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What to do when WWS is too difficult?


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My daughter is in seventh grade. She started WWS in her sixth grade year. It was often tough for her, so we took it slow and steady, and did about half of it last year and have been doing the second half this year.

 

It has always been challenging for her, and sometimes even a struggle to the point of tears, but now she has started the section on two-level outlines and it's just been getting harder and harder, to the point where she is miserable. Several of the readings in the book she cannot even understand, let alone write about.

 

I'm not sure I just want to set it aside for a while, because it would just feel like procrastinating.

 

I'm a little bit concerned why this is so difficult for her. Isn't this supposed to be a fifth grade curriculum?? But my main question is, what do you suggest we do now? Is there some sort of "bridge" activity or curriculum that is not quite so difficult that will help her get to that level?

 

Btw, we did do all of WWE 1-3 and about half of WWE 4.

Thanks for any thoughts

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We found WWS to be rather ridiculous, honestly. The readings were dry as a bone, the incredibly complex amount of detail was overwhelming, and the overall program was just. no. fun. My writing-loving, strong-writer dd started hating writing. We switched. Honestly, writing doesn't need to be that hard. It really doesn't. Now, I am a natural writer (and former editor), so that is easy for me to say, but even for a struggling writer (which, inexplicably, WWS is supposed to help), like my son, WWS would have killed him twice, dug him up, killed him again, and buried him. I didn't even attempt WWS with him, and I never will. I really don't understand how WWS is supposed to be an immediate sequel to WWE. But whatever.

 

Personally, we are enjoying School Composition by William Henry Maxwell for my competent writer. It teaches imitation, outlining, modeling, paragraph construction, etc., in a much more straightforward way than WWS. The readings are more interesting yet not childish. We will follow it up with Writing in English by the same author. Both are free from Google Books or cheap in bound version from Amazon. You might also like the book Commonsense Composition, free from ck12.org.

 

I promise you, effective writing instruction needn't reduce a student to tears. My personal opinion, after investigating 17 million different writing curricula (maybe not quite that many, but almost) is that the modern "classical" writing programs are extremely convoluted, and the vintage programs teach the same skills in a less hoity-toity, easier-to-follow manner. A writing program needn't have strange vocabulary and eleventy-one modules to teach clear, precise writing.

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We started WWS1 in 5th and just finished it up earlier this year. It was HARD. My son is not a natural writer, but he slogged through it, and I do think he learned quite a bit. But the readings were challenging, and we did have to work together on them--this wasn't an independent book for him. We own WWS2 and we are going to take a bit of a break in between and probably do Hake Writing. But I am going to take a peek at School Composition that Tara linked above...

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How could it possibly be procrastinating to set something aside that is clearly not helping your dd learn?  You say yourself that she can't even understand the readings.  I think it's the other way around - you're wasting your time now using a program that isn't right for her that she's simply not learning from.

 

Everyone knows I'm a Brave Writer fanatic, so that's always my suggestion and would be a really different direction, but I agree with Tara that you can still do classical style writing without it being so onerous and there are many other program options out there.

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Jenny,

 

You have my sympathies, and I just want to encourage you that it's not your dd's fault, it is the program.  It works for some kids, and that's awesome, but for some kids it's an epic fail and for others it's just tedious and miserable.  Don't feel bad about her as a writer or yourself as a teacher based on this.  You've given it a serious try and it's not working.

 

If I were you, what I would do right now is download and listen to SWB's Middle Grades writing lecture, and just start doing that, using the materials she's reading anyway in her content subjects.  Or you could have her work on doing the kinds of papers that she has learned in WWS - biographical sketches, narrations in history, descriptions, super basic literary analysis papers - but again, using material that you know she likes and understands, from your history, science, and lit studies.

 

I think that doing this kind of writing, and/or Bravewriter, and getting some of her joy and confidence back is the first step, before you launch into another curriculum, might be really important for her.  Spend the rest of this year regrouping and writing across the curriculum, and take your time investigating what you might do next without feeling like either of you have failed.

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I would suggest SWB's middle grades writing lecture if you haven't heard it. It goes over the skills that she feels are necessary to develop during these years to go on to high school level writing. I am pretty sure she would say that WWS will not be the best program for everyone.

 

It's the skills that are important, not the program you use. She can certainly outline, for example using something else. And you can do one level outlines only now. Or just wait til next year to try outlining again and focus on writing different types of paragraphs across the curriculum for now. There is time. :)

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How could it possibly be procrastinating to set something aside that is clearly not helping your dd learn? You say yourself that she can't even understand the readings. I think it's the other way around - you're wasting your time now using a program that isn't right for her that she's simply not learning from.

What I meant was that saying, "Well, let's not do WWS this week" or "Let's take a break for a month before we go back to it" would not be solving anything or addressing the problem. There's no reason anything will be any different next week or next month.

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What I meant was that saying, "Well, let's not do WWS this week" or "Let's take a break for a month before we go back to it" would not be solving anything or addressing the problem. There's no reason anything will be any different next week or next month.

 

I see.  Yes, I think that's probably very true.  Seconding Rose's good advice.

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First of all, not every program is the right one for everyone. Of course you know that so moving on....

 

I want to second the SWB lecture about writing in the middle years. And you might want to get the one for the high school years just so you know where you are going with all of this.

 

And while you are looking around for a better fit, maybe also consider adding in reading comprehension exercises. Something like "Reading Detective" at grade level once or twice a week might be useful. 

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Personally, we are enjoying School Composition by William Henry Maxwell for my competent writer. It teaches imitation, outlining, modeling, paragraph construction, etc., in a much more straightforward way than WWS. The readings are more interesting yet not childish. We will follow it up with Writing in English by the same author. Both are free from Google Books or cheap in bound version from Amazon. You might also like the book Commonsense Composition, free from ck12.org.

 

I promise you, effective writing instruction needn't reduce a student to tears. My personal opinion, after investigating 17 million different writing curricula (maybe not quite that many, but almost) is that the modern "classical" writing programs are extremely convoluted, and the vintage programs teach the same skills in a less hoity-toity, easier-to-follow manner. A writing program needn't have strange vocabulary and eleventy-one modules to teach clear, precise writing.

Ds11 started WWS1 when he was almost 10. We went most of the way until the last unit of poetry. We took a year off and are doing IEW AWI Level B with 8 other boys from our co-op. it has been a very good fit and a good break from WWS 1. I am not sure we will finisht the poetry unit.

It is good to know that the vintage writing programs work well, too. I will look into that for next school year. Thanks for sharing.

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Or you could have her work on doing the kinds of papers that she has learned in WWS - biographical sketches, narrations in history, descriptions, super basic literary analysis papers - but again, using material that you know she likes and understands, from your history, science, and lit studies.

This is what I did with my DD. She complained that WWS1 had nothing to do with what she was learning in her content subjects, so I had her work on WWS skills using selections from her science and the world geography we did last year.

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I use wws as a guide for the writing assignments we complete for history, science, and literature. We read the lesson in wws and do it orally and apply the skill in a content lesson. For example, we just completed a single level outline from an article on the history of the olympic games. This alteration has made wws MUCH more bearable and sensible for my dd and me.

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I use wws as a guide for the writing assignments we complete for history, science, and literature. We read the lesson in wws and do it orally and apply the skill in a content lesson. For example, we just completed a single level outline from an article on the history of the olympic games. This alteration has made wws MUCH more bearable and sensible for my dd and me.

 

We use WWS the same way, except that sometimes my dd does the day 2 and day 4 lessons orally with me and sometimes as written independently. I'm slowly transitioning her to independent. We are having a great year using WWS this way.

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I use wws as a guide for the writing assignments we complete for history, science, and literature. We read the lesson in wws and do it orally and apply the skill in a content lesson. For example, we just completed a single level outline from an article on the history of the olympic games. This alteration has made wws MUCH more bearable and sensible for my dd and me.

For those of you who use the WWS lessons with your own readings, could you explain in a little more detail how you do this?

 

I've often lamented that I really love how WWS is laid out, but wish the reading selections were different. Most of them are either dull and/or crazy-hard for anyone younger than 13, IMO. I'm always curious what the reading comprehension levels for those selections are, because I'd be shocked if some of them were on a fifth or sixth grade level.

 

Anyway, I'm a little confused how you could read the lesson, then apply it to your own reading, and would like to hear more about now you make that work.

It seems like the lessons - the questions about it, the directions, etc - are directly ABOUT the specific details in the reading passages. How exactly would we do the lesson if we're not doing the reading? If we skipped the parts of the lesson that involve the details of the reading, it seems like we would skip almost everything.

 

Thanks! All the replies have been very helpful.

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For those of you who use the WWS lessons with your own readings, could you explain in a little more detail how you do this?

 

 

 

I will use week 19 to give an example of how this looks at our house.

 

Day One: We skipped the outlining and she did a one level outline from her history reading (I have her do the outlining in WWS on weeks where the 'Analyzing the Topos' lesson comes directly from the outlining).

 

Day Two: We sat side by side and I quickly (skimming if necessary) read the beginning of the lesson out loud. We each read the Milton passage silently, ymmv. We went through the teaching part together, discussing as we went. Ditto for the next two biographical sketches.

 

Day Three: We are not using the WWS topic, so she spent the week taking notes on Alexander the Great. These are not notes that cite sources as WWS will teach at the end of the year. These are simply list style notes. We learned this style of note-taking last year, and I could not have used WWS this way without this skill in place first. Before she started taking the notes, I went over the objectives for the lesson: notes on life events - I suggested three per chapter of the book she was reading, notes on aspects for the description - I told her to list 5-8 things.

 

Day Four: She was supposed to do the copia exercise by herself, but she found it too difficult. We worked on it together; we did every other sentence orally, and she wrote the others.

 

This was last week. We did something similar with this week (week 20). The biggest difference is that we will skip Day Three completely and continue working on her biographical sketch: Monday we organized notes together, Tuesday she wrote rough draft, today we will edit, and she will rewrite it tomorrow.

 

We are going just a bit faster than 1/2 pace. We will stop for the year after week 22 and spend the rest of the year using the WWS skills we have learned so far.

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Just did the quick screen test, and she was 6.3.

Most of those readings are probably 8 - 12th grade reading level. I would work to get her up to 12th grade level. My spelling lessons, the things on my how to tutor page. I also like Marcia Henry's Words, it combines higher level phonics with root study and spelling.

 

You can do a quick version of the links at the end of my how to tutor page, reading and spelling just a few words and adding in syllables for the early units. The syllable division and later Webster's Speller teach higher grade level words.

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/howtotutor.html

 

My spelling lessons are 2 hours and focus on spelling and higher level phonics.

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Spelling/spellinglessonsl.html

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I think at end of elementary and above, they are going to encounter lots of reading material that is above "grade level" so I would think working on that simultaneously is a good idea.

It makes teaching everything else so much easier if they can read anything. The standard used to be to have students work through their spellers and readers until they could read anything. (Back in the early 1900s and for centuries before.) That produced large numbers of people who could read things like the Federalist papers easily with only a rudimentary education, the reading grade level of things produced in tracts and newspapers back then was much higher.

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I would also suggest the 1879 McGuffey 4th reader. It has reading comprehension questions and vocabulary and difficult words pronounced. The reading shouldn't be too hard overall, especially at the beginning, but the vocabulary is advanced and by the end of the book the reading will be a bit difficult but doable with the diacritical markings as help.

 

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14880/14880-pdf.pdf

 

If you have her read a few passages a day, you can work through the book fairly quickly.

 

I would also work through all the 1908 Webster's Speller 2+ syllable words and passages after working through either my spelling lessons or the program on my how to tutor page.

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I think at end of elementary and above, they are going to encounter lots of reading material that is above "grade level" so I would think working on that simultaneously is a good idea.

 

I actually disagree with that. I think that, when one is learning new skills, you teach them via material a student is already comfortable with so that they are focusing on learning one new thing, not struggling to integrate several new, challenging things. Practicing old skills is the time, to me, to up the challenge level in another aspect of the situation.

 

For example, if you are just learning to make the perfect pie crust, do you also want the directions to be in Latin, which is also something new to you? Or do you want them in English so you can easily read and understand them, which makes applying them infinitely easier?

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For a bit you should teach writing at a comfortable reading level, but it really should not take that long to gain enough reading grade levels to be able to work with WWS again. Most of my students gain a grade level per 5 to 10 hours worth of focused phonics and syllable work.

My dd can decode at a 12th grade level, but she is nine, and doesn't have the vocabulary to comfortably read at this level independently. I usually have her read the passage(s) aloud to me and I stop her to explain words/phrases that I know are unfamiliar to her. If she reads it on her own she won't usually come away with full comprehension of the passage.

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The problem with a lot of the WWS passages is not just reading level per se - it's a problem of unfamiliarity.  Some of the  resources are over 100 years old, and/or refer to things most 5th graders probably aren't familiar with.  The short story The Necklace, for example - it's not just a matter of understanding all the words in the story, you have to understand about loans and interest, the relative value of diamonds and paste stones, etc.  It's a world/life knowledge/context thing that makes a lot of passages difficult for 5th graders.

 

ETA: edited for accuracy - changed "most" to "some"

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The Necklace is a fairly standard middle school short story. I think I read it in 5th or 6th grade. It made me chuckle when I saw it.

 

It doesn't mean it doesn't have unfamiliar terms etc. I am not arguing that. I am simply pointing out that is is not beyond the pale for a student of this age. She might have been assigned the same story in ps.

 

The Necklace, the Tell Tale Heart, Headless Horseman, Gift of the Maji, The Jumping Frog of Calveras County etc. I remember reading all of those in 5th and 6th grade.

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The problem with a lot of the WWS passages is not just reading level per se - it's a problem of unfamiliarity.  Most of the resources are over 100 years old, and/or refer to things most 5th graders probably aren't familiar with.  The short story The Necklace, for example - it's not just a matter of understanding all the words in the story, you have to understand about loans and interest, the relative value of diamonds and paste stones, etc.  It's a world/life knowledge/context thing that makes a lot of passages difficult for 5th graders.

 

Fact checker alert :D .... A gander at the works cited pages shows about 1/3 of the books being published before 1950. I didn't tally the numbers, but I would guess that most of the resources are 1990 or later. Still the point stands that a lot of the resources are old.

 

That aside, I have a serious question. I know that some kids will struggle with these passages. I also know that there may be a couple real buggers - WWE has a couple. So to my question: Rose (or anyone who wants to jump in here) do you really think the majority of these passages are too difficult for most 5th graders? I know you started WWS early - do you believe your dd would have struggled if she used WWS a year later?

 

My dd has not had a problem with any passage at this point, but we haven't done the actual writing assignments. Maybe that is coloring how I view this. I guess I'm wondering if my dd is the exception or the rule.

 

On that note, I will second the McGuffey recommendation. My dd went through the Fourth Reader last year. One of my goals was to familiarize her with the older style of writing and vocabulary. I believe it was time well spent.

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That aside, I have a serious question. I know that some kids will struggle with these passages. I also know that there may be a couple real buggers - WWE has a couple. So to my question: Rose (or anyone who wants to jump in here) do you really think the majority of these passages are too difficult for most 5th graders? I know you started WWS early - do you believe your dd would have struggled if she used WWS a year later?

.

I would really like to hear answers to this as well. Specifically, I'm curious if "most" 6-7 graders are reading excerpts and short stories like this in school, because if that is "the norm" ... well, then I am totally out of touch, and need to adjust my expectations accordingly. I think about my kids' friends, and the students I had when I worked as a school music specialist years ago, and I just don't see it. But I don't know, as I never taught LA.

 

Would love to hear perspectives especially from people who have more public school experience.

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It doesn't mean it doesn't have unfamiliar terms etc. I am not arguing that. I am simply pointing out that is is not beyond the pale for a student of this age. She might have been assigned the same story in ps.

 

The Necklace, the Tell Tale Heart, Headless Horseman, Gift of the Maji, The Jumping Frog of Calveras County etc. I remember reading all of those in 5th and 6th grade.

As I mentioned in the above post, I am often wondering if WWS are the same types of readings and assignments kids her age are doing in public schools.

 

All I know is my own experience, which proves nothing, but I NEVER read The Necklace until this year, never read Headless Horseman, and I believe I read TTH and GotM in 8th grade. I should add that this was considered a total "cream of the crop" school district and I was in an advanced LA class where over three-quarters of the class was in the school gifted program, so I would not even consider that an "average" or "typical" representation.

 

But, like I said, I am really curious what of others' experiences and what the current-day reality and expectation is. Surely all middle schoolers aren't all expected to do school assignments that are on a tenth grade level and higher -- or are they???

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I have no idea about most 6th-7th graders, but I can share our experience. My daughter used the bulk of WWS1 in 6th grade. The writing assignments took forever, but she didn't have any trouble with the reading passages. I'm not sure if it made a difference, but she grew up having old, old stories and books read to her. Once she could read, she started reading the old books herself. So, in essence, they've always been part of her life.

 

She is in 7th and is working on WWS2. This year is going much more smoothly, and she is completing the writing assignments on schedule most of the time.

 

So, I'm not sure about children in general, but that's been our experience.

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Well, I don't know exactly how to answer this question.  My dd reads at a 12th grade level according to Elizabeth B's tests.  She didn't have a hard time with all the readings by a long shot, but she did have a hard time with The Necklace - as I described.  When she did the Alexander the Great assignment (I think this was in the spring of 4th grade) she had a little trouble with it, because if you don't know anything about A the G and the story of the Gordion knot, the details provided were a little sparse.  

 

Lots of early users posted about how their kids had a hard time writing from SWB's notes on various topics, rather than from their own reading/notes. Lots of us shared resources that we went to the library and found, or went online and found.  Some of my dd's most successful WWS1 lessons (and she had many) were weeks when she spent time reading and taking notes on her own, rather than trying to write from the notes that were given in the text.

 

Do I think she would have done better in 6th grade?  Absolutely.  I don't know about you guys, but the growth in maturity and mental ability between 5th and 6th grade for my dd were absolutely phenomenal.  Now, she's a November  birthday so started K at 4 so is a year "ahead" of the grade she'd have been in otherwise . . . so maybe the 5th-6th difference I've seen is what a lot of people see between 4th-5th, and for us the official "logic stage" didn't truly begin till this year.  We didn't start homeschooling till 4th, so it's hard for me to say, but she's a totally different student this year than she was in 4th & 5th.  I'm probably a much better teacher now, too.  ;)

 

When we worked some with WWS 2 this year, she didn't have any trouble with the passages, either comprehension or context.  They were just on topics she found pretty dull and that were totally disconnected from the rest of her studies.  She would way rather compare and contrast a meteor and a comet than a beaver and a platypus.  She'd rather compare and contrast Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden than the Wright brothers.  Her interest and engagement are much higher when doing WWS-style assignments on topics from her history, lit, and science studies than they are when writing about random topics.  

 

I think my observations and claims here are consistent with what I've been posting for months now about WWS - I don't think it's a smooth step from WWE4 to WWS, and I don't think it's a program that will work well for many 5th graders - even 5th graders who are more than ready to move beyond WWE.  I think WWS can be used successfully in jr high and early high school, and it troubles me when people feel that their kids are behind, or they are failing as writing teachers, when their 5th and 6th graders struggle with it.  

 

Did I cover everything y'all were asking?  I'm not trying to claim WWS is "bad" - just that it's a bad fit for some students, and neither they or their moms should feel bad about that.

 

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My dd can decode at a 12th grade level, but she is nine, and doesn't have the vocabulary to comfortably read at this level independently. I usually have her read the passage(s) aloud to me and I stop her to explain words/phrases that I know are unfamiliar to her. If she reads it on her own she won't usually come away with full comprehension of the passage.

 

That's what I'm talking about - you can have the ability to read very long, very complicated words and sentences, but not have the real-world knowledge to understand many of the passages.

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For a bit you should teach writing at a comfortable reading level, but it really should not take that long to gain enough reading grade levels to be able to work with WWS again. Most of my students gain a grade level per 5 to 10 hours worth of focused phonics and syllable work.

 

 

Not to beat a dead horse or anything . . .  ;)  but while kids can gain a grade level in reading comprehension in 5 to 10 hours, it takes a lot longer than that to develop the background, context, and real-world knowledge to truly understand adult-level texts, right?  

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I think WWS is probably better suited to students older than 5th grade. But I do think WWS is really, really good. We are doing it slowly, interspersed with other things. I am just really impressed with it and feel that it is worth persevering with. The older passages are difficult, but I feel that if dd can write using those, then she can probably write using just about anything. I'm not sure what the expected standard is if the assignments are done to the timetable in the book. We take longer on some assignments, but I want dd to get as much as possible out of the work she is doing, so to me slower means more value.

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We did the first 11 lessons - successfully -  in the spring of 4th grade, and most of the rest of WWS in 5th grade.  We did a few WWS2 lessons in the beginning of 6th grade, but for most of the year have been winging it - often with WWS-style lessons - writing across the curriculum.

 

I don't advocate using WWS that early - it's just that my dd was ready to move beyond WWE, and I trusted SWB and wanted to follow her writing advice, as I understood it based on her writing lectures and the Writing With Ease: Strong Fundamentals book.  I thought that WWS would be the written articulation of what she advocated in those books as appropriate for 5th grade writing (now that I'm familiar with it, I don't consider that to be the case).  I wasn't confident in my abilities to teach writing without a curriculum, and I desperately wanted WWS to work for us.

 

That's where I'm coming from - I can remember reading some of the lessons, and some of the passages, and thinking, "This is supposed to be for 5th graders?" and feeling woeful and inadequate.  I hate to see other people going through that same experience, which is really the only reason I tend to pipe up in WWS threads.

 

I can't tell you if the passages are really more appropriate for 6th grade, or 5th grade, or 9th grade . . . I'm no expert in levelling writing materials.  I believe that some of the passages that my dd found challenging, and needed extra scaffolding for, as a 4th and 5th grader, would not be hard for her now - partly because we have now completed (almost) the history cycle, and also because she's more mature, better read, and is better at making logical connections.

 

But it's really more that I disagree philosophically with writing about random topics that are disconnected from a kid's studies.  Ironically, in this I am in full agreement with what SWB says in her writing lectures.  If you listen to them, you'll see that she's pretty scornful of writing curricula that are disconnected from what a student is studying, and she advocates writing across the curriculum.  I agree with this 100%.  (I also totally understand why she felt the need to write a middle grades writing curriculum! Based on her experiences as a college writing teacher, and on the fact that she's had so many parents say to her that they follow WTM . . . except for the writing part.)  

 

And I think that this fundamentally keys into the question that you are asking about reading comprehension.  You can read something that is at a "reading level" you are perfectly competent to read, but if you know nothing about the subject matter, it will go right over your head.  I'm reading a bunch of astronomy and physics books, because it's something that interests my dd, and whoosh! much of it went right over my head at first, even though I am a highly intelligent and competent reader ( ;) ).  Now that I've read several books, they're getting much easier to understand.  Not because my reading comprehension has improved, but because I have more content knowledge about the subject.  Does this make sense?

 

So, when I saw this thread kind of going off  in the direction of saying, "Well, if Jenny could just increase her dd's reading comprehension level, she'd be fine with WWS" I just had to pipe up and say no, I don't really agree that this is the issue.  Maybe her daughter would be more successful if she were writing about things that interested her, that she was studying, and that she had some background knowledge about, and then Jenny would find that the problem wasn't her daughter, it was the curriculum.

 

What do I kow? It's just a thought. 

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I actually disagree with that. I think that, when one is learning new skills, you teach them via material a student is already comfortable with so that they are focusing on learning one new thing, not struggling to integrate several new, challenging things. Practicing old skills is the time, to me, to up the challenge level in another aspect of the situation.

 

For example, if you are just learning to make the perfect pie crust, do you also want the directions to be in Latin, which is also something new to you? Or do you want them in English so you can easily read and understand them, which makes applying them infinitely easier?

 

I completely agree with this. I think about WWE being so very incremental. In her talks, SWB explains that it is an incredibly complex process to learn how to write, how to synthesize all these new, disparate skills. Yet the audience for WWS is also learning new and complex skills, just at a higher level. Something has to provide balance. Something needs to be easy to make what is hard more manageable. If kids are struggling with the passages, that's adding needless angst to an already complex process. 

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I think WWS is probably better suited to students older than 5th grade. But I do think WWS is really, really good. We are doing it slowly, interspersed with other things. I am just really impressed with it and feel that it is worth persevering with. The older passages are difficult, but I feel that if dd can write using those, then she can probably write using just about anything. I'm not sure what the expected standard is if the assignments are done to the timetable in the book. We take longer on some assignments, but I want dd to get as much as possible out of the work she is doing, so to me slower means more value.

 

I agree that it is good stuff. I use it as part of my teacher education, but we still write across the curriculum, just as we always have. I still look forward to the WWS1-4 guide that SWB says she will put out when she has finished the series. 

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I completely agree with this. I think about WWE being so very incremental. In her talks, SWB explains that it is an incredibly complex process to learn how to write, how to synthesize all these new, disparate skills. Yet the audience for WWS is also learning new and complex skills, just at a higher level. Something has to provide balance. Something needs to be easy to make what is hard more manageable. If kids are struggling with the passages, that's adding needless angst to an already complex process. 

 

Right, and the way SWB tries to make it easier is by providing pre-digested notes that the students write from, at first.  The idea is you don't want them to be doing a bunch of hard things at once - reading the passage, taking notes, and writing a composition - so she provides the notes for you, and you're supposed to write from the notes.  For my dd (and lots of other posters reported the same thing) this actually made the assignments more difficult, because instead of writing about content that you had read, digested, and made your own, you were writing about a totally random topic, from notes you had not written.  To me, this is actually a flaw in the program.  I think the way to make writing easier for a kid is to have them write about what they know, or are studying.  I don't think having them try to write from someone else's notes actually meets this goal of making things easier, so that they are only doing one hard thing at a time.

 

When I want my dd to do a new hard thing in writing, I usually give her a ridiculously simple, yet meaningful to her, topic to write about - Harry Potter, or horses, or something she's familiar with.  That way she can struggle with the new structure/organization practice, but on content that she knows very well.

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Not to beat a dead horse or anything . . .  ;)  but while kids can gain a grade level in reading comprehension in 5 to 10 hours, it takes a lot longer than that to develop the background, context, and real-world knowledge to truly understand adult-level texts, right?  

 

But one of the ways kids do that is by reading more difficult text and asking questions and writing about what they read. 

 

I am pretty sure there were things my son didn't completely understand when he read "The Necklace" but he did seem able pick up a whole lot from context. I think he asked about a couple of the french words. It is difficult to remember because it was 2 years ago. The fact that I don't remember it that well bodes well. It means he did it with little difficulty. Now, the Marie Antoinette assignment I remember Very Well :lol:

 

When I asked him he just remembered liking the story.

 

And does he 'truly understand' adult level texts? Of course not. He is a not an adult. He doesn't get all the nuances I see in Harry Potter 4-7, lol. But he can learn from challenging stories and novels. That is all I can ask.  If I wait for him to get enough life experience to fully comprehend every little bit of things he reads we are going to be waiting a very long time.

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But it's really more that I disagree philosophically with writing about random topics that are disconnected from a kid's studies.  Ironically, in this I am in full agreement with what SWB says in her writing lectures.  If you listen to them, you'll see that she's pretty scornful of writing curricula that are disconnected from what a student is studying, and she advocates writing across the curriculum.  I agree with this 100%.  (I also totally understand why she felt the need to write a middle grades writing curriculum! Based on her experiences as a college writing teacher, and on the fact that she's had so many parents say to her that they follow WTM . . . except for the writing part.)  

 

And I think that this fundamentally keys into the question that you are asking about reading comprehension.  You can read something that is at a "reading level" you are perfectly competent to read, but if you know nothing about the subject matter, it will go right over your head.  I'm reading a bunch of astronomy and physics books, because it's something that interests my dd, and whoosh! much of it went right over my head at first, even though I am a highly intelligent and competent reader ( ;) ).  Now that I've read several books, they're getting much easier to understand.  Not because my reading comprehension has improved, but because I have more content knowledge about the subject.  Does this make sense?

 

 

So when I asked about reading level, I wondered "aloud" if not using the writing assignments colors my view. This makes me think that it definitely does. When we outline from a WWS passage, it doesn't matter if my dd has background knowledge - she can still pick out the main point of the paragraph. When we examine a model passage, background knowledge isn't really that important - we can still look at the way the biographical sketch, description, etc. was written and get a lot out of the lesson. In fact, in these two cases I like that my dd's background knowledge is being expanded. But when it comes to writing about a completely disconnected topic, I can definitely see the problem where lack of background knowledge = poor comprehension. Lack of background knowledge is the reason I didn't want my dd writing on the WWS topics in the first place. I just never connected that with comprehension. This makes a lot more sense now.

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But it's really more that I disagree philosophically with writing about random topics that are disconnected from a kid's studies.

 

I guess I see this differently. My Charlotte Mason roots run deep. . .

 

Education is the Science of Relations.

 

I don't feel the need to make sure everything lines up just so within our studies. I'm a believer in allowing connections to happen naturally. For example, the assignment about the Gold Rush was interesting, but certainly didn't spark a passion and wouldn't have been something she would have chosen to write about. Nevertheless it was assigned. Just a few weeks later The Economist had an article comparing the Gold Rush to what is happening now with fracking. There were details in the fracking article about the Gold Rush that she knew only from the assignment in WWS2. Being familiar with those details helped make the fracking article easier to read and understand. I was glad she had done the Gold Rush assignment. There have been other similar occurrences. 

 

Also, before we started WWS1, I bought the books I thought Lily would be interested in as a surprise for after she finished the assignments. So after she turned in an assignment from WWS about a passage in a book, I would hand her the book to read for fun. I was spot-on with the books I ordered, but I missed some! I was genuinely surprised. For example, she requested that I order Genghis Khan and the Mongol Horde. She also requested Savage Inequalities. She then carried it around for months. Reading and rereading. She even took it to camp! :001_huh:     

At one point she wrote a short essay about a section of the book just because she felt strongly about it. :svengo:

 

Those are just a few examples. For us, the randomness is a good thing. It's how exposure happens.

 

I guess it's sort of a chicken or the egg situation. . .

 

Please note: I don't think anyone should feel obligated to like WWS. Kids are different, parents are different. Not everything will be a good fit for everyone. :001_smile:

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I guess I see this differently. My Charlotte Mason roots run deep. . .

 

Education is the Science of Relations.

 

I don't feel the need to make sure everything lines up just so within our studies. I'm a believer in allowing connections to happen naturally. For example, the assignment about the Gold Rush was interesting, but certainly didn't spark a passion and wouldn't have been something she would have chosen to write about. Nevertheless it was assigned. Just a few weeks later The Economist had an article comparing the Gold Rush to what is happening now with fracking. There were details in the fracking article about the Gold Rush that she knew only from the assignment in WWS2. Being familiar with those details helped make the fracking article easier to read and understand. I was glad she had done the Gold Rush assignment. There have been other similar occurrences.

 

Also, before we started WWS1, I bought the books I thought Lily would be interested in as a surprise for after she finished the assignments. So after she turned in an assignment from WWS about a passage in a book, I would hand her the book to read for fun. I was spot-on with the books I ordered, but I missed some! I was genuinely surprised. For example, she requested that I order Genghis Khan and the Mongol Horde. She also requested Savage Inequalities. She then carried it around for months. Reading and rereading. She even took it to camp! :001_huh:

At one point she wrote a short essay about a section of the book just because she felt strongly about it. :svengo:

 

Those are just a few examples. For us, the randomness is a good thing. It's how exposure happens.

 

I guess it's sort of a chicken or the egg situation. . .

 

Please note: I don't think anyone should feel obligated to like WWS. Kids are different, parents are different. Not everything will be a good fit for everyone. :001_smile:

I see your point, but those connections can (and do) spring up anywhere. Time spent reading the WWS passages is time not spent on a rabbit trail from history, science, geography, current events, literature, etc. (or just life, LOL), any one of which forays could produce a similar result. We go off on tangents here pretty often, exposing ourselves to randomness on a regular basis. In the end, every choice is a trade-off though, and everyone has to weigh pros and cons for themselves.

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Right, we had some happy discoveries too.  Shannon got obsessed with the Titanic, read every book in the library and watched every doco we could find on it.  She lived, ate, and breathed the Titanic for about 3 weeks after the WWS week on it.  It was great! she learned about something that she found interesting, had nothing to do with our history sequence.  Loved it!

 

But . . . there have been weeks where she just slogged along writing about stuff that didn't engage her.  And the difference in the quality of her writing was apparent, btw.  She begged to not have to write about Daniel Boone, and offered Sacagawea instead.  Great!  And just seeing how gloomy writing about the Wright brothers made her, it was not hard to decide to choose a different topic for the compare and contrast assignment.

 

I'm not saying everything has to line up perfectly.  I'm just saying why make a kid write about a topic that they aren't interested in, when there are so many cool topics that they are interested in?  

 

I totally agree that education is the science of relations - and I think it's really effective to relate something new (and interesting) to something you already know.  I don't think there is a lot of benefit in making a kid write about something they don't find interesting.

 

I'm not trying to convince anybody.  I'm just stating a case.  This way works better for us.  Nobody should feel bad about their choices, or feel like they have to fit themselves into someone else's mold.  That's really the thesis of all my posts this evening.  

 

ETA - oh yeah, I forgot my main point, which was that there are only so many hours in the day, and it feels a lot more efficient to have writing serve the content areas, rather than having writing add on new content areas.  For us.  We're getting more done in less time by writing inside of history and science and literature, instead of having it take up its own, separate time.  That's working well.

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As a mom whose DS successfully completed WWE4 as a 4th grader, but wasn't nearly ready to move straight into WWS1 as a 5th grader, I am vigorously nodding my head and agreeing with many things I've seen mentioned already in this thread. I haven't seen it recently, but some folks in other threads have even mentioned WWE4 being "optional" and were discussing moving from WWE3 straight to WWS1. It concerns me enough that I think the below quote from Rose is worth repeating, and I hope others pondering this will see this thread and take heed. 

 

FWIW, we spent DS's 5th grade year waiting for more academic maturity, doing IEW's SWI-B, and focusing on outlining and paragraphs with easier resources like Remedia's Outlining workbook, Paragraph Writing Made Easy, and Diana Hanbury King's Writing Skills. It was a brief detour away from SWB's writing curricula and I believe it set us up very well for WWS1 this year (6th grade).

 

I think my observations and claims here are consistent with what I've been posting for months now about WWS - I don't think it's a smooth step from WWE4 to WWS, and I don't think it's a program that will work well for many 5th graders - even 5th graders who are more than ready to move beyond WWE. I think WWS can be used successfully in jr high and early high school, and it troubles me when people feel that their kids are behind, or they are failing as writing teachers, when their 5th and 6th graders struggle with it.

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Seems like a good thread in which to share the thoughts of SWB herself...

 

WWS is a completely fleshed-out version of the writing recommended across the curriculum in TWTM.

 

I have always said that the *ideal* way to teach writing is to *not* have a writing curriculum, but rather to incorporate writing into the subject areas. So WWS is, in a way, an artificial method of teaching writing. What I've come to realize, over the past fifteen years of talking to home educators, is that only about 20% of parents really have the confidence and skill to follow the original TWTM recommendations as laid out. (Which I still think are ideal.) The rest just struggle, and struggle, and ultimately quit. (Listen, if you'd spent years listening to parents say, "Well, we're doing everything in TWTM except we're not really writing at all. That's OK, right?", you'd see the need for an option with some more hand-holding too.)

 

If you don't need the hand-holding, GO YOU. Sounds like the right decision. (Having said that, I do think that one area we didn't address in TWTM thoroughly enough was the whole research-and-documentation thing: What is plagiarism? How do you avoid it? How do you footnote? When? Why? THAT is thoroughly addressed in WWS1.)

 

If you do need the hand-holding, don't beat yourself up about it. You're in the 80%. Use WWS.

 

That's the parent part. Here's the kid part:

 

The more intuitive and natural your young writer is, the more they'll hate WWS. It is absolutely the wrong choice for a kid who loves writing. I call it my "Engineer's Guide to Writing." It was constructed with the non-intuitive, "I can't figure this out!" weeping writer in mind. *Those* were the kids who seemed to me to be totally unserved by existing writing programs.

 

HTH,

 

SWB

 

P.S. I will be doing a "WWS handbook," like the WWE core text, that outlines the basic requirements for each year but allows you to choose from your own materials. However, the scope & sequence is so complex that I need to finish the actual spelled-out levels first before putting the handbook together, so that's a couple of years down the road.

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Not to beat a dead horse or anything . . . ;) but while kids can gain a grade level in reading comprehension in 5 to 10 hours, it takes a lot longer than that to develop the background, context, and real-world knowledge to truly understand adult-level texts, right?

It really depends. Most of my middle class students and a surprising number of my inner city remedial students have no problem reading and understanding advanced materials once they are remediated, but most of them are older, generally 4th to 12th grade.

 

Many younger students and some of my older students do have to build up their vocabulary and range of reading material to be able to understand complex texts, but a fair number of them do not, although I do advise many of them to work through something like McGuffey where you are gradually increasing your vocabulary and reading level.

 

I had a 5th grader who was going to be placed in Special Education because his reading was so poor...he was actually a very smart kid, after 6 hours of remediation he was above grade level. I only had the NRRF up to 6th grade at that point, this was 20 years ago and he was my 3rd student. I had him read an article abut black holes in Scientific American. He needed help sounding out 2 multi-syllable words, but figured out the rest on his own and I had a nice discussion with him about black holes and the article. It was something that had just been discovered about them, he was so excited to go home and tell his brother in high school that he knew something about black holes that his brother didn't!! (His parents actually eventually ended up moving over an hour away from their work to find a good school, the district he was in is still one one of the worst districts in the nation.)

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I'm a believer in allowing connections to happen naturally.

In reflecting on this further, it occurs or me that while the connection happened naturally (after all, it was happenstance that The Economist ran an article about something just covered), the initial exposure to the topic was artificial, arbitrary even, merely a vehicle employed to teach a writing lesson. There is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with that, and it will provide a dose of randomness which may be welcome. But, truly, I do not see connections made after writing across the curriculum as any less natural.

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