anyone use WWS in co-op (or even online class) setting? (doing one level per year)

[matrips]

^Hi,

^{I'm looking for folks who have used Writing with Skill in a co-op (or even an online) setting, with one lesson done a week.  How long is the class and many days a week does it meet?  What does the teacher cover in class versus what student does at home?  Does it work well?  What do you wish was different?}

 

^{We have a teacher interested in teaching it at our co-op, but she feels one class period a week is not enough to teach the whole level in one year.  The class period would be about 50 minutes.  Her preference is to do one level over two years, so a typical 'WWS week' would take two weeks in the co-op.  Her concerns are her ability to set the kids up for success with just the one class and how much the kids would have to do on their own at home (and if it would even get done).  She likes going through the readings with the kids to discuss and point out things.  She is open to discussion though.}

 

^{So if you've done a WWS class, what does the teacher cover in the class time?  What is expected of the students?}

 

^Thanks,

^Mary

[Aretemama]

Since I'm so late responding to this, I don't know if you are still interested, but I have taught WWS in a co-op situation. First, I'd say to take SWB's advice that it should be started later than 5th grade or at a slower pace. For our co-op I find that 7th is a great time to start this program because even though it starts rather slow, it does pick up speed by the second semester.

 

I would only do one level over two years if you are teaching younger grades, but for younger grades I'd use a different program (maybe something from Classical Academic Press?). I did try the younger grade/slower pace suggestion, and it's okay for the first semester, but after that, you might have issues with the student's being mature enough to understand the samples and be able to use citations correctly.

 

So, for a one-level a year class I pretty much follow the week by week schedule. Our co-op does not have as many weeks as the book, so I had to cut out the poetry section. By the end of the school year, my students (ages 12-15) were feeling pretty overwhelmed with the whole process of pre-writing and citations, and I had to slow down and take a couple of weeks on the Julius Ceaser and Marie Antoinette paper. I believe this is due to the nature of these particular students, not that it isn't an age-appropriate program. 

 

We met twice a week (T/Th), an hour for each class. In this amount of time, I was not able to cover the copia exercises but did work in a little grammar because my students needed it. For the first semester, the students were assigned to turn in the narrative summary on Thursday and the main assignment on Tuesday. I took two days to cover Days 2-4 or 1-3 (the main assignment), depending on the week. I always did the outlining in class with them. The students had Friday through Monday to work on the main assignment.

 

For the crash course, where we covered three years in one, I followed a similar syllabus that the WTM Academy uses. For this class, we only met once a week, but the students (ages 14-17) handled the course just fine. We did not have time to cover any of the literary analysis portions, and I used a different resource for the copia exercises.

 

I hope this helps.