Writing: Is this a problem? (Killgallon)

[Ellyndria]

Most of our writing experience has been with WWE, so I am unsure what to do about this.

 

Last year (4th grade) I tried to throw in one of the elementary Killgallon books.  That did not go over well at all, so I stopped it pretty early and just went back to WWE4 for the rest of the year.

 

But now he's 5th grade and I feel he needs something different, and am waiting for 6th to do WWS.  So I got a couple of the middle school Killgallon books and plan to alternate that with trying to do WTM style writing across the curriculum.  (I also have the first couple W&R books and offered to let him take the online class for that instead, but he does not want to.) 

 

DS pretty much hates writing anything, looks for shortcuts, etc.  So the only thing that seems to make it more bearable for him is to write about cute things.  Namely, bunnies.  So, most of his imitation sentences are about bunnies.  And it's getting a bit repetitive, which seems to be not the point.

 

Now, if he were doing the imitations well, it would not bother me so much.  But there are only so many times he can write about bunnies nibbling grass or eating carrots or hopping.  But choosing bunnies as the subject of almost every sentence seems to be limiting his ability to do the imitations.  A couple days ago he actually did a sentence about sharks, and the imitation was practically perfect.  I was quite impressed.

 

I've suggested that it might be easier to do the imitations if he were to change the subject depending on the sentence.  But he wants them all to be about bunnies.

 

So my question is, do I let him write about only one thing?  It doesn't seem right to me, I feel like I should limit him to only one bunny sentence per set, but at the same time I don't know if it matters.

 

(Also, I feel like this is one of the silliest questions ever.)

[waa510]

We're only about halfway through a middle school Kilgallon book so take this with a grain of salt, but I agree with your thoughts that just writing about bunnies will limit the ways in which he can write the imitations. Some of the models are fairly complex so to put yourself in a narrow box in regards to topic is challenging. I'm not sure it could be done well with what I've seen in the book so far. I make those kind of adaptations to allow my 6 yr old (she's a wombat fan!) a bit more freedom in her work as she's little but my 8 (a week from 9) yr old can suck it up and deal!  Gently, I think he's old enough to understand that the point of the exercises is to build more complex skill sets in sentence-composing. This is very difficult to do when the topic is extremely limited. I think there are times to be flexible but if it misses the entire point of the curric I think you need to reevaluate, kwim?

[Ellyndria]

  Gently, I think he's old enough to understand that the point of the exercises is to build more complex skill sets in sentence-composing. This is very difficult to do when the topic is extremely limited. I think there are times to be flexible but if it misses the entire point of the curric I think you need to reevaluate, kwim?

 

Yep, that's what I thought.  I just didn't know if I would be being excessively mean by doing so.

 

I feel like "suck it up and deal" is quickly going to become the motto for this year.

[Farrar]

Well, I think it's okay. If he can make them about bunnies and still follow the pattern of the sentence, then why not? You're saying he hates writing - if this softens it, why argue? I think that's one of the nice things about Killgallon - my kids often make really silly imitation sentences about bizarre things or they're repetitive. I think it's fine. They're learning from imitation and bringing creativity to it. And he did start to expand what he was doing with the shark sentence. If he doesn't write decent imitations... I think that's another issue. But most of them are really flexible. I think that's the whole point - that you can learn different patterns of sentences and use them in all kinds of writing.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I have no advice, but I also have a boy who loves to write about bunnies. Lol.

[AuNaturel]

So he really loves his bunnies? That's cute. What if you introduced some more animal study or even something simple like turned on a Wild Kratts episode once in a while? My aspiring future zoologist (9yo) absolutely loves that show. She knows more about animals than I do at this point. She soaks up everything on the subject from every resource she can get her hands on.

 

The point is, if he learns about new "cool" animals, maybe he will be more willing to mix up the subject and reduce the bunny subjects naturally.

 

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[Dawn E]

Michael Clay Thompson said something during a seminar that has stuck with me. I wish I could remember verbatim, but his point was that children should not just write papers about what they know and love. They know and love those things because they discovered and studied them. Research papers give them an opportunity to discover and love something else.

 

That being said, I don't think him writing only about bunnies in the context of learning to imitate sentences is a big deal. If he is grasping the lesson and producing sentences that show that, I don't think I would make the subject matter a hill to die upon. Truthfully, he will likely tire of it after a while. If not, it means that he will have to become increasingly more creative and clever with his topic of choice.

[PeachyDoodle]

With some personalities, this would totally backfire, but I would be tempted to tell him he can *only* write about bunnies. :p

 

Maybe you could spend some time together brainstorming every way you can think of to describe bunnies -- what they look like, the different ways they hop and eat, etc., etc. Read books and look at pictures and watch videos about bunnies. (Some descriptive passages from Rabbit Hill or Watership Down might be good for this, but it's been a looong time since I read them!) Then let him take all those images of bunnies and apply them in his writing. If he wants to write about bunnies, give him the tools to write in a really creative way about... bunnies.