Can't click "buy" for BW...suggestions for writing to finish out school year..

[journey00]

I was considering Bravewriter's online class "Write for Fun 1." But, it is so expensive $199 1st kid + $99 2nd kid for a 3 week class. 

 

They (ages 12 & 10) are currently doing journaling but I want to add something fun to finish out the school year on May 6th. 

 

Should I go ahead & bite the bullet & pay for it? We have not done BW but I don't have time to do the BW Basic or The Writer's Jungle.  Any suggestions on what to add? Thanks.

Edited March 14, 2016 by journey00

[Ellie]

I cannot imagine anything teaching writing that would be worth $300 for two children for a three-week class.

[Jackie]

If you poke around the BraveWriter blog posts and "lifestyle" pages on the website, you will find a pile of ideas for free. More than enough to just implement any pieces you want to finish out the year and see if the BraveWriter vibe is right for you.

[shinyhappypeople]

For something fun to finish out the year you could pull activities from Write On ($20 at amazon).  Just a caveat, though, if you look at the sample pages (the first few activities) they are very simple.  They become more challenging as the book progresses, so don't let the simplicity of those first few activities turn you off.  

 

There's also my favorite: pinterest :)  And Teachers Pay Teachers.

 

No way would I spend $199 for a 3-week class. That's just nuts.  That's also more than one level of the rather pricey (but worth it) IEW Student Writing Intensive (full year DVD curriculum).

[kalusignan]

We do a lot of the Brave Writer lifestyle activities for free: poetry teatime, free writing, nature journaling, narration, copywork, and dictation. If you browse through the site, you can find some good information about 'how' to go about implementing all of these in the "Brave Writer" way. So much of Brave Writer isn't WHAT to do, buy HOW to do it (and it's FUN!). Her periscopes are a great resource (you can watch them here) to get you thinking about the HOW.

 

HTH!

[Critterfixer]

Go over to NaNoWriMo and pick up either their elementary or middle school novel workbooks. Free and fun.

Take fairy tales and fracture them.

Have your boys pick out their favorite non-fiction or fiction stories and attempt to imitate them, or totally blow them out of the water.

Play with poetry.

 

[Zoo Keeper]

My oldest enjoyed The Creative Writer as a change of pace...

[ondreeuh]

I bought the ebook of Write On and was like :huh: ? What did I just pay $15 for? I guess it would be OK as a morning warm-up thing, or something to let the kids look through and pick a project on a car trip, but it's just so bare-bones and simple. No real lessons, just prompts with lots of different fonts.

 

Igniting Your Writing is $8 at CurrClick and the instant delivery is great. It is such a better deal than Write On! Real instruction! It has fun writing ideas that actually teach style intentionally!

[hollyhock]

Good suggestions so far. Another free option is School Composition by Maxwell. You might not get to all of it but you could pick and choose. And free is good. :)

[Farrar]

For fun writing ideas and inspiration that's very BWish, I like this book:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Youre-Trying-Teach-Write-Revised/dp/0865303177/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457977034&sr=1-1&keywords=if+you%27re+trying+to+teach+kids+how+to+write

 

Only a penny plus shipping. :D

 

I second all the ideas to just add some extra BW things. I don't know what you're doing now, but just adding a freewrite time is a good idea if you just need a little thing. Whether the class is worth it or not depends so much - on you, your expectations, your kids, your budget. It sounds like you should wait though.

[journey00]

I cannot imagine anything teaching writing that would be worth $300 for two children for a three-week class.

 

Exactly.

[Haiku]

Bravewriter classes look fun and her website is appealing, but holy smokes! So spendy! I'm honestly not sure how she gets away with such prices, but if it works for people ...

 

I second the suggestion of Igniting Your Writing. We love it. We do it on Fridays (all together) for a "writing workshop." It is all style, no mechanics, but it's a fun change of pace.

[Stellalarella]

I look at the Brave Writer website and get really, really confused.  

 

I don't think I'm stupid, but I've been on it 4 times recently and just can't figure out what the deal is, why it costs so much, what to use for whom, etc.

 

I'm in the same boat as the OP.  We're finishing book 2 of Writing and Rhetoric this week and I need something for the rest of the year.

[Farrar]

I look at the Brave Writer website and get really, really confused.  

 

I don't think I'm stupid, but I've been on it 4 times recently and just can't figure out what the deal is, why it costs so much, what to use for whom, etc.

 

I'm in the same boat as the OP.  We're finishing book 2 of Writing and Rhetoric this week and I need something for the rest of the year.

 

It's a weirdly complex deal. I agree.

 

Basically it's this...

 

The Writer's Jungle is a book about the philosophy of how to teach the BW way. It has ideas of how to structure your year and exercises and assignments, but it's not really a curriculum. It's a book for you.

 

The class Kidswrite Basic is supposed to do the same job as the book - teach you to teach the BW way but by coaching you to teach your kid. The other classes are similar, though some of them are laid out a little differently (or so I hear).

 

Then there's the mechanics and literature supplements. These are - in order of ascending difficulty - the Quiver, the Arrow, the Pouch, and the Boomerang. The Quiver and Pouch are sort of in between levels - simplified versions of the product above them. These are copywork/dictation and literature. They're meant to be done once or twice a week, with the book being read or read aloud consistently over the course of a month.

 

Finally, there's the project books. These are - again, in order of ascending level - Jot It Down, Partnership Writing, Faltering Ownership, and (sort of) Help for High School. These contain a writing project per month and instructions on how to do it. The project is supposed to take one or two days a week.

 

For newbies to the BW way, the best thing to do is read her blog, watch her scopes, subscribe to her daily email thing. If you like it and want more, if you're a big picture thinker and like to read about that yourself, then get The Writer's Jungle. If you're a nuts and bolts practical person, get the project book that's at the right level for you kid. Those products (Jot It Down, Partnership Writing and Faltering Ownership) have nice opening sections that explain the BW lifestyle for that age. They have loose schedules to follow. They have specific instructions of projects to do.

[eternalsummer]

I like the project books; they have a general overview of the philosophy but then a series of specific projects and even (joy) suggested schedules for combining it with an Arrow (literature study) unit.  If I'm using curriculum I generally like it to at least kind of tell me what to do and when to do it (though I love the inspiration and freedom to adjust that bravewriter incorporates vs say WWE).

[eternalsummer]

Oh, and DD10 did one of the 3 week classes a year or so ago; she did not hate it.  She didn't learn a lot about writing (what can you learn in 3 weeks?) but she did gain a lot of confidence as it was her first online writing class and the teacher was very encouraging while being pretty specific about instruction and feedback.  I wouldn't do it again unless I had a specific part of writing I felt like I couldn't teach or if she were getting bogged down in her own writing again (reading other kids' work helps her feel like writing is a legitimate thing to do, which is great).

[Haiku]

Aside from the fact that I disagree with some of Julie Bogart's ideas on teaching writing and grammar (for example, I do NOT believe that we just "pick up" grammar by reading and speaking; if that were true, we wouldn't have pervasive grammar issues like using apostrophes to pluralize and misplacing modifiers; spoken and written language are not exactly the same), I do find the idea of her classes appealing, but her overall program reminds me of Classical Writing: too complicated. Learning to write does not have to be really complex. It's easier for some kids than others, yes, but you really don't need eleventy-one components to a writing curriculum.

[Farrar]

Aside from the fact that I disagree with some of Julie Bogart's ideas on teaching writing and grammar (for example, I do NOT believe that we just "pick up" grammar by reading and speaking; if that were true, we wouldn't have pervasive grammar issues like using apostrophes to pluralize and misplacing modifiers; spoken and written language are not exactly the same), I do find the idea of her classes appealing, but her overall program reminds me of Classical Writing: too complicated. Learning to write does not have to be really complex. It's easier for some kids than others, yes, but you really don't need eleventy-one components to a writing curriculum.

 

She doesn't think you pick up mechanics from speaking and reading though. She suggests that everyone do a "grammar year" at least a couple of times during schooling and even has programs she likes (Winston Grammar, though I have never used it). The Arrow and Boomerang guides have a ton of stuff teaching mechanics through copywork and dictation. She does think that good writing flows from good voice - developed mostly through speaking and reading. That's true. I think that's the biggest different between the BW way and most classical writing approaches - BW's core is that good writing comes naturally with development from speaking skills while SWB's basic idea is that you teach writing like you teach a foreign language because it's so different.

 

Her products are way overly complicated, but her method is pretty simple and laid back. She herself would say don't buy everything she sells.

[Sahamamama]

I was considering Bravewriter's online class "Write for Fun 1." But, it is so expensive $199 1st kid + $99 2nd kid for a 3 week class. 

 

They (ages 12 & 10) are currently doing journaling but I want to add something fun to finish out the school year on May 6th. 

 

Should I go ahead & bite the bullet & pay for it? We have not done BW but I don't have time to do the BW Basic or The Writer's Jungle.  Any suggestions on what to add? Thanks.

 

• Purchase (or make) a composition book, entitle it "The Illustrated Book of Me," and have each student write about himself or herself, including drawings (or photos).
• Have them interview a grandparent and write up that person's life story, with a pull-out timeline.
• Spend the final few weeks of school writing up a "school newspaper" to share with family and friends -- include highlights of the year, ridiculous "news" stories, interviews, comics, riddles, a crossword puzzle, advertisements, poetry, and whatever else they come up with
• Have the kids assemble a cookbook of their favorite recipes, but instead of simply copying recipes from an existing book, have them get the recipes from family and friends. The kids have to carefully transcribe and organize the recipes in a way that makes sense to other readers.
• Instead of focusing on composition, spend time learning to touch type, work with Word documents, and master some basic computer skills.
• Spend time working with a dictionary, a thesaurus, an atlas, and other reference tools. Practice alphabetizing. Master contractions and apostrophes. Have your kids ever seen a phone book? Until recently, I didn't realize that mine had no idea what a phone book was, LOL.
• Try some creative writing from photographs. I remember doing this at those ages (so long ago), but I really enjoyed it. Our teacher simply hung up an interesting photograph (black and white), and we were to create our own story from that picture. I remember one was a photo of an old man with a very wrinkled face; another was a girl with a flower. Simple, but (IMO) effective. Another was a photo of a huge oak tree, with the sunlight streaming behind it. I can still picture those photographs, forty years later.
• Do some practical writing -- ask your kids to make lists of what they'd like to do over the summer break. Ask your kids to write up their evaluation of the school year. Ask your kids to write up their goals for the upcoming school year.
• Teach them to outline a simple encyclopedia article.
• Go on a hike and do a Draw & Describe -- they choose one item from or aspect of nature (very specific), draw it in a nature journal, and then describe it in writing.
• Have poetry teas or cocoa classics (read classic children's stories that appeal to your students).
• Memorize passages from Shakespeare, the Bible, or poetry.
• Forget composition altogether for a few weeks and enjoy a good read aloud instead.

Edited March 15, 2016 by Sahamamama

[Stellalarella]

It's a weirdly complex deal. I agree.

 

Basically it's this...

 

The Writer's Jungle is a book about the philosophy of how to teach the BW way. It has ideas of how to structure your year and exercises and assignments, but it's not really a curriculum. It's a book for you.

 

The class Kidswrite Basic is supposed to do the same job as the book - teach you to teach the BW way but by coaching you to teach your kid. The other classes are similar, though some of them are laid out a little differently (or so I hear).

 

Then there's the mechanics and literature supplements. These are - in order of ascending difficulty - the Quiver, the Arrow, the Pouch, and the Boomerang. The Quiver and Pouch are sort of in between levels - simplified versions of the product above them. These are copywork/dictation and literature. They're meant to be done once or twice a week, with the book being read or read aloud consistently over the course of a month.

 

Finally, there's the project books. These are - again, in order of ascending level - Jot It Down, Partnership Writing, Faltering Ownership, and (sort of) Help for High School. These contain a writing project per month and instructions on how to do it. The project is supposed to take one or two days a week.

 

For newbies to the BW way, the best thing to do is read her blog, watch her scopes, subscribe to her daily email thing. If you like it and want more, if you're a big picture thinker and like to read about that yourself, then get The Writer's Jungle. If you're a nuts and bolts practical person, get the project book that's at the right level for you kid. Those products (Jot It Down, Partnership Writing and Faltering Ownership) have nice opening sections that explain the BW lifestyle for that age. They have loose schedules to follow. They have specific instructions of projects to do.

Your explanation should go on her website.

 

[Haiku]

I think that's the biggest different between the BW way and most classical writing approaches - BW's core is that good writing comes naturally with development from speaking skills while SWB's basic idea is that you teach writing like you teach a foreign language because it's so different.

 

My experience as a (professional) editor taught me differently. I met many, many people who were witty and entertaining speakers who had marginal writing because they didn't understand the difference between speaking and writing. 

 

My personal conversations with Julie when my kids were younger left me with the distinct impression that she was not a fan of direct grammar instruction.

[eternalsummer]

There is a fair amount of direct grammar instruction in the Arrow units (so far); granted, it is very gentle and not what you'd call systematic - but it is explicit.

 

eta:  What I like about this approach is that it teaches grammar (and other elements of style - analogies, metaphor, imagery, etc.) within the context of the book, gradually introducing even young children to the idea that writers use these techniques to achieve certain ends.  When I took the IB English program in high school this was exactly the focus (in lieu of biography or themes or plot), and it's cool to see a very simplified version to teach to my kids.

Edited March 15, 2016 by ananemone

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I love how BW always causes contention.  :-D  

 

I would not spend that amount of money for a 3 week class.  That seems like a crazy lot of money.  

 

But I love BW in general.

 

A cheap book that I love and that could be easily adapted for your kids' ages:  The Most Wonderful Writing Lessons Ever.  

[journey00]

Thank you everyone for the great suggestions & replies and I researched them all carefully.  I decided to sign them both with WriteGuide for half the price of BW and they provide one-on-one instruction for 1 month . Actually, I could have gotten away even cheaper had I used 1 instructor for both students but I did not.  The time frame is actually perfect since our goal is to end school 4-30-16.  We will see how it goes, wish us luck.  Thanks, hive!

Edited March 21, 2016 by journey00