Better sentence writing resources

[Farrar]

I'm looking for some sentence activities or resources for ds10. He can write a sentence just fine (and, actually, a paragraph too) and his spelling and mechanics have improved so much in the last year or two. But most of his sentences are a bit flat. He's often a bit better in written narration since you can borrow a bit from the book. But overall, he doesn't add detail, use strong words, vary the type of sentence, etc. So I'm looking for resources to help him with those things in a light, fun way. We do work on this when revising his own work and I sit there asking sentence stretcher type questions to elicit more detail, but making changes when it's your own writing is so hard. So I'd like him to work on it on the side some with less stress of "this is the composition I just wrote and I already worked so hard!" hanging over him.

 

I don't want a full, big program like Killgallon. I also don't really want anything that's super dry looking, though I suppose that's in the eye of the beholder... A workbook would be okay though, especially if it had varied activities.

 

Games would be good. I think my ideal resource would be something like Peggy Kaye's Games for Writing except for upper elementary. We've done a few things, like using a sentence or two from dictation to then become a sentence model and playing You've Been Sentenced, which really encourages thinking outside the box of sentence construction to win. I'm looking for lots more activities like that.

[Loves Light]

Following.

 

I just purchased Killgallon but I'm not sure it's going to fit our needs.

[FloridaLisa]

This doesn't fit your needs but I wanted to put for those interested in this that Classical Writing's Homer really does a good job with this.  That's one of the primary strengths of the program.  It  really gets the students to play with words and word order and structure and substitution, synonyms, antonyms, connotation, etc. But it's a full writing curriculum. 

 

Lisa

[freesia]

Here is a link to the 6-sentence shuffle that CW Homer uses:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/engrade-myfiles/4063157525964886/6_Sentence_Shuffle_Steps_and_form.pdf

 

I don't use the program, but I do do the 6 sentence shuffle with my dd who does not use IEW (which does do what you were asking about--but in a big program). I don't do every part that is listed but the basics: start with a sentence, parse or diagram, change for synonyms, add phrases and clauses, subtract to the basics, write a new sentence that has the same parts. We do it lightly and quickly. I find it fun.

 

Killgallon is not a big program, though. I have also used it as a once or twice a week supplement for sentence building purposes.

 

On the games idea, you could use ideas from the Games For Writing book. You could put prepositional phrases in one, adverbial clauses in one, subjects in one,verbs in another. Then have him pick one from each and then play around with building the sentences.

 

You could borrow an idea from IEW and make a rule like: no more than 2 of the same types of sentence openers in a row. Make a checklist for him that reflects what you are looking for (well, not everything at once, work on one thing at a time).

[rjand6more]

We are using Igniting Your Writing and Tin Man Press's Just Write in my co op this semester.  I really like them!

[Chrysalis Academy]

Yeah, I hate to be annoying and mention Killgallon when you specifically said you don't want that, but . . . I am anyway!  ;)  :D   I was in the same position with my then 10 year old a year ago, and I had her start using Grammar for Middle School, just once or twice a week, just a few exercises a day.  Totally independent for her, totally painless for me.  And it has actually made a big difference, it has definitely rubbed off in not only her writing, but in the fact that she is now noticing the use of sentence techniques in the books she's reading, and appreciating and commenting on them.

 

I got nothing else.  Good luck!  :)

[hornblower]

When people talk about "full, big program like Killgallon" what are you guys talking about?

I've only ever used his Sentence Composing books & they're fun & the exercises are fast. I'd start with the yellow elementary school book. http://userpages.umbc.edu/~killgall/

[Farrar]

I guess I'm rebelling against the thought of Killgallon because it involves a lot of grammar and a lot of chunking things and breaking them down and we tried that with MCT and it was a big, utter, waste of time fail. It seems to take this idea of using models, which should be whole to parts and makes it more parts to whole. I definitely want something that feels more whole to parts. I also think of it as a full program for grammar, not as a side resource and I definitely want a side resource type thing, not something that feels like a full program.

 

Maybe I'm all wrong... Or maybe I don't know what I want.

 

I don't want to hone in too far on our BW mojo. It's working - he writes, his mechanics are steadily improving, his fluency with writing is improving and his stamina to write longer things, he often has a witty writing voice - classically snarky, silly boy, you know? I don't want to ruin any of that so I definitely don't want this to be a huge element to our writing.

[Crimson Wife]

I guess I'm rebelling against the thought of Killgallon because it involves a lot of grammar and a lot of chunking things and breaking them down and we tried that with MCT and it was a big, utter, waste of time fail. It seems to take this idea of using models, which should be whole to parts and makes it more parts to whole. I definitely want something that feels more whole to parts. I also think of it as a full program for grammar, not as a side resource and I definitely want a side resource type thing, not something that feels like a full program. 

 

Saying this gently, but you're probably not going to get him to improve his sentence variety if you ignore grammar. Killgallon is different from MCT in that it really focuses on the sentence writing aspect. Yes, the grammar is taught, but in a very applied way.

 

Additionally, Killgallon is not something that needs to be done every single day. I did "Story Grammar" daily for a semester but then with "Grammar for Middle School" it was just one element in the LA loop schedule and she did it a couple times per week for a full year.

 

Take a look at the Killgallon samples and also Harry Noden's "Image Grammar". I haven't used that one since it appears to have too much overlap with the Killgallon books but it is supposed to be very good. The Noden may appeal to you more for whatever reason.

 

ETA: Here is a link to a sample chapter from Noden's "Image Grammar": http://www.heinemann.com/shared/onlineresources/E04174/Noden_SampleChapter.pdf

[Roadrunner]

Another one agreeing about Killgallon. Or you can just take ideas from it. Spend one weak on teaching appositives and writing sentences with appositives as openers or the middle of the sentence. Then you can do the same with gerund phrases.... That's what Killgallon does. It has helped us tremendously.

[Farrar]

Yeah, as I have seen multiple studies showing only the most tenuous link between grammar knowledge and writing quality and as I have seen a lot of kids in my classes when I was a school teacher improve their writing skills greatly without doing things like sentence diagramming or analysis, I don't think you're going convince me that the only possible path here is going deeper with grammar. He does have a pretty good fifth grade understanding of grammar. He had identify parts of speech and basic types of sentences and what's a clause and things like that and, as I said, his mechanics are getting pretty decent in terms of comma usage and so forth. But I know that if I have him doing that type of looking at sentences, it won't be enjoyable for him. When I was having him rewrite and change dictation sentences, that was an enjoyable exercise. I just want more ideas like that. And maybe some things that are a little more predone. I already pick all our dictation passages and so forth. I wouldn't mind having something that's a little less on me to prep.

 

Image Grammar was something I was considering for us for next year when I have in my head that it will be time to do grammar again. It does seem to do some of that. I think I just don't have it on my plate to want to do grammar this year. I specifically made this a year off.

[hornblower]

"When I was having him rewrite and change dictation sentences, that was an enjoyable exercise."

Can I just chime in again with Sentence Composing? It's really quite different & way less stress about the grammar.

Take a model sentence, chunk its parts (but you don't have to worry about naming them; i had a student completely ignore all that. All you really need to be able to do is recognize nouns, verbs, modifers & prepositions/prepositional phrases).

Unscramble a bunch of given phrases to build a sentence that's imitating the model sentence.

Make up your own sentence that matches the model. 

That's pretty much the entire book, with lots of variation in sentence lengths, types & complexity.

My student who used it did not get any grammar out of it (worked on that separately). It was very much a guided creativity exercise.

 

[Farrar]

Okay, you're starting to convince me. I guess I'm wary... I'm thinking about how I got talked around into trying MCT and it was a mistake. It was the same thing, everyone was like, it's exactly what you're asking for. And I was like, but I looked at it and I don't think it will work for us... and it didn't (I mean, I'm not *that* upset - I got it used and sold it for what I bought it for, so it was basically free and we did end up liking the poetry - enough that I might get the next level, though that surprised me because it was the grammar... anyway...). I mean, I have looked at Killgallon - even held it in my hands.

[Soapy]

My student who used it did not get any grammar out of it (worked on that separately). It was very much a guided creativity exercise.

I used Killgallon with 4/5th graders this way exactly. We treated it as kind of an author study thing. We eventually started finding our own great sentences and chunking them up and emulating them.

 

What about 6 traits sentence fluency activities? I'm sure you could just google some activities and incorporate them. I also remember liking the way Jeff Anderson approached this kind of thing as a part of one of his books. I just can't remember which. I don't think it was the editing one. He's a middle school person, but I found it wonderful with fifth graders.

[Farrar]

Okay, there are used, stated to be clean copies on Amazon of the elementary one for only about $4. I guess that's a pretty cheap try if we only use a little of it.

 

Any not Killgallon ideas or resources?

[Roadrunner]

O.K. I am not saying teach him grammar. I am saying apply it. Killgallon is all application, not that different from copywork. It happens to use the correct grammatical terminology, but focus is on application. We are also looked at image grammar because it's in a similar spirit, but my kids aren't ready for it yet.

[stripe]

Farrar -- have you seen the pages put up by a teacher in Oklahoma that summarizes Killgallon and suggests how to do it yourself? I posted a link maybe a month ago. Let me dig up the link.

 

Okay here it is

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/524942-favorite-inexpensive-writing-curriculum-for-middle-school-and-what-was-your-least-fav/?p=5858126

 

 

By the way, I found handouts by a teacher from Oklahoma named Mrs. Ayn Grubb who has done some presentations on Killgallon. They provide a nice overview of the method and how she implements this style in her own classroom -- including having her students look for interesting sentences

 

http://www.mrsgrubb.com/PDFfiles/APSI/TCU2012/2012.RealLangRealGram.pdf

http://www.mrsgrubb.com/PDFfiles/APSI/TCU2012/2012.GramKillgallon.pdf

 

And have you seen the teacher's books

I think this one is the best

http://www.heinemann.com/products/E01246.aspx

You now have to give your name etc to download it, but it's 50 p long and very detailed. The Paragraphs for Elem School guide is 64 pages long.

[Crimson Wife]

Yeah, as I have seen multiple studies showing only the most tenuous link between grammar knowledge and writing quality and as I have seen a lot of kids in my classes when I was a school teacher improve their writing skills greatly without doing things like sentence diagramming or analysis, I don't think you're going convince me that the only possible path here is going deeper with grammar. He does have a pretty good fifth grade understanding of grammar. He had identify parts of speech and basic types of sentences and what's a clause and things like that and, as I said, his mechanics are getting pretty decent in terms of comma usage and so forth.

 

Killgallon is very different than traditional grammar instruction. There are no diagramming, parsing, or mechanics exercises. Take a look at the samples on the Heinemann site. The focus is on applied grammar via imitating model sentences.

[...................]

FYI I loved the sentences in Kilgallon but I sent the book back to Amazon because it continually quotes horror novel authors.  The quotes themselves were innocuous, but I didn't want to hold that up as an example.  ...

[threedogfarm]

I agree with all the other posters that suggested Killgallon (in spite of your request for other suggestions!).  You said right in your original post what you wanted and Killgallon will deliver. . .and it's not a full blown program.

 

You might also consider reading Notes Toward a New Rhetoric:  9 Essays for Teachers by Frances Christensen.  Killgallon based his program on Christensen's work.  I like to understand how and why a curriculum came about, whether it is math, science, writing, etc.  Reading books/essays about the theory behind a curriculum really helps me embrace the curriculum and help my children get the most from it (or in some cases, reject the curriculum).

[stripe]

FYI I loved the sentences in Kilgallon but I sent the book back to Amazon because it continually quotes horror novel authors. The quotes themselves were innocuous, but I didn't want to hold that up as an example. ...

Was this in the elementary or middle school books? Athough now that you mention it, I do remember seeing RL Stine on the list of authors. But It didn't seem too horror-filled.

 

A sort of gamey book is If You're Trying to Teach Kids How to Write, You Gotta Have This Book by Marjorie Frank (OOP).

[...................]

Was this in the elementary or middle school books? Athough now that you mention it, I do remember seeing RL Stine on the list of authors. But It didn't seem too horror-filled.

 

A sort of gamey book is If You're Trying to Teach Kids How to Write, You Gotta Have This Book by Marjorie Frank (OOP).

I noticed Stephen King over and over, RL Stine I didn't personally see... and several books that were clearly of the Horror genre.  Only one sentence was in any way dark in and of itself.  And even that one sentence wasn't evil, but a possible foreshadowing.  THis was the Middle School book.  

 

But still...I think that it might be useful for others to know when considering Kilgallon. I'm sure I'm not the only one that would be unhappy with that.

[Farrar]

It apparently has a Stephen King quote in the opening, but it's about writing. He's written a lot about writing and many writers feel his writing about craft is really good. I think that's a little different from using Stephen King novel sentences for middle schoolers... But maybe not to everyone?

 

Like I said, I ordered a used copy, but I am still really dubious. Again, as I said, I have seen it before - even held it in my hands and thumbed through it - and it felt like a grammar program. I mean, when I look at the samples, the whole first part is about breaking sentences into clauses and so forth by "chunking" them and teaching that as a skill. I don't see that going over well with ds. And nor is it a skill I feel like I want to focus on, honestly, because it's about breaking writing down into component parts in an analytical way. That's not really what I'm wanting... But if it really does feel more wholistic to folks... I guess for that little I can look again.

[stripe]

My son hated chunking and doing Killgallon got to be a big chore. I am not in a position to offer any words of wisdom on writing, but I would be interested to know what you find.

[Farrar]

Ah, finally, someone to speak against it!

 

I'm such a contrarian that that actually makes me what to try it more than before. I think I may have a problem there. People tell me I'll love it, I resist. Someone says it's not great, then I'm interested.  :lol:

 

Have you actually used the If You're Trying to Teach Kids How to Write book, Stripe? It was one of those very unclear looking resources, you know? Where you have no idea what to expect and there's no preview.

[Crimson Wife]

Like I said, I ordered a used copy, but I am still really dubious. Again, as I said, I have seen it before - even held it in my hands and thumbed through it - and it felt like a grammar program. I mean, when I look at the samples, the whole first part is about breaking sentences into clauses and so forth by "chunking" them and teaching that as a skill. I don't see that going over well with ds. And nor is it a skill I feel like I want to focus on, honestly, because it's about breaking writing down into component parts in an analytical way. That's not really what I'm wanting... But if it really does feel more wholistic to folks... I guess for that little I can look again.

Again trying to say this gently, but I don't think you are going to be able to improve the variety of sentence structures in his writing simply through having him read and do totally unstructured BW style "freewriting". Killgallon will teach him the skills you are looking for.

[Farrar]

And I'll say again, that I completely disagree. I think if I wanted to continue BW style and use the BW style dictations in this way, as I've been doing a little, as sentence models and to play more games and so forth, that I think we'd get on fine. It's just that it's more prep work for me and I'd like to have a book of ideas on hand or a set of predone sentences that were chosen with this purpose in mind or something so I don't have to do the legwork.

 

BW is serving us really well. It really does teach these skills but in a very different way.

 

I also... I have too much experience teaching writing to middle schoolers for you to sway me. I'm set in my beliefs that language does not need to be broken down in order to achieve better writing.

[stripe]

I bought it right before going out of town and haven't looked at it much since my return. It's kind of random looking...I'd scan some pages if it wouldn't violate copyright. Snort. It looks very 70s to me, with a lot of stuff packed on each page, with lots of fonts and handwritten things swirling around. I think it overwhelms me. I will try to read it soon and report back. I definitely haven't used it.

[stripe]

This book is like Julia Bogart / Sweeney on speed.

 

Eta: I found this blog entry with a couple pictures

http://www.becauseimme.net/2014/01/home-schooling-essentials-few-of-my.html

 

I am not entirely sure that it would help with *sentences* particularly. Obviously Killgallon is specifically about this, and that's what makes it the obvious suggestion. Then there are those Scholastic download workbooks. Including these StudySmart books (only place I've seen inside contents revealed)

http://scholasticstudysmart.com/

 

Angelilo's Grammar Study has a chapter on mentor texts but it's pretty vague, and I think Jeff Anderson's Mechanically Inclined is much more robust. Amazon is suggesting Kelly Gallagher's Write Like This, but I haven't seen it.

[Chrysalis Academy]

You know, it's funny - I don't love it.  And for the first month or two, I didn't think it was working at all.  I used it because: 1) lots of people I respected had raved about it as a specific tool to deal with the stylistic issues I was seeing in dd's writing, and 2) it was something - one thing - she could do independently.  Totally.  So, I thought worst case it's busy work - copywork for big kids - and best case it might help  a little.

 

So for me, the proof is in the pudding.  The consistent effort of physically copying and creating different sentences with multiple, varied structures has shown up in more varied sentences in her own writing.  That's the only reason I suggest it - no commitment to it as a curriculum per se, or as a philosophical approach to writing instruction.  I just found that this was a tool that addressed the specific issue I saw.  Which sounded like the issue you described.  That's all!

[Farrar]

Okay, that description I can get behind more, Rose. Copywork for older kids. That makes more intuitive sense to me and fits in more with how we approach writing.

 

I'm just not sold on grammar at this moment for us. I do want to point out, for anyone under the misapprehension that Brave Writer is all freewriting and nothing else... We do regular dictation, regular written narration, regular writing projects that have included compositions and instructions and stories and a number of other forms. We revise the writing and focus on making it stronger and richer. I think I'm feeling a little defensive, but I do want to say, I'm not expecting ds to have just developed this skill in a vacuum. I just want to add another mode of practice that's more focused and less stressful than adding more revision because it's less about your own words.

[Farrar]

This book is like Julia Bogart / Sweeney on speed.

Even if it doesn't help with sentences per se, that description is crazy appealing to me.

[...................]

It apparently has a Stephen King quote in the opening, but it's about writing. He's written a lot about writing and many writers feel his writing about craft is really good. I think that's a little different from using Stephen King novel sentences for middle schoolers... But maybe not to everyone?

 

Like I said, I ordered a used copy, but I am still really dubious. Again, as I said, I have seen it before - even held it in my hands and thumbed through it - and it felt like a grammar program. I mean, when I look at the samples, the whole first part is about breaking sentences into clauses and so forth by "chunking" them and teaching that as a skill. I don't see that going over well with ds. And nor is it a skill I feel like I want to focus on, honestly, because it's about breaking writing down into component parts in an analytical way. That's not really what I'm wanting... But if it really does feel more wholistic to folks... I guess for that little I can look again.

 

I counted at least four sentences from Stephen King novels used in the middle school book, as sentences to imitate.  It was not "just in the opening."  

 

Now, as I said, the sentences themselves were innocuous.  

 

(But, I do not want Stephen King in my curriculum.)

[stripe]

I counted at least four sentences from Stephen King novels used in the middle school book, as sentences to imitate.

It was my understanding that this was the case; I have the elem books only, and that's why I was confused.

 

I think Story Grammar has less grammar vocabulary. The advantage of Killgallon is that there's this huge repository of well done sentences available to look at, not unlike the ones pulled out in The Arrow. I had my son look for interesting sentences that fit different criteria, such as, subject not at beginning. A few are hard to find without a lot of careful searching (subject at end of sentence or something), but many are easy (short subject). I thought it would be hard to find two word sentences, but I happened to be reading Dorothy Macardle's The Uninvited at the time, and that book is CHOCK FULL of two word sentences. I contributed a huge number; it got to be quite funny.

 

 

**[ETA: I looked in his notebook -- 16 (!) two word sentences just from The Uninvited. He found several in Enright's Then There Were Five and also several subject-free "sentences" in that. And there was a page long sentence in The New Yorker on Nov. 4, 2013 that we glued in the notebook: Fed by Donald Antrim. Happily, it's available in its entirely for all to see, on the New Yorker's website.]

[Saddlemomma]

Sorry to say but another vote here for Kilgallon. My DD loves this program and has fun doing it. BTW, did I mention she HATES writing? This year she is thoroughly enjoying Kilgallon's GFMS, which focuses mostly on how to construct awesome sentences, with Jump In as her main program. We do GFMS two days a week.

[Miss Tick]

The middle school books definitely reference older reading material a la Stephen King and Michael Crichton. The approach is exactly the same as the elementary books although those use good junior fiction references (and slightly shorter sentences), so if something catches your dc's eye it is easier to hand the book over without so many reservations (or to hand it over at all, depending).

 

Maybe I've spent too long in the world of FLL, but it is hard for me to think of Killgallon as a grammar program. Each section introduces a grammar term, uses it with no mention of previous lessons, for a week, and then no additional mention until the end of the book review.

 

We are using it as a supplement. Every couple of weeks I pull it out and we work through a unit. I like Stripe's idea of doing a sentence hunt for different types. If your ds has no interest in the chunking exercises you could skip or skim them pretty easily.

 

Done as written, my ds would collapse under the psychic weight of all the writing, so we tweak the program to suit us, as with everything.

[stripe]

I like Stripe's idea of doing a sentence hunt for different types. 

I am pretty sure I got the idea from Anderson's Mechanically Inclined.

 

Also, I forgot about this one: The Art of Styling Sentences by Ann Longknife. It uses technical grammar vocabulary. I think it's intended for adults, a point I was reminded of as I flipped through and happened to see this example: "Is sex dirty?" -- Woody Allen. I think Killgallon is a better choice for the elem age.

[Carol in Cal.]

I really think that if you could watch the IEW video about sentence openers, and then make a list of them and require a variety, it would build the kind of habit you are looking for.  BW is excellent for osmosis type learning, if you look for older books with complicated sentences for reading aloud and copywork/dictation.  I agree with continuing copywork even at this age--that was extremely helpful to my daughter.

 

I don't like IEW very much in general, but to add this particular tool to the toolbox of a BW type student, it is really very good.  Other than that, though, I would stick to BW.

[Crimson Wife]

I have too much experience teaching writing to middle schoolers for you to sway me. I'm set in my beliefs that language does not need to be broken down in order to achieve better writing.

I have always wondered why you seem to get so much more out of TWJ than I did. If you have a background as an English teacher and are already doing Killgallon style work using dictation sentences that makes a lot more sense then.

[Soapy]

I am pretty sure I got the idea from Anderson's Mechanically Inclined.

 

That is the book I was thinking too. I like his editing one too, but I liked his treatment of sentence types. I didn't do Killgallon as an actual work text, but combined it with Anderson-ish stuff. I'm not sure you actually need to hand a kid the book. I'd see it more as an opportunity to study what a great writer does naturally.

[stripe]

I realized I have another book I was wondering about: Discovering Voice: Voice Lessons for Middle and High School by Nancy Dean

How does it compare?

[Mommy to monkeys]

I noticed Stephen King over and over, RL Stine I didn't personally see... and several books that were clearly of the Horror genre. Only one sentence was in any way dark in and of itself. And even that one sentence wasn't evil, but a possible foreshadowing. THis was the Middle School book.

 

But still...I think that it might be useful for others to know when considering Kilgallon. I'm sure I'm not the only one that would be unhappy with that.

You're not the only one. This is very good to know.

[Crimson Wife]

I realized I have another book I was wondering about: Discovering Voice: Voice Lessons for Middle and High School by Nancy Dean

How does it compare?

 

I'm curious about this one as well as I've heard it recommended before (maybe on this forum?) but haven't been able to find good samples of it online.

 

[stripe]

I'm curious about this one as well as I've heard it recommended before (maybe on this forum?) but haven't been able to find good samples of it online.

 

I'm able to "look inside" and see a fair amount on Amazon. Is this helpful?

http://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Voice-Lessons-Middle-School/dp/0929895894

[Pen]

I'm looking for some sentence activities or resources for ds10. He can write a sentence just fine (and, actually, a paragraph too) and his spelling and mechanics have improved so much in the last year or two. But most of his sentences are a bit flat. ...

 

 

Could you provide an example of his writing?

 

I'm thinking that maybe, esp. at age 10, you'd be best off sticking with the BW approach, and just trying to get some more detail etc. in at the revision stage...or if that is too painful, maybe having him revise things you write.  

 

Or even to go back and do early BW type exercises that are all about writing descriptions, especially about things of interest to the writer, with good details-- and point out what you see as the best of the detail he gets down that really allows you as a reader to see what he is writing about, and similarly to point out interesting sentence construction in his work or in things you read.

 

????

[Pen]

Or, alternatively, in the "mop up" stage, perhaps ask if he would like some suggestions of how to make a few of the sentences more powerful and or more complex than they are.  So there could be correcting something that absolutely needs correcting in "mop up"--but also there could be suggesting stronger ways to do something, some variety of sentence structure at that point...couldn't there? I mean I don't think there is a rule against that, and by age he is where many kids still are in "partnership writing" phase.

 

Also, is he reading things that are exciting? Or things that are themselves kind of flat?

 

My ds will sometimes pep up something if I suggest a dull version.  

[Farrar]

Could you provide an example of his writing?

 

I'm thinking that maybe, esp. at age 10, you'd be best off sticking with the BW approach, and just trying to get some more detail etc. in at the revision stage...  Or even to go back and do early BW type exercises that are all about writing descriptions, especially about things of interest to the writer, with good details-- and point out what you see as the best of the detail he gets down that really allows you as a reader to see what he is writing about, and similarly to point out interesting sentence construction in his work or in things you read.

 

????

 

Yeah, we have done all those BW close observations things. Oy. It's like pulling teeth. He loathes them. And he turns out really dull content:

It's an orange. It is orange. It is round. It is a fruit. It's a delicious. "Farrar, I can't think of anything else to say!!!!" Ugh.

 

His AAS writing stations are similarly pretty flat:

I was deciding what movie to see. I picked the roundest movie. (What does that even mean!? Silly AAS words.) I mean, they're a little better. There's also: After the movie, we got ice cream. (I can't even figure out which AAS word was in that one...)

 

When he does freewrites, there's a lot of tiny story teasers that are basically... I did this. Then I did this. Then I did this. I felt this. Then, a twist! There's always an expected twist. It's cute and it'll get better eventually.

 

Narrations are generally the best, but that's because he's borrowing phrases and organization from whatever he just read.

 

I feel like he will keep improving, but I also think if he was doing something on the side to notice and think about this stuff he'd see it a little more and then slowly start working it into his own writing.

 

So today, I had him just do some old fashioned sentence stretchers. I especially liked this one, which started with "Elizabeth leaps."

 

"Elizabeth leaps over the water from rock to rock as the sun rises."

 

He was really pleased too. And it was low key. If, as I do periodically for writing projects, I had asked him to add more detail to a "I did this." sentence he would have been near tears. This was easier and more fun yet worked on it. And so was changing around a dictation.

[Pen]

Yeah, we have done all those BW close observations things. Oy. It's like pulling teeth. He loathes them. And he turns out really dull content:

It's an orange. It is orange. It is round. It is a fruit. It's a delicious. "Farrar, I can't think of anything else to say!!!!" Ugh.

 

 

Sounds like he is not interested in the orange as a subject!

 

 

His AAS writing stations are similarly pretty flat:

I was deciding what movie to see. I picked the roundest movie. (What does that even mean!? Silly AAS words.) I mean, they're a little better. There's also: After the movie, we got ice cream. (I can't even figure out which AAS word was in that one...)

 

When he does freewrites, there's a lot of tiny story teasers that are basically... I did this. Then I did this. Then I did this. I felt this. Then, a twist! There's always an expected twist. It's cute and it'll get better eventually.

 

Narrations are generally the best, but that's because he's borrowing phrases and organization from whatever he just read.

 

I feel like he will keep improving, but I also think if he was doing something on the side to notice and think about this stuff he'd see it a little more and then slowly start working it into his own writing.

 

So today, I had him just do some old fashioned sentence stretchers. I especially liked this one, which started with "Elizabeth leaps."

 

"Elizabeth leaps over the water from rock to rock as the sun rises."

 

 

 Nice work!

 

He was really pleased too. And it was low key. If, as I do periodically for writing projects, I had asked him to add more detail to a "I did this." sentence he would have been near tears. This was easier and more fun yet worked on it. And so was changing around a dictation.

 

Then it sounds like you have an approach that is working out. Hurrah.

 

 

My ds has done his best with BW when he has done freewriting on a nonfiction topic, such as on the vikings as I've posted on, or recently on a favorite constellation, or about Mercury for his Hogwarts essay. He is not good either on an I did this and then that type thing.

[Crimson Wife]

So today, I had him just do some old fashioned sentence stretchers. I especially liked this one, which started with "Elizabeth leaps."

 

 

"Elizabeth leaps over the water from rock to rock as the sun rises."

 

He was really pleased too. And it was low key. If, as I do periodically for writing projects, I had asked him to add more detail to a "I did this." sentence he would have been near tears. This was easier and more fun yet worked on it. And so was changing around a dictation.

 

I hate to sound like a broken record, but you are describing the Killgallon exercises. Really and truly.

 

If it's the "chunking" exercises specifically that are a turnoff, those could be very easily skipped in favor of the imitations.

[dauphin]

I counted at least four sentences from Stephen King novels used in the middle school book, as sentences to imitate. It was not "just in the opening."

 

Now, as I said, the sentences themselves were innocuous.

 

(But, I do not want Stephen King in my curriculum.)

Which Middle school book? Since I've heard they (Grammar vs. Sentences I think) were similar/worked on the same tasks, I would think I could do the other one? Or if no one chimes in to say whether or not the authors still had a horror bent when they wrote the later one I think I'm willing to take that $4ish gamble.....