessing the writing of others and pointing out voice. So it seems I am stuck pulling this together on my own, because I am not aware that it exists anywhere. Brownie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted February 11, 2014 Share Posted February 11, 2014 Would it be cool to include some of our favorite writing books that aren't curricula, but things we like, use to help ourselves teach, or for inspiration? I'm sure I'll think of others, but the things I've picked up recently that I really like include: Don't Forget to Write: 50 Enthralling and Effective Writing Lessons (ages 11 and up) - Dave Eggers Writing Extraordinary Essays: Every Middle Schooler Can - David Lee Finkle and I'm again reading the lovely Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 12, 2014 Author Share Posted February 12, 2014 I will add a BOOKS section to the top of the thread. My internet is down right now, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hollyhock Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 Ironically, I think something that must be mentioned here is SWB's writing lectures - her pre-WWS writing lectures for middle and high school outline a method for teaching writing without a curriculum, as do her Literary Analysis lectures. I find her descriptions of how to teach writing much more inspiring and doable than the actual writing curricula! http://peacehillpress.com/audio-lectures/ I completely agree. This will be a really useful thread, thanks for starting it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momto2Cs Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 Would it be cool to include some of our favorite writing books that aren't curricula, but things we like, use to help ourselves teach, or for inspiration? I'm sure I'll think of others, but the things I've picked up recently that I really like include: Don't Forget to Write: 50 Enthralling and Effective Writing Lessons (ages 11 and up) - Dave Eggers Writing Extraordinary Essays: Every Middle Schooler Can - David Lee Finkle and I'm again reading the lovely Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose I am coming to the conclusion that it is dangerous to read any thread you have posted in! ;) Somehow a few more books found their way into my Amazon cart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momto2Cs Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 I would also really encourage people to listen to Julie Bogart's (Brave Writer) podcasts. Also, she has an email sign-up for daily writing tips that I have found immensely useful, and of course there is always The Writer's Jungle itself! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 I am coming to the conclusion that it is dangerous to read any thread you have posted in! ;) Somehow a few more books found their way into my Amazon cart. :lol: Just sharing the love. To bad I don't get a commish, right? ;) :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NCMom Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 Super!!! If anyone can write here the direct links for those posts HOW TO WRITE A.....I would be grateful........... Thanks for starting this cool thread...... Not sure if this is the right tag, but the 1st and 4th posts in this tag have been extremely helpful to me. The 1st post discusses essay writing, with several different points of view and the 4th is an excellent round up of lab report writing formats/ideas. http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/tags/forums/how%2Bto%2Bwrite%2Ba.../ hth, Georgia Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lewelma Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Here are the resources which we will be using instead of a curriculum to study writing: Essays sorted by rhetorical topic (definition, compare/contrast, example, etc,) with science, political science, anthropology, pop culture, etc examples in each category. Essays come from excellent sources like The New Yorker and Nature:The Norton SamplerStudent examples in about.com Current eventsThe economist Debate/ argumentThe economist Debates online http://www.economist...ebate/upcoming The Saturday Essay in WSJ: http://online.wsj.co...0004817176.htmlNYTimes Room for Debate (many are poorly written with loads of fallacies, and we have loved critiquing them) http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate ScienceScientific American opinion section for argument and rest for expositoryBest American Science and Nature Writing series http://www.amazon.co...wwcanoniccom-20NY times science (you have to pick and choose, some are essays and some are just newspaper articles) http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/ BiographicalThe economist Obituaries Literary analysisThe Monsters and the Critics, Tolkein Politics and the English Language by Orwell Mapping the World of The Sorcerer's Apprentice (have not seen this but recommended) Norton Critical Editions of the Classics have several Lit essay sincluded Book reviews in the Wall Street Journal This site has some student samples: http://web.cocc.edu/...ermexamples.htm 1 example of contemporary writer's blogs http://www.danagioia...elongfellow.htm PromptsSAT prompt exemplars http://www.majortest...say-sample1.phpprompt archetypes: http://talk.collegec...chetypes-5.html500 examples of HS student's responses to prompts http://www.englishda..._essays.php?302 Fully analysed essays from the point of view of Rhetoric Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student Corbett http://www.amazon.co...n/dp/0195115422 x-post from LisaThese are my two favorites for the earlier years of high school: The Brief Bedford Reader –Kennedy - I prefer my kids to study essays done by professional writers versus peers in order to understand how to write an essay. This particular volume isn't very big, but it offers a lot of instruction and it probably one of my favorite high school English resources. The first part of the book talks about reading critically, writing effectively and using and documenting sources. The second section talks about the different methods for writing essays: narration, description, example, comparison and contrast, process analysis, classification, cause and effect, definition, argument and persuasion. So for comparison and contrast, you will read about the writing process and then read Suzanne Britt's Neat People vs. Sloppy People. At the end of the essay, there are several questions for discussion regarding the topic and the writing strategy. This is followed by essay topics and finally the essay's author gives their own thoughts on writing. 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology – Samuel Cohen - another small, but indispensable volume with a wide variety of authors: Maya Angelou, George Orwell, Frederick Douglas, Langston Hughes, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Zora Neale Hurston, and Dave Barry. There are questions for discussion and writing at the end of each selection. This is the volume my ds (15) is currently using for his AP English Language course through PA Homeschoolers (which I highly recommend): The Language of Composition – Shea -This is another multi-talented volume that offers a great introductory section on rhetoric, a close-reading section, and the incredibly helpful section on synthesizing sources. I find the Exploring the Text questions to be deeper than most English resources. Next year we will be using the following resources as part of ds's English and biology classes: http://www.amazon.com/Everythings-Argument-Readings-Andrea-Lunsford/dp/0312407246/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1388422956&sr=8-9&keywords=everything Everything’s An Argument – Lunsford - More essays, a lot of solid instruction on argumentation. Often used in AP Lang. courses. Another favorite. The Nature of Life: Readings in Biology (I like science essays and am looking for collections for chemistry and physics) ---------------------- As always I have a bigger budget for Composition books than for science, so I have bought almost everything! The shipping cost almost as much as the books because a lot of them you can get for cheap second hand. Will have more to say about how we will be using them , but my parents are coming tomorrow for 2 weeks, so might be a bit busy..... Ruth in NZ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 13, 2014 Author Share Posted February 13, 2014 Thanks, Ruth. I will keep adding resources to the top as time permits. I just received a copy of the Norton Sampler today:) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brownie Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Thank you for all these resources! I have spent the past week trying to pull together sample writing on my own and now I have books I can buy that will do it for me :) Just a note, for those comfortable analyzing essays without the aid of a book, many of these famoud essays are free online if you just do a search for them...just without the analysis. e.g. Salvation; Neat People vs. Sloppy People Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Two other great Orwell essay anthologies - I love Orwell the essayist - are facing Unpleasant Facts (mostly narrative essays) and All Art is Propaganda (mostly critical essays). He's wonderful! I also think The Poetic Principle by Poe is a must-read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosepetal Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Nice discussion going on here! I am really nervous in teaching Writing by myself....... If someone kindly share their daily plan for every type of writing such as Expository,Narrative,Persuasive,Descriptive,Comparison/Contrast Essay,Poetry,Book Reports,Advertisements and Summary writings for Grades 5-8..... Any possible and neat tips and resources for all these writings online...... and how to spread it weekly with focus more on Sentence structure,mechanism,word choices and step by step guidance for each set of writing? Any guidance for Writing Lessons would be appreciated........ Thanks.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momto2Cs Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Some resources I am considering somewhere down the road... The Art of Styling Sentences The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing The Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly Spilling Ink: A Young Writer's Handbook And some that have been useful already... Hot Fudge Monday Grammar-Land (this one you can also find free on google books, and there are free worksheets that a homeschooling mom made) Pizza, Pigs & Poetry Unjournaling (my ds especially loves this book, and has come up with some very creative pieces using it!) Figuratively Speaking What I am looking at right now is using WWS as more of a guide than a curriculum, per se. Haven't decided yet though, because ds seems to like it pretty well! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildiris Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 A link to another thread about writing I posted in http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/504595-writing-essays/ Books that were a successful experience with middle school kids: 6+1 Traits of Writing Thinking in Threes Unjournaling Twisting Arms A Writer's Notebook Grammar Lesson & Strategies Teaching Powerful Writing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brownie Posted February 14, 2014 Share Posted February 14, 2014 Here's what I've done so far. We've completed 2 days of writing without a curriculum :) DS is in 5th grade and has never really written a multi-paragraph essay except IEW-style with the materials handed to him, or a science report. He is a reluctant writer. Day 1 - Presented the 4 main types of essays. Said we would be focussing on Narrative for about 1 month and expanded on the narrative essay. I gave him a list of possible prompts I cobbled together from websites. For 5 minutes we both had to come up with as many ideas as we could for a narrative essay...just things like "trip to Disney", "day at grandmas". I told his they could be silly, stupid or good...it was a brainstorming session. He balked at being timed but he came up with over 20. A bunch were silly - a whole list of his favorite foods :) Day 2 - I asked him to spend 10 quiet minutes thinking of any other ideas he may have missed yesterday. Brainstorming and quiet thinking are both helpful tools. He came up with 2 more ideas and I think one he is likely to use. I then explained that even a narrative should have a purpose and gave him a list of likely purposes (e.g. lesson learned, love, persistence). I asked his to choose 5 of his ideas and give a purpose. He freaked :( I admit that even I'm a little unclear on this. Some essays have a clear purpose, but at 11 years old, I think "My favorite vacation" might be totally adequate? So next we will work through this together I think. Day 3 - We will start reviewing examples of narrative essays, and talking about what makes them good. This could take a week or more. Also, each day I have chosen a grammatical element to practice. I am using Killgallon's elementary book right now to help me along. We practiced prepositional phrases on day 1 and now have moved onto appositives. Writing is not my thing. I am fearful to break out on my own here, but I am not happy with how things have been moving along. DS has enough idea of grammar, sentence variety, paragraph structure, etc...The issue is coming up with content out of his own brain and organizing it (even when it is content from reference books). I don't find that skill being learned effectively via the curricula we have. But this is definitely much more demanding of me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted February 14, 2014 Share Posted February 14, 2014 I really, really love the freedom that writing without a curriculum gives! Shannon's most recent assignment is a literary analysis (simple, a la SWB) of Animal Farm. We read it, along with historical/context readings, and discussed it. She wrote the summary/explication part pretty easily, but was stuck on the analysis, even though we'd discussed it thoroughly and come up with several ideas. So I had her do a Bravewriter style freewrite - write for 10 minutes without stopping about the story and what she thought it meant. A few real gems popped out! She'll be writing the analytical portion today, I'm eager to see what she comes up with. My point being that unless I had stepped away from following a specific curriculum, it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to combine techniques as seemingly disparate as those of SWB and Bravewriter. By far the best thing I'm doing to teach writing is to read and think about writing - not just teaching writing, but the process writers go through to compose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodland Mist Academy Posted February 14, 2014 Share Posted February 14, 2014 potential derail....sorry! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 14, 2014 Author Share Posted February 14, 2014 Woodland Mist! Come back! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodland Mist Academy Posted February 14, 2014 Share Posted February 14, 2014 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodland Mist Academy Posted February 14, 2014 Share Posted February 14, 2014 Let's see.... we have periods of time when our focus is on a particular aspect of writing. Right now we are spending lots of time on words. Choosing words, discussing how using a synonym can change the texture of what we are trying to convey, spelling the words correctly... Think about words is a near constant refrain. OK....I confess. I got that little phrase from a curriculum! (MCT) I so need to leave this thread, for real. :leaving: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 14, 2014 Author Share Posted February 14, 2014 OK, well here is are the two terms that I keep churning over: essays and academic writing. How to define them. How to fit them together. I had started to think of first person essays a bit dismissively - as just a stepping stone to the real, academic writing or just a trifle to be dealt with on a standardized test. And now I sit her with The Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition, a book filled with excellent first-person model essays and second person pronouns, and I am reminded how much I love creative nonfiction. Maybe my kid would, too. Of late, we have been so focused on academic writing and the rules. No contractions. No first or second person. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodland Mist Academy Posted February 14, 2014 Share Posted February 14, 2014 OK, well here is are the two terms that I keep churning over: essays and academic writing. How to define them. How to fit them together. I had started to think of first person essays a bit dismissively - as just a stepping stone to the real, academic writing or just a trifle to be dealt with on a standardized test. And now I sit her with The Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition, a book filled with excellent first-person model essays and second person pronouns, and I am reminded how much I love creative nonfiction. Maybe my kid would, too. Of late, we have been so focused on academic writing and the rules. No contractions. No first or second person. This reminds me of an essay I just read by Jane Smiley called "Horse Love". It actually helped me see Lily in a different light. Jane writes about the memories of her love of horses as a fourteen-year-old and seeing that love through her now adult eyes. First person doesn't always need to be navel-gazing mindless drivel with off-the-cuff opinions--it can actually be quite complex. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quark Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 Another favorite. The Nature of Life: Readings in Biology (I like science essays and am looking for collections for chemistry and physics) Here you go! (from the same publisher but for physics): What's The Matter? Readings in Physics Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quark Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 Let's see.... we have periods of time when our focus is on a particular aspect of writing. Right now we are spending lots of time on words. Choosing words, discussing how using a synonym can change the texture of what we are trying to convey, spelling the words correctly... Think about words is a near constant refrain. OK....I confess. I got that little phrase from a curriculum! (MCT) I so need to leave this thread, for real. :leaving: I love this. This is something that I find important too. Kiddo's choice of words and how much difference it makes when he chooses one over the other. Please stay! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 Let's see.... we have periods of time when our focus is on a particular aspect of writing. Right now we are spending lots of time on words. Choosing words, discussing how using a synonym can change the texture of what we are trying to convey, spelling the words correctly... Think about words is a near constant refrain. OK....I confess. I got that little phrase from a curriculum! (MCT) I so need to leave this thread, for real. :leaving: Are you thinking about leaving because it seems like people are dissing curricula (and curricula users?) I hope that's not the case. I've been worrying about it all day. I hope that nothing I (we) say about not using a curriculum is construed as being critical of curricula and curriculum users. I have used curricula, I will use them in the future. I use them with my 2nd grader. I guess I'm just feeling a little bit of giddy liberation right now, because I spent almost 2 years trying to use a curriculum that I felt like I should use, but was a bad fit, and then trying to replace it, and feeling like an unsuccessful failure . . . but the last thing I would want to do is make anybody else feel that way, or feel judged or anything! Say it ain't so . . . please? :crying: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodland Mist Academy Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 I've been worrying about it all day. Me too!!!! :laugh: I posted trying to work through some thoughts I was wrestling with, but then worried I would offend or hurt someone by posting, so I deleted it and worried all day. Worrying is super productive as far as writing goes--with or without curriculum! (Just ask Lily... who got out of writing for the day. . ;) ) Don't mind me...I have writing thread issues...remember last time? My nights of insomnia alternating with nights of writing nightmares???? :grouphug: OK...back to writing.... Umm....let's see.... The Economist has a wittiness about it that plays into Lily's sense of humor. I think that seeing that wittiness play out in somewhat formal writing is helping her with her own writing--or at least it is giving her lots of lunchtime laughs! ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alte Veste Academy Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 Think about words is a near constant refrain. Yes, I'm parroting that line here as well. One of the most serendipitous things for us lately came around as a side effect of DS11 learning to type. I waited for his handwriting (manuscript and cursive) to be perfectly solid before I would let him on the computer. Now, oh my! The double-click to highlight, right click to "look up" the word and KAPOW! a dictionary definition and the cornucopia of the thesaurus to select the perfect specimen. I love it! I can't believe how such a small thing has grown my kids' (already pretty good) vocabularies Are you thinking about leaving because it seems like people are dissing curricula (and curricula users?) I hope that's not the case. I feel like a hypocrite whenever I post in most threads about writing curricula because I don't use anything as written. On the other hand, I hesitate to enter threads about writing without a curriculum because I own and use lots of of stuff (WWE, Writer's Jungle, WWS, IEW TWSS, ViE, MCTLA for starters...not to mention a plethora of supplements). But I use them how I want to use them, when I want to use them. I chop them up into bits, discard what doesn't suit us, and use what is left whenever and however I wish. And it is all so tightly centered around what my particular kids need at any given time that it would seem haphazard to anyone else. It's hard to say what I do because it changes daily. I see bad stuff and I correct it. Or I see good stuff and I expand on it. Anyway, I am enjoying the thread immensely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hollyhock Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 I see bad stuff and I correct it. Or I see good stuff and I expand on it. :) This is basically what I do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8filltheheart Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 To be completely off-topic-----I am currently using a writing curriculum. :lol: After responding to a thread about a child's very gifted creative writing, I realized that I needed to take my own advice. My 6th grade dd is a fantastic fiction writer but it has been like pulling teeth to get her non-fiction writing to sound like anything other than stilted. So, I purchased the One Year Adventure Novel and she now asks to do writing. I decided that the freedom to develop her voice and own her writing style is more prudent now than constantly hitting a brick wall on finding any voice other than encyclopedic in her non-fiction writing. She wrote a paragraph yesterday for part of one of the assignments that had my 15 yr old dd drop her jaw. She couldn't believe a 6th grader had written it. So.....there you have it. Curriculum embraced b/c there is no way I would have a clue how to work through the stages for this!! I just hope it pans out a yr from now that she is confident enough in her own style that she won't freeze when it isn't creative writing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 15, 2014 Author Share Posted February 15, 2014 Are you thinking about leaving because it seems like people are dissing curricula (and curricula users?) I hope that's not the case. I've been worrying about it all day. I hope that nothing I (we) say about not using a curriculum is construed as being critical of curricula and curriculum users. I have used curricula, I will use them in the future. I use them with my 2nd grader. I guess I'm just feeling a little bit of giddy liberation right now, because I spent almost 2 years trying to use a curriculum that I felt like I should use, but was a bad fit, and then trying to replace it, and feeling like an unsuccessful failure . . . but the last thing I would want to do is make anybody else feel that way, or feel judged or anything! Say it ain't so . . . please? :crying: It ain't so. At least that was never my intent. Goodness, I used models from three curricula (Warriner's, WWS2, and an online student model from Sadlier) just to get through our first compare-and contrast essay assignment. Can anyone tell me how you go through the revision / editing process? I find it difficult to decide when he is done and it is time to move on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom31257 Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 Thank you for this thread. I am looking into developing my own lit/writing class for co-op next year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TracyP Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 I don't teach writing without a curriculum; I teach writing with many curricula while using none as written. :tongue_smilie: I think that still kinda qualifies. My favorites are SWB (lectures and books), Writing Aids/Tapestry of Grace, 8FillTheHeart's incremental writing, and The Writer's Jungle. This has worked really well so far although I think I'm going to need some new resources when we move to essay writing. My biggest problem is deciding on appropriate assignments. How long? In what time frame? How many edits? Could you have more than one going on a time, say a 1 page report on a history topic for the week while working on a 4 page biography over 4-5 weeks? The resources I listed vary pretty widely on these questions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 I don't teach writing without a curriculum; I teach writing with many curricula while using none as written. :tongue_smilie: I think that still kinda qualifies. My favorites are SWB (lectures and books), Writing Aids/Tapestry of Grace, 8FillTheHeart's incremental writing, and The Writer's Jungle. This has worked really well so far although I think I'm going to need some new resources when we move to essay writing. My biggest problem is deciding on appropriate assignments. How long? In what time frame? How many edits? Could you have more than one going on a time, say a 1 page report on a history topic for the week while working on a 4 page biography over 4-5 weeks? The resources I listed vary pretty widely on these questions. I find that we do better focusing on one writing assignment at a time. I'll still have her take notes for history or something, but I won't assign more than one significant piece of writing - meaning, something that will be revised, polished, etc., at a time. This means I definitely have to pick and choose, because things always take longer than I think. So we can't write about every book, every cool potential essay topic in history, etc. We're doing history in ~3-week topical blocks, and during those three weeks, she does one topical composition and writes about one of the fiction books she's read, typically. We haven't really gotten in any writing in science this year. I am thinking of assigning a slightly longer end of year science report in the spring. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TracyP Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 I find that we do better focusing on one writing assignment at a time. I'll still have her take notes for history or something, but I won't assign more than one significant piece of writing - meaning, something that will be revised, polished, etc., at a time. This means I definitely have to pick and choose, because things always take longer than I think. So we can't write about every book, every cool potential essay topic in history, etc. We're doing history in ~3-week topical blocks, and during those three weeks, she does one topical composition and writes about one of the fiction books she's read, typically. We haven't really gotten in any writing in science this year. I am thinking of assigning a slightly longer end of year science report in the spring. OK, the bolded is my problem. If we don't write about a topic, how are we going to remember it? How are we going to have a record that we studied it? (these are rhetorical questions) I feel like we have to write about everything we study. I need to get over that. How much time do you spend revising those papers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 It ain't so. At least that was never my intent. Goodness, I used models from three curricula (Warriner's, WWS2, and an online student model from Sadlier) just to get through our first compare-and contrast essay assignment. Can anyone tell me how you go through the revision / editing process? I find it difficult to decide when he is done and it is time to move on. Well, for us it varies. Some papers come out pretty decent on the first pass, and we do some minor edits and revisions and move on. This tends to be the case with the literary analysis essays - she can put together a decent summary, and then write about one or two aspects of the book, and with most of the books she's been reading for history, I feel like this is plenty. Some assignments we really dig into. These tend to be reports/analyses of historical topics. She still needs help and scaffolding in taking ideas/research/notes and turning them into a coherent and well-organized paper. We're not really spending a lot of energy on the nuances like word choice at this point, I find we're working a lot on organization. I do try and give feedback on every piece of writing, but we don't try and take them all up to a fully polished level. Some assignments that were clearly uninspiring we just dropped - this was mostly when I was still trying to use WWS and the topics were just uninspiring (I'm thinking of the Wright Brothers compare and contrast assignment, LOL!) We're about to embark on what I expect will be a massive revision-and-editing process of the Animal Farm paper she's working on. She has some good ideas, but the organization is terrible at this point. I think what I'm going to try is having her create an outline from her rough draft. I think that might help her see where she has left things out, repeated things, and generally talked in circles rather than adressing her points directly. It's kind of like the idea SWB talks about in her lectures, using diagramming to help kids figure out what's wrong with their sentences. Well, her sentence-level organization is fine, but her essay-level organization is a mess, so I'm hoping that using this tool will help shine some light on that for her. I'm really making this up as I go along, so we'll see how it goes! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 OK, the bolded is my problem. If we don't write about a topic, how are we going to remember it? How are we going to have a record that we studied it? (these are rhetorical questions) I feel like we have to write about everything we study. I need to get over that. How much time do you spend revising those papers? We're cross-posting, so I kind of answered the 2nd question above. We usually spend at least a week on a paper. If it's one that needs massive revision, or that I feel like is an important topic (i.e. history, not just writing about a book) she might spend the first week writing it, then we revise for several days during the second week. As to the first question, this is tough for me too! My history syllabus has an essay question/idea for every sub-topic. I just had to let that go, or we'd never get through the 20th century! I definitely try and use discussion - prelection at the beginning of a topic, then a summary discussion at the end - to make sure there is a coherent narrative that she can articulate and discuss. I feel like for every topic, she has kind of an idea of the arc of historical events, and more in-depth knowledge of one aspect (the one she wrote about). I have to feel like maybe that's ok for 6th grade? ETA: she also takes notes on most of her history reading, and that goes in a binder, so it's a "record" and something she can look back at to remember what she learned - or at least, what she read! :lol: The point of the note-taking is two-fold, it's to help her read more deeply & retain some content, but also it's to teach notetaking, the skill. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8filltheheart Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 All of my kids have only ever worked on one paper per week b/c I won't accept anything other than their best effort. We edit their papers to reflect what I know they are capable of achieving or for writing instructional purposes where I show them how a re-write of sections really improves the piece. Tracy, you do not have to have a record of everything. Pick what is important TO YOU (not some curriculum provider) and go deeper in those areas. 36 quality papers a yr is a lot of excellent writing practice for building a solid writing foundation. FWIW, Rose, I think it is far more than OK for 6th grade. This is their foundation. High school builds on it, but high schoolers can also dig a foundation and build what they need on the spot for content courses. Skills (discerning important from trivial, writing, math, etc) those are vital skills that they need heading into high school. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tammyw Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 Subbing so I can come back to read more later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hollyhock Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 If anyone is interested, I made a document of writing guidelines for each of the middle grades based on Susan's audio lectures and the scope & sequence of WWS. I am linking them here. The text in green is what is new for each year. I spent a lot of time on these so if they are helpful to anyone else, here they are. I hope they make sense, as they are just the notes I made to help myself! https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Vx80LYv3cMQUYwTDZ4MWhieUE/edit?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Vx80LYv3cMRnVUQ19wMGVlc1k/edit?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Vx80LYv3cMd3M2dFdCOWpOZkE/edit?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Vx80LYv3cMVzRkUXF2TFRGZ2s/edit?usp=sharing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 Erin, thanks for sharing, these are super helpful! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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