Stick with ELTL or move to WWS?

[Davina]

I am trying to decide what to do next with dd11(almost 12).  We had gone through 3 levels of WWE and all of FLL, by the time she started what would be her 5th grade year.  Neither of us was prepared to do another year of WWE but I felt like she wasn't prepared to do WWS yet.  So I went with ELTL level 4.  It is an entire language arts curriculum encompassing literature, writing(through copy work, dictation, and simple outlining and narration), and grammar.  We are both mostly pleased with the literature and grammar portions and are almost finished with this level.  But the outlining and written narration is difficult for her to do independently. 

 

The writing assignments follow the same pattern:  First she is asked to read a history or science exert and give an oral narration.--no problem with this except for she doesn't enjoy the style in which they are written.  All of the exerts are taken from archaic/wordy texts.  Next she is to create an outline--lots of hand holding here.  She seems to have a lot of trouble picking out main ideas.  Then a couple of days later she is asked to create a written narration from her outline.  The resulting narration is very choppy and has no flow. We end up with 5 or 6 very short 1 or 2 sentence paragraphs (if you could call them that).  It is like working from the outline has actually hindered her ability to elaborate on the topic, or she doesn't enjoy the readings enough to write more.  Before we started to outline her narrations were more in depth but sometimes unorganized.

 

I am not really sure how to help her because I never use an outline to write.  I use outlining to break apart difficult text in order to study it.  When I write, I free write with plenty of scribbling and scratching out until I get a general idea. Then I rewrite until I have it the way I want it.  No one ever taught me this outlining method of writing. So, it may be that I am not teaching it well enough.  I can see that it would be a much more efficient way to organize ones thoughts.

 

Has anyone used both of these programs? Does WWS give more of a step by step approach to outlining and how to use that outline as a tool to write?  Is that what we need?  Okay now I have confused myself even more.  Maybe I should have written an outline before writing this! LOL!

[KathyBC]

From your description, I would have no hesitation about moving on to WWS. You could always plan to stretch it over two years if needed. Maybe supplement with other, less academic styles of writing? The Creative Writer maybe or try some ideas from Brave Writer?