Fourth Grade writing goals

[Minerva]

If you have a fourth grader (or thereabouts), what are your writing goals for the year?

 

While working on Language Arts today, I realized that we have sort of lost our oomph in the writing department. I need a reality check.  

 

What expectations do you have for the year? Are you teaching different types of essays? Is your child writing these essays or are you just exploring them? Do you require writing throughout various subjects or do you mainly keep the writing during Language Arts class? What have been your favorite resources? Does writing happen organically in your house or is it heavily scripted? 

 

I am continuing to work on the nuts and bolts of writing. We still do spelling, penmanship, typing, and grammar. We have been practicing outlining and writing simple paragraphs. I feel like we are ready to go to the next level, but just not exactly sure what that level looks like.

 

Thanks.

[hollyhock]

I mostly follow SWB's philosophy of writing.... 

 

By the end of 4th grade I expect that my kids can write their own 3-4 sentence narration after reading a passage on their own. Basically, that amounts to a paragraph. For us, this is the beginning of writing paragraphs and we continue to do so through 6th, then switch to outlining and rewriting those outlines. I don't introduce essays until 8th grade.

 

We kill two birds with one stone by having them write these narrations after reading science or history. That way it counts for writing and science or history at the same time.

 

I would say our writing is not heavily scripted. My current 4th grader will sometimes narrate orally first, or at least voice a few ideas about what he'll write about, then he writes it, and then I read it over and if needed, point out areas that he could improve. So I guess that might count as organic?

[waa510]

My big goal is to get DD ready for WWS1. She's been done with WWE4 for quite a while so we've used this time to perfect her written narrating skills and enhance her grammar-for-writing knowledge. The curriculum I'm using helps her with learning to organize her thoughts more clearly and to write more eloquently. I'm not looking for essays at this point. I'm really looking for clear, concise slightly longer written narrations. If she can stylize a few of the sentences while still maintaining the structure of the writing...bonus! My feeling is I don't want to just have this huge quantity of writing (essay) that says nothing and is poorly done. I'd much rather go for shorter and well-written, which is where she is right now. That sounds very vague, I think, but it's working well right now. 

[Targhee]

Goals (for 5th):

1) Write 2-3 sentences at a time without whining, arguing, complaining, or crying.

2) Write down your own summaries (no more mom scribe)

3) Use proper spacing/indentation/margins, capitalization, spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

4) Write either an amplification, narrative summary, or creative narrative once per week (2-5 paragraphs)

5) Realize you are capable of (and actually rather good at) writing

[Mrs Twain]

I use IEW DVD programs. Besides grammar and penmanship/cursive, our writing program covers the following components around fourth grade.

 

--Well written paragraphs with topic and clincher sentences as well as dress ups and no banned words.

 

--Three-paragraph stories of

1. Setting, characters

2. Conflict

3. Climax, resolution.

 

--Three-paragraph research reports, taking notes from one to three sources.

 

--Friendly letters written with proper format.

 

Starting with fifth grade, we work on adding introduction and conclusion paragraphs to the three-paragraph report. This is a good foundation to segue into essay writing.

 

In sixth through eighth grades, we work on essay writing.

[ALB]

I mostly follow SWB's philosophy of writing.... 

 

By the end of 4th grade I expect that my kids can write their own 3-4 sentence narration after reading a passage on their own. Basically, that amounts to a paragraph. For us, this is the beginning of writing paragraphs and we continue to do so through 6th, then switch to outlining and rewriting those outlines. I don't introduce essays until 8th grade.

 

We kill two birds with one stone by having them write these narrations after reading science or history. That way it counts for writing and science or history at the same time.

 

 

We're doing pretty much the same thing, and also add dictation every day.  For grammar we use Rod and Staff which does include some more formal writing lessons (but just a few, not all that often).

[rebbyribs]

We're not to essays yet.

 

For writing this year, my 4th grader has finished up CAP Fable, worked through the NaNoWriMo Young Writers' workbook, and written an 800-word story.  In the spring, we're going to have most of her writing come from history, using the SOTW comprehension questions and some selections from Write from History.  I'm hoping to see good, solid sentences and 3- to 5-sentence summaries of passages.  

 

(In other language arts, we're using AAS4 and MCT Island level, but I'm not planning to have her do many of the writing assignments from Sentence Island). 

 

This daughter was a late reader and struggles with spelling, so this is where she is now.