Rapid paced but explicit writing instruction for 6th grade?

[Caprice]

Next year my DS will be in 6th grade, and I am going in circles trying to find a good writing curriculum for him. Up to this point he has done Writing Tales and some Bravewriter Arrows, a lot of creative writing and written narration, and a few report-like projects. The writing he produces is of pretty good quality, especially with using rich vocabulary, varied sentence structure, and interesting tone, but he definitely needs some work on organizing thoughts. Also, I think it's time for bigger projects. He won't write more than a paragraph unless I require him to (except for stories he writes on his own time).

He is a kid who likes and needs very explicit and incremental instruction, but picks things up quickly, so I end up having to accelerate curricula most of the time. Any brilliant ideas out there for something as specific and incremental as IEW, but... quicker? TIA!

[Julie of KY]

Well, if you like IEW, there's nothing that says you can't do it quicker.

The Student Intensive Continuation Course has a syllabus to spread it out over a year with lots of extra assignments. The SICC is 9 dvds which were filmed as nine classes over nine weeks. There is nothing that says you have to spread it over a full year at all. If you want you can watch an entire 2 hour dvd in one sitting (as the students in that class did in real life) and then do the homework assignement as assigned as your homework for that week.

 

For my accelerated kids, less is better as in I don't give them more just because they can handle it. I expect excellence and I expect them to fill their day with learning, but it doesn't all have to be assigned by me.

[mom31257]

Maybe IEW's Elegant Essay? It has a 10 week lesson plan or 3-4 boot camp plan. I would probably do the 10 or even longer with one that young. It will teach essay structure, thesis statements, intros, conclusions, and how to transition. Descriptive and persuasive essays are both covered.

 

http://iew.com/shop/products/elegant-essay-teacherstudent-combo

[basketcase]

Lost Tools of Writing - it's designed as a 28ish week program but could be accelerated. It starts with a very simple essay and moves on from there - it's excellent at helping students internalize how to find topics and subtopics for essays and how to organize an essay.

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

I would do IEW and just accelerate it. I used just the TWSS last year with my 4th and 6th graders and plan to the same this year. There are 9 units, each designed to be done over the course of a month. Last year we went more slowly than that and didn't do them all. This year we'll go through the whole thing but we're planning on a 28 week school year so we'll spend only a couple of weeks on the easier units so that we can have time to spend on the last ones. I had considered using a SWI or a theme book this year but in the end decided to just make my own lessons using TWSS because of the flexibility it would give me.

[Caprice]

Thank you all so much! So helpful!

 

I see now that there are several paths to painlessly accelerating IEW. Also, Lost Tools of Writing looks excellent. I hadn't looked at that one before--it might be just perfect.

[SparklyUnicorn]

The IEW writing intensives could be done very quickly.

 

 

[RootAnn]

I was going to suggest Lost Tools of Writing as it really focuses on the thought part. However, two caveats. One, it can be tough to wrap your head around to teach it. Two, you might be tempted to speed up or awesome of the first sections, but those are really important to do just like they spell it out. That is the greatness of the program (and be hard to see at first).

 

There are threads on this. . .

[SnMomof7]

Essentials in Writing. It even has graphic organizers for planning, and is very explicit. Easy peasy to teach - video and workbook.

[PeterPan]

You just described the *point* of the MCT (michael clay thompson) materials.  I'm not really a huge fan of them, but they're designed to do what you're saying.