SWB lecture on Teaching writing in the middle grades - implementation?

[Kendall]

Have any of you had your children write, either exclusively or with other writing, essays such as are suggested in her lecture?  i know I shouldn't compare, but it would really help me to see what these papers look like when they are finished.  I am starting at the point with my 10th grader and hope to quickly move to the high school suggestions.  But this child struggles and I know we need to back up to the end of the middle grades suggestions.  

 

Any thoughts, experience, essays to share?

 

Thanks,

Kendall 

[Chrysalis Academy]

I'm kind of confused, I guess.  In SWB's middle grade lectures, students aren't writing essays. They are doing narration + outlining in the first years, plus talking and writing about books that they read.  Then you add in rewriting from outlines in maybe 7th and 8th grades.  But no essays till high school.  

 

If you are wanting to use SWB's approach with a high schooler, I guess you'd be wanting to focus on outlining and rewriting from outlines, plus basic "literary analysis" papers, right? And I'd listen to the high school writing lectures to have a good grasp of the kind of writing that is the goal, and move into that when your student has mastered the earlier stages.

 

So I'm not sure what you'd like people to share? Narrations and outlines written by their 5th-8th graders? "Literary analysis" papers written by this age group, following, SWB's method? Or actual essays?  But again, essays don't figure into SWB's writing suggestions until high school.

[Kendall]

No, it was me who is confused!  I listened to the literary analysis lecture and the high school one, and after you posted I realize tht I haven't relistened to the middle grades lecture so I will do that.   In the literary analysis talk she encourages you to talk about the questions and then toward the end of the middle grades write answers to the questions.  I clearly need to listen again:)!  So after discussion they are to write short essays(page or less) answering some of the questions including some evaluative questions.  Main character, what do they want, etc. those questions.  So I would love to see attempts at this.

 

I think with history/science essays I will start with the high school years suggestions but with literary analysis I need to start back with these essays answering the questions.

 

 

[hollyhock]

So you want samples of the lit. essays? Here is one written by my 5th grader last year. He was just starting to write them so it's pretty basic:

 

"Mike's Mystery is about a boy named Mike. He wants to find out who burned down his mother's house."

 

I will come back later and add some from my 7th grader but right now for some reason I can't access those files. 

 

ETA: I found this one he wrote in 6th: "George Washington Carver is a biography written by David Collins. The main character is George Carver. He is a man who loves plants. He wants to learn about plants as much as he can. Toward the end of the book, he discovers many uses for the peanut because the cotton is eaten up by a type of beetle called the boll weevil."

 

Honestly, I've had real trouble getting my boys to write anything close to a page for this. If I get a paragraph or two out of my oldest, I think it's good. I'm not sure if the length really matters that much.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Ah, got it! That makes sense.  I'll post a few that my dd has written over the past few years using the method SWB suggests:  the kid reads the book, you discuss it, then they pick some aspect of something that arose in discussion (or one of the LA questions) and writes about it.

 

Here's one my dd wrote in spring of 5th grade after we read and talked about Huckleberry Finn. 

 

Huckleberry Finn

                Huck is a boy growing up on the Mississippi River who wants people to stop trying to make him be something he doesn’t want to be.  He solves his problem by running away.  Jim is a slave who is about to be sold down river away from his family to work on a plantation.  He also solves his problem by running away.  When Huck and Jim run into each other on Jackson Island they decide to travel together to a free state.  Even though Huck feels guilty for helping Jim run away their friendship becomes so strong that he decides it is the right thing to do, even if it means he will go to hell.

                On the way down river Huck and Jim pass the free states in the fog and find themselves deep in slave country.  While in slave country Jim gets captured and Huck works hard to free him, only to find that both of them had been free all along:  Jim’s mistress had died and freed him in her will, and Huck’s Pap had died.

                Of all the characters that Mark Twain introduces us to, Jim, the one who is most looked down upon, is really the most admirable.  He is admirable in his friendship for Huck, which he shows in many ways.  For example, he lets Huck sleep in when it is his turn on watch.  He waits for Huck when they are separated, and when Huck plays tricks on him he talks to him and tells him that’s not what friends do.  Another way he shows his admirable character is that he sacrifices himself for others, even if they have been unkind to him.  For example, he allows himself to be recaptured in order to save Tom who has not been very nice to him at all.  In fact, Jim is even more admirable than Huck, and he shows himself to be a better friend.  Jim never plays tricks on Huck, and if Huck were captured, Jim would have rescued him right away, instead of playing a silly, unnecessary game that wasted time and kept Jim in prison longer than he needed to be.

                Mark Twain used irony and humor to show people that prejudice is wrong, instead of lecturing them, because people are more likely to listen to a funny story than a scolding lecture.  Twain wanted his readers to judge people by who they are inside and by their actions.  He wanted his readers to see people as individuals, not judge them by skin color, wealth, or class in society.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Here's one she did early in 5th grade - you can see that this one has much shorter, less developed paragraphs. This might have been one of the first books she wrote about where she tried to analyze characters.

 

20,000 Leagues under the Sea

                In Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, there are three main characters: Ned Land, Professor Arronax, and Captain Nemo.

                Ned Land is an impatient man of action with a very big appetite.  Ned loves having dry land beneath his feet.  He loves freedom, and is constantly planning escape from the Nautilus.  Ned also has a very sharp temper.

                In the beginning the Professor is a calm patient man, and is happy to be on the Nautilus because he is a scientist, and this is a chance for him to greatly expand his studies.  The Professor is afraid that if he leaves the Nautilus, Captain Nemo will be disappointed (or even hurt) by his actions.  Thus we see the beginning of a father-son relationship between the Professor and the Captain.

                Captain Nemo is a completely impassive man with a strange and mysterious background.  In the beginning he seems a calm and in control scientist, but his hatred of the British reveals a more Ned Land-like side of him.

                The Professor and Ned Land are complete opposites, but Nemo seems to be a cross between them.   One way Land and Nemo are alike is they both risk their own lives for one another for the sake of honor.

                During the end of the story Nemo confronts a British ship, and becomes a monster of rage and hatred, and we get to see the Ned-like side of him.  When Nemo goes so far as to sink a ship the Professor needs no persuasion from Ned, he knows it is time to leave.  The Captain has made him part of the bloody revenge he never wished to witness.  The events of the novel lead to a profound change in the character of the Professor.  He changes from someone content to be an observer, to someone who is forced to act.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Here's one from 6th grade:

 

Animal Farm

Animal Farm, by George Orwell, is about a farm where the animals overthrow the farmer who owns them. Two pigs called Snowball and Napoleon take charge of the farm after the farmer is gone. Then Napoleon uses some vicious dogs he has raised to exile Snowball. He “finds†papers that show that Snowball has really been working with the farmer all along. Now that Snowball is gone Napoleon sets up a dictatorship with himself in charge, and after a while things are as difficult and unhappy for the animals as when they were owned by the farmer.

            This book is an allegory written to represent the Russian Revolution. The socialists, led by Lenin, got rid of the czar and took over Russia. When Lenin died, there was a struggle for power between Stalin and Trotsky. Eventually Stalin had Trotsky exiled and killed. He set up a dictatorship, and things were just as bad, if not worse, as when the czar was in charge.        

            George Orwell wrote a “fairy story†about animals to make people think about the situation in Russia. He wrote a “fairy story†because that way he could deliver his message without the reader feeling like they were being lectured. He wanted readers to consider several questions while reading this book.  He wants us to ask ourselves why the intellectuals of Russia, represented by Benjamin, the donkey, in the book, don’t speak out against Stalin.  Had they told the working class, the majority of Russia’s population, what was going on, and provided a leader for the people, they would eventually have been able to overthrow Stalin.

            Orwell’s second major question that he doesn’t directly ask us, but gets us thinking to ourselves, was: would the people of Russia have been any better off if Trotsky had taken over instead of Stalin?  Also would Trotsky have been any better a leader than the czar, because Stalin certainly wasn’t.  Orwell doesn’t answer these questions but he does make us think about them.

            The last and most important question is: were the people of Russia better off being ruled by Stalin than the czar?  Orwell shows us how much worse off the animals were when they were ruled by Napoleon than when they were owned by the farmer. When they were owned by the farmer they knew they were unhappy because they were slaves working for another’s benefit, but when they were ruled by Napoleon, they were worse off because they had been betrayed by someone they thought was on their side, someone they thought was using his leadership to help them.  They had believed they were all working for a similar cause, their freedom.  Napoleon had taken the idea of Animalism and used it as an excuse to make himself a powerful dictator, and that is exactly what Stalin did with Communism.

            This book was a good read by itself as a novel, and also a very powerful read when you dive deeper into it as I did in this essay. I admire the way that Orwell cleverly hides his message in the story so that the readers don’t feel like they are reading a lecture. Whether you are a fiction reader looking for a good book to read, or a historian studying the Russian Revolution, I would definitely recommend this book to you.     

[serendipitous journey]

Kendall, can the child do the early-middle grade writing easily? 

 

As I recall, over the course of a week that would be:

4-6 sentence "narration" summarizing a 1-2 page selection from history reading

" from science reading

Orally outline 3 paragraphs from history with you: read a paragraph, identify who or what each paragraph is about and why that person or thing is important

" from science

From literature, orally work with you to identify in a passage or book: the main character; what the main character wants; what prevents main character from getting this; how does the main character get what he/she/they want(s). 

Diagram simple sentences. 

 

Is all of that fairly straightforward for the child? 

 

For comparison I'll post some summer work from my child, entering 5th.  We've begun writing along the lines of the middle school lecture and are slowly working through SWB's Writing With Skill (which might be a great way to bring your child up to speed, though it would take years to do all the books.  Maybe you could post on the high school board about the best approach for a 10th grader?)

 

Here are samples, as they are in the notebook.  We have corrected misspellings. 

 

Pre-History: "There are many theories about why hominids walked upright.  Maybe they did it to see over tall grass.  Or maybe to be able to pick fruit from low branches.  I think they did it to save energy." 

 

Science: "When you see two dogs of different types, you might not realize that they're the same species.  Humans have actaully bred dogs for certain characteristics.  Some were for hunting, shepherds, retrievers, or guards.  Some were even bred for cuteness.  Lots of other animals were also domesticated, like cats, goats, sheep, pigs, cows, and chickens."

 

Literature:  from "The Pig Chase" (a chapter).  "The main character is a pig called 'Good Luck'.  Her owners are trying to prevent the ship's cook from turning her into a bunch of pork, but all the miners are also trying to get her.  Fortunately, their friend, Mountain Jim, hid her under a barrel." 

 

A history outline:

"1. The First Farmers in Middle East

2.  Domesticated animals helping humans

3.  Irrigation helped crops"

 

So that's us at the beginning of logic writing.  :)

 

ETA: Just saw Rose's daughters work.  That is so lovely! and the comparison is slightly hilarious.  Rose, all the work y'all have done writing is certainly paying off! 

[Chrysalis Academy]

And here is one from 7th grade. It's nice (for me, at least!) to see some development in the thinking ability, and the ability to flesh out an idea/point with evidence from the story, that has developed over the last two years.  By this point, I'm requiring that literary essays have a thesis. This was the new thing in 7th grade - don't just narrate or describe with a little analysis thrown in, but have an argument that you are supporting with evidence from the text.  It's a start!

 

Shane

 

            In most stories, the action is driven forward by the hero’s desires, or the hero is shaped by its events. At the end of the story he gets what he wants, or is changed by what has happened. In the story of Shane however, the hero finds that he cannot change even though he wants to, and at the end, he does not get what he wants.

 

As soon as we meet Shane, we can tell he is the hero of the story. We see that he is a good man, and will be important later on. There are a few factors that tip us off that Shane is the hero. For one thing, he is polite and courteous. He asks permission to cross the Staretts’ land. He gets down off his horse to talk to Joe, instead of making Joe look up at him. He is also brave, but not hotheaded. When Chris confronts him in the bar the first time, Shane does not retaliate. The second time, he gives Chris a chance to back down and make things right. Only when Chris refuses his unspoken offer does Shane see fit to engage in a fight. Shane is not proud, and he is not a braggart. When asked by Joey if he could shoot, he replied, “A littleâ€, even though we find out later on that he is an expert shot. These qualities combined are what make Shane a hero.

 

In the movie, the plot is about the fight between the homesteaders and Ryker. It is easy to see what they want. The homesteaders want to stay on their claims, and Ryker wants all the land for himself. But where does Shane fit into all this? What does he want? Shane wants a home. He wants a place where he can settle down and be part of a community. He wants to give up his old life as a gunfighter and be able to finally relax, instead of roaming from place to place, getting into scrapes and always having to be on the alert for danger. He wants rest. When he goes to live with the Staretts, he finally has a chance of a peaceful life.

 

            Sadly for Shane, the place where he has a chance of settling down is in the middle of a conflict, a conflict that he cannot help being sucked into. He feels the need to defend his friends, the people that have taken him in, and accepted him as family. And he does. He wins the gunfight, and kills Wilson and Ryker, creating a place where the homesteaders can thrive, as a real community. But it is a community he cannot be a part of himself. As he tells Joey, “A man is what he is, there’s no breaking the mold. I tried and I’ve lost.†You can’t run from who you are, and Shane sees this. “There’s no going back from killingâ€, he says, “Right or wrong, the brand sticks and there’s no going back.† And so, even though this new community wouldn’t have been created without his victory over Ryker, Shane is not a part of it. Shane must ride on, alone.

[Roadrunner]

Wow Rose! Thank you for posting those samples!!!! May I ask if these compositions have been worked on, or are they first takes?

[Chrysalis Academy]

Wow Rose! Thank you for posting those samples!!!! May I ask if these compositions have been worked on, or are they first takes?

 

Oh, no, they are all at least second drafts. But I can't remember off the top of my head how much editing went into each one.  We tend to choose some pieces to really dig into and try to polish, and with others we do a basic edit job and then move on. It depends on how engaged she is in the piece, and also in how worn out she is after writing it! LOL.  

 

For the 5th grade pieces, she was still writing by hand, I probably typed these up for her after she was done.  At some point in 6th grade she started composing on the computer, and that has made it a lot easier to do editing, of course - she's less physically tired after writing and so she has more energy for editing. Just more maturity for editing, and more of an ability to hear criticism, as well. 

 

What I critique for is totally different now, of course. Now, that 20,000 Leagues piece would get sent back for more fleshing out and analysis, but I was pretty darn happy with that as a first effort from a 5th grader!  She was still 9 when she wrote that.  Of course your expectations change based on what they are capable of. And they are different for each kid.  My current 9 year old is "behind" where her sister was in terms of getting sentences down on paper, but OTOH I think she has deeper thoughts about what we read, compared to her sister at the same age. But I'm having to take a different approach to writing with her, because of her individual personality and strengths.

[Roadrunner]

Oh, no, they are all at least second drafts. But I can't remember off the top of my head how much editing went into each one. We tend to choose some pieces to really dig into and try to polish, and with others we do a basic edit job and then move on. It depends on how engaged she is in the piece, and also in how worn out she is after writing it! LOL.

 

For the 5th grade pieces, she was still writing by hand, I probably typed these up for her after she was done. At some point in 6th grade she started composing on the computer, and that has made it a lot easier to do editing, of course - she's less physically tired after writing and so she has more energy for editing. Just more maturity for editing, and more of an ability to hear criticism, as well.

 

What I critique for is totally different now, of course. Now, that 20,000 Leagues piece would get sent back for more fleshing out and analysis, but I was pretty darn happy with that as a first effort from a 5th grader! She was still 9 when she wrote that. Of course your expectations change based on what they are capable of. And they are different for each kid. My current 9 year old is "behind" where her sister was in terms of getting sentences down on paper, but OTOH I think she has deeper thoughts about what we read, compared to her sister at the same age. But I'm having to take a different approach to writing with her, because of her individual personality and strengths.

I listened to her lecture and copied TWTM logic stage lit analysis questions. My older is reading through Huck Finn now, so your samples really showed me how to handle the writing assignment about a novel.

Thank you!

[Kendall]

Hollyhock - thanks for the samples, I need to get my 6th grader going on this, too and next year a 5th grader.  I also do not expect that I will get a page out of them! 

 

Rose - this is inspiring.  I love seeing the growth.  I can't tell you how helpful it is to see this growth and the samples.  I will be spending more time reading them this weekend. 

 

Ana,

 

I checked today and got this

 

from Biology:  I think if I asked her to edit it she would take care of the obvious things.  

 

Organic molecules are molecules that can only be made by living things. They are sometimes called carbon compounds simply because they all have carbon in them. They are different from inorganic molecules in several different ways. One of the ways they differ is that organic molecules are larger. Another way is that organic molecules have carbon, and inorganic molecules don’t.

 

From A Short History of Medieval Europe.  I told her to write a precis of each paragraph.

 

Medieval Europe

Write an outline of 4 or 5 paragraphs in Medieval Europe.

1^st paragraph: Jerome’s greatest accomplishment was to translate the bible, which was then in Hebrew and Greek, into Latin.

 2^nd paragraph: Augustine of hippo wrote many works about theology and philosophy.

 3^rd paragraph: Augustine doesn’t believe that Christians should enjoy pagan works, but that Christians should use the pagan works for Christian things. Augustine used some pagan information to develop a new Christian philosophy.

4^th paragraph: Augustine feels that the goal of the Christian is to attain realize that Christ died for us. Augustine believes that you can only get that through Christ.

 

She has done most of WWS 1.  retention of skills, concepts, terms, etc is not a strong point.  We are working on it.  It requires lots of repetition. Lots. 

 

 

She answers the middle grades literary questions orally and on paper just fine.  But when I had her write the other day it was largely a summary and the good thoughts she had didn't come out on paper.  

 

 

[Chrysalis Academy]

Hollyhock - thanks for the samples, I need to get my 6th grader going on this, too and next year a 5th grader.  I also do not expect that I will get a page out of them! 

 

Rose - this is inspiring.  I love seeing the growth.  I can't tell you how helpful it is to see this growth and the samples.  I will be spending more time reading them this weekend. 

 

Ana,

 

I checked today and got this

 

from Biology:  I think if I asked her to edit it she would take care of the obvious things.  

 

Organic molecules are molecules that can only be made by living things. They are sometimes called carbon compounds simply because they all have carbon in them. They are different from inorganic molecules in several different ways. One of the ways they differ is that organic molecules are larger. Another way is that organic molecules have carbon, and inorganic molecules don’t.

 

From A Short History of Medieval Europe.  I told her to write a precis of each paragraph.

 

Medieval Europe

Write an outline of 4 or 5 paragraphs in Medieval Europe.

1^st paragraph: Jerome’s greatest accomplishment was to translate the bible, which was then in Hebrew and Greek, into Latin.

 2^nd paragraph: Augustine of hippo wrote many works about theology and philosophy.

 3^rd paragraph: Augustine doesn’t believe that Christians should enjoy pagan works, but that Christians should use the pagan works for Christian things. Augustine used some pagan information to develop a new Christian philosophy.

4^th paragraph: Augustine feels that the goal of the Christian is to attain realize that Christ died for us. Augustine believes that you can only get that through Christ.

 

She has done most of WWS 1.  retention of skills, concepts, terms, etc is not a strong point.  We are working on it.  It requires lots of repetition. Lots. 

 

 

She answers the middle grades literary questions orally and on paper just fine.  But when I had her write the other day it was largely a summary and the good thoughts she had didn't come out on paper.  

 

This is really hard!!  My dd was the same way.  We can have this truly amazing discussion, where she has epiphanies of insight, but when she goes to write it down, she's got nothing.  It just takes time, and practice.  I think it's a good reason to have them do a lot of short papers, rather than trying to pull longer ones out of them.  They need to read-discuss-write-discuss some more-revise over and over again.  After awhile, some of the great discussion items do start to "stick" and make their way into the final written product.

 

But I'm with both SWB and Julie Bogart on this one - learning the form of wriiting is the easy part.  It's have something to write about that is the challenge! And it take maturity before they can learn to think analytically in the first place, then it take time again for the thinking to make its way onto the paper.  It takes however long it takes, but I really think you can't skip the discussion - before writing, after a draft, before revising.  That's where so much of the learning is actually taking place.

[hollyhock]

Ok, I found some lit. essays from 7th grade (finally) so here are a few my oldest wrote this past year. He is a good writer but he doesn't like writing about books, so none of these are really stellar, but they are at least straight-forward and answer the questions.

 

1) Joseph Lister was a physician that worked at a maternity hospital. The hospital had two wards. One ward had midwifes, and one ward had doctors. The women that came to the hospital always begged to be seen by a midwife, instead of a doctor. Joseph Lister wondered why this was. He decided to investigate.

 

He found out that in the midwife ward the death rate was way less than in the doctors ward. This was because the midwifes were very clean, while the doctors didn’t even wash their hands.

 

Lister told the doctors to wash their hand before they went into an operating room. The doctors scoffed at him. They eventually expelled him from the hospital because he told them to wash their hands.

 

 

2) In “The Shore Road Mystery,†by F. W. Dixon, the Hardy boys want to capture a gang of car thieves that have been stealing many cars in Bayport, where the boys live.

               

The boys manage to do this in the end by buying a cheap car that looks expensive on the outside. They give it a fresh coat of paint, and drive it on to the shore road; many of the thefts were reported there. The Hardys get into the trunk and wait. After a while the car thieves come and steal the car, lead the boys to their hideout, and this eventually leads to the gangs capture.

               

The most  exciting part of the book is when the boys are in the trunk and the car is being driven away.

 

 

Obviously, these aren't even close to what Rose's daughter is writing but I thought I would post them anyway as a more average example of what these can look like.

[serendipitous journey]

She's got the basic skills down, which is great.  I agree with Rose that with lots of repetition the ideas start to make it into the writing; I believe that in the lecture SWB suggests first discussing the literature questions before the child writes, at least until the skills are solid. 

 

Do you have the Peace Hill Press handout for middle grade writing  (that links to the PDF).  I've found it so useful in planning out a trajectory. 

 

In looking at the writing samples I posted, for example, A. is okay but it is clear that his literary analysis isn't meeting the 5th grade target of "One page or less to begin with (after conversation) answering one of the discussion questions.  Move towards answering two or more questions, including one of the evaluation questions." [p 25].  It is clear to me that if I'm going to get a page (handwritten -- this would be 1 - 3 paragraphs for us) that answers one or two of the discussion questions, I need to work with him more on developing WHY a certain character is the main character, HOW we know what the main character wants, &c.  This is one of the things that Rose's child is developing so beautifully. 

 

At any rate, that's how I use the downloaded handout -- as a check.  If you have questions about moving the child's output from where it is now to where it seems it ought to be, you can post here and folks are very helpful.  Or you can post the writing sample on one of the writing boards for specific feedback. 

 

Would you want to step her through the writing program as outlined, moving to the sixth grade level next?  That (summarized on p. 26) would be a narrative each week in history & science, not more than 1/2 page, and 2-level outlines taken from 3-4 pages of text twice a week, and a literary "essay".  The essay seems to be the 1-pageish essay giving perhaps a brief summary, answering a couple of discussion questions and an evaluation question.  I think you would provide support for this by discussing first, seeing what the output is, and then deciding how to augment your discussion/assignment parameters to move the NEXT essay closer to your goal. 

 

She might be able to move to this level of output in a few weeks to a couple of months?  Then you could step up to 7th grade writing and so on ...

[Serenade]

 

 

 

Obviously, these aren't even close to what Rose's daughter is writing but I thought I would post them anyway as a more average example of what these can look like.

 

 

Yes, this is more typical of what my older son would have written at that grade.

 

I will say, he has improved significantly by working through Writing with Skill.  We haven't even done it regularly, but now, finishing up 9th grade, he can write a very good summary and is getting better at analysis.  I still haven't had him do any long papers, preferring to work on structure and composition with shorter pieces.