Help me think this through - WWE vs CAP W&R

[WistfulRidge]

I'll be ordering the bulk of next year's curriculum in the next couple of weeks and a recent "let me just run through this and make sure it's what we want" moment has me rethinking a couple of things - especially writing for Mr. Inquisitive.

 

Background: He just did some gentle narration/copywork in 1st that I made up more or less on the fly and just integrated into our work. This year (2nd) he's been working through WWE1 and is fine with it. He doesn't love it, he doesn't hate it, and it gets done.

 

My original plan was to do WWE2 next year for 3rd and then move to CAP W&R and do a couple years of that before diving into WWS. Now I'm just wondering if I should just jump to W&R now? The main reason I'm mulling over this is I think that while WWE is doing the job perfectly fine (and I can see his skills improving) I think he might enjoy W&R more. Specifically, I think he would enjoy the layout and the "retelling" quite a bit more.

 

As the teacher I'm fine with either one. The price and pdf availability of WWE definitely appeals to my practical side more but those aren't deal breaker sort of things. I'll probably show Mr. Inquisitive the sample chapter of W&R later today and see what he thinks but I thought I'd toss this out there and gather opinions/experience on the matter?

 

FWIW, Mr. Inquisitive is a very straightforward by-the-book child. He likes workbooks and lists. He prefers to work as independently as possible. He loves writing and often spends an hour (or more) every day crafting stories, novels, and comics for his younger siblings to read. He's very analytical and very creative at the same time. He is my "Why?" child. He wants to know the big picture and whys of everything. (Which, I guess, is the other reason I'm looking at jumping to W&R for him. Just from a glance through the sample it seems like it does a better job of saying why he is answering these questions, doing that copywork, retelling that story etc... at least that was my initial impression!) My main goals for writing at this age are to equip him with a good set of basic skills and foster his love for writing - or at least avoid killing it.

 

So... if you were in my shoes would you stick with "it ain't broke, don't fix it" or take a chance on "possibly better"?

 

For those that have used both WWE and W&R for this age (bonus if you've got a similar learner!) what was your preference?

 

And, practical question, for those that use W&R do you have your students write in the student book or do they do work on another piece of paper/notebook?

[Aloha2U]

I'll be ordering the bulk of next year's curriculum in the next couple of weeks and a recent "let me just run through this and make sure it's what we want" moment has me rethinking a couple of things - especially writing for Mr. Inquisitive.

 

Background: He just did some gentle narration/copywork in 1st that I made up more or less on the fly and just integrated into our work. This year (2nd) he's been working through WWE1 and is fine with it. He doesn't love it, he doesn't hate it, and it gets done.

 

My original plan was to do WWE2 next year for 3rd and then move to CAP W&R and do a couple years of that before diving into WWS. Now I'm just wondering if I should just jump to W&R now? The main reason I'm mulling over this is I think that while WWE is doing the job perfectly fine (and I can see his skills improving) I think he might enjoy W&R more. Specifically, I think he would enjoy the layout and the "retelling" quite a bit more.

 

As the teacher I'm fine with either one. The price and pdf availability of WWE definitely appeals to my practical side more but those aren't deal breaker sort of things. I'll probably show Mr. Inquisitive the sample chapter of W&R later today and see what he thinks but I thought I'd toss this out there and gather opinions/experience on the matter?

 

FWIW, Mr. Inquisitive is a very straightforward by-the-book child. He likes workbooks and lists. He prefers to work as independently as possible. He loves writing and often spends an hour (or more) every day crafting stories, novels, and comics for his younger siblings to read. He's very analytical and very creative at the same time. He is my "Why?" child. He wants to know the big picture and whys of everything. (Which, I guess, is the other reason I'm looking at jumping to W&R for him. Just from a glance through the sample it seems like it does a better job of saying why he is answering these questions, doing that copywork, retelling that story etc... at least that was my initial impression!) My main goals for writing at this age are to equip him with a good set of basic skills and foster his love for writing - or at least avoid killing it.

 

So... if you were in my shoes would you stick with "it ain't broke, don't fix it" or take a chance on "possibly better"? I'd suggest completing WWE2, and possibly even WWE3, before switching to W&R.

 

For those that have used both WWE and W&R for this age (bonus if you've got a similar learner!) what was your preference? Read our story below.

 

And, practical question, for those that use W&R do you have your students write in the student book or do they do work on another piece of paper/notebook? He likes writing in the workbooks for the most part, but sometimes there just isn't enough room and an extra piece of paper must be used. We keep those in a 3-ring binder specifically for W&R.

 

This is a tough one, and yet not... at the same time. :) My little man has completed WWE 1-4, W&R Books 1-4, WWS 1, and then back to W&R Books 5 and (presently) 6. We will continue with W&R.

 

I definitely saw the benefits of WWE, and I would do those over again in a heart beat (before W&R of course), though they were somewhat disliked by my guy, especially WWE 4. W&R was supposed to be just a filler, until he was able to do WWS. However, my little man enjoyed the series right out of the gate. That being said, we switched back to our original plan of WWS 1, after completing W&R Books 3 and most of 4. This wasn't entirely a mistake, as we both believe there was some useful information taught in WWS, though not necessarily "skillful writing", the title being a bit misleading, but I do regret spending the whole year on it, especially with his strong dislike of it. He stopped writing altogether outside of his study work. Okay, maybe it was a complete disaster. Lol! This year we switched back to W&R, and he's happily writing again. He has four books in the works. In our opinion, W&R is far more helpful than WWS at teaching outlining. Other than citing works/sources, WWS was pointless for us. Nothing was memorable from WWS, whereas W&R teaches [the progynasmata] in such a way that sticks and gets used.

Edited March 7, 2017 by NCAmusings

[Targhee]

I say make the switch. My DS hated WWE and struggled with both narration and dictation (ADHD), and we dropped it after 3 months. He did not need it to move into W&R. Caveat is that he began in 4th, but with very little writing under his belt.

 

He likes W&R - the stories, the discussion, The copiousness activities, and the variety.

[TheAttachedMama]

I started a similar thread right before my oldest went into third grade.   I will share what we did and what our experience was.   (OF COURSE, every child is different--so this may not be your experience.)

 

I went ahead and made the switch and started W&R in 3rd with my oldest son.   We completed several weeks worth of lessons.   He was able to do the lessons, but my gut instinct was telling me that he needed another year (or at least a couple of months) of dictation/copywork/narration.    The writing wasn't coming as easily for him as I would have liked.   When giving oral narations, his sentences were wonderfully diverse and well constructed.   However, his written fable re-writes were NOT like that.   He also wasn't taking delight in the process.   Physically writing everything was taking him forever also.

 

SO--I put away W&R and started another cycle of dictation/narration/copywork.   I just COULD NOT bear to do another year of WWE.  I get so bored teaching that program for some reason.   It is a great program, I just had a mental block with it.      So we ended up switching to English Lessons Through Lit 3 for that year.   (It contains grammar, copywork, narration, and studied dictation.  Sort of like FLL 3 combined with WWE2 or 3.)    Really, I could have used any source material....the point is that he needed more foundation of narration/dictation/copywork.

 

In hindsight, that was the BEST decision I could have made for my son.    This year we pulled W&R back out and I am getting SO MUCH MORE from him.   He also is delighting in the lessons.   I know now that I could have pushed him forward, but it would have been a wasted year.   He NEEDED that foundation before he could really move on to more original writing.   

 

Like I said, we used W&R this year with my 4th grade son.   My middle daughter is in 3rd grade this year, so I thought perhaps I could combine them in writing to save some time in the day.   I tried to have her go through fable with my son.  Once again, she was able to complete the lessons....but her writing was just lacking some sort of....je ne sais quoi.   :)   I decided to put it away for her too and pull it out again in 4th.   I guess I just feel that there is a big jump up in maturity from the 3rd to 4th grade.   It is like another year of life experience really does a lot for a child's writing at this stage of the game.   I feel like focusing on the basics (reading aloud in copious amounts/phonics/penmanship/grammar/oral composition, narration/dictation/ copywork) really helped give them a foundation to do well in upper grammar.   

 

So what is my advice?   :)

 

Long story short, you aren't going to know unless you try.   If I were to try to predict the future, I would guess that he would probably be ABLE to complete W&R at this stage.   But I am betting that he would get more out of it if you gave him another year of dictation/narration/copywork.   (I especially think that since he has only gone through WWE 1.)    However, I can't really predict the future.   You might hand him fable and he does GREAT with it!    

 

If you decide to continue on with WWE, I think I should warn you that the dictation starts to become VERY difficult.  (That is another reason we decided to go with ELTL 3 vs. WWE 3).  I know many children who are brought to tears when completing WWE books because the dictation is so tough.   Personally, I am not sure the benefit of dictation is worth it if the child is routinely crying when they have to complete a writing lesson.   (And that seems to be a common problem with WWE.   There are typically multiple threads going where kids are having problems with WWE dictation.)     I would think it is more important that a child associate positive feelings about writing at this stage as opposed to making it harder than it has to be.   So if you go with WWE, be prepared to give the child AS MUCH help as they need in order to be sucessful.   That may mean reading the dictation passages a million times.   That may mean doing more studied dictation like Charlotte Mason advocates.    That may mean breaking the dictation into smaller chunks, etc. etc.  

 

I would listen to Susan Wise Bauers audio recording about teaching writing in the elementary years before making any decisions and see if that adds some clarity.   

Edited March 7, 2017 by TheAttachedMama

[blondchen]

DD9 (4th grade) is finishing up W&R Fable now. She absolutely loves it, and is thriving with it. I enjoy it, too. She did WWE2 before this, and it worked really well because it really solidified her narration and dictation skills before going on to more involved writing. W&R is just challenging enough, and it's interesting and fun for her, and I'm glad I waited to start it until this year. Even if she could have done the work last year, I know she wouldn't be thriving like she is now.

 

In any case, I probably wouldn't put the typical 3rd grade/8yo child into W&R straight from WWE1. There's a big gap in skill level/maturity level between those two, imo. Either WWE2 or ELTL would be a good fit for that bridge (and of course there are other options as well). WWE is more efficient, though, if all you want is writing, because ELTL contains read alouds, poetry, picture study and grammar in addition to narration and dictation. I used it for a while but decided I wanted to choose my own poetry, literature and grammar, and we went back to WWE.

 

I understand why some people get bored with WWE - it's a no-frills, get-it-done program, but if you're doing ok with it now, I'd keep going. I thought WWE2 was much better and more interesting than WWE1, by the way. I stopped WWE1 halfway through with my oldest because it bored me to death (DD didn't mind it), and then I put her into WWE2 after a brief detour into ELTL.

 

Anyway, I found WWE1-WWE2-W&R to be a great progression for us and I highly recommend it.

Edited March 7, 2017 by blondchen

[Kaschill15]

My experience has been very similar to the previous two posters. I have a third grade boy going through WR Fable this year. We had completed WWE1 and 2 in first and second grades. My son is 8, a summer birthday so he's a young 3rd grader, enjoys writing and I would call him somewhat gifted in language arts in general. That said, my original plan for 3rd was to do the first two books of the series with him this year, but that did not happen. After the second lesson, I realized there is still a pretty big gap in skill set between WWE2 and WR Fable. So we had to put WR away for a bit, and worked through some other beginning writing exercises for the rest of the semester. We picked it back up in January and it seems that time to mature was what he needed. We are now on lesson 9 and he is doing well enough I think. I think if he started the program in 4th, he would get even more out of it (another year of reading under his belt, better spelling skills, more stamina for writing, etc.) My suggestion might be to do WWE2 for at least a semester and then ease into Fable. And maybe plan to stretch Fable out. Otherwise I think Fable and Narration I are best for 4th grade.

[WistfulRidge]

First, thank you so much for your replies. It's given me much to mull over the past couple of days. I also sat down and talked to Mr. Inquisitive about writing in general and then sounded some ideas/thoughts off of DH (because I've reached that point of pregnancy where my brain is either on point or I couldn't tell you up from down if my life depended on it, lol).

 

And I've pretty much decided on this path...

 

My suggestion might be to do WWE2 for at least a semester and then ease into Fable. And maybe plan to stretch Fable out. Otherwise I think Fable and Narration I are best for 4th grade.

 

... more or less.

 

Plan A is to do our own WWE inspired narration/copywork/diction for the first third to half of the school year and then move into Fable. Plan B is to do the first half of WWE2 and then move into Fable. Plan C is to just do the whole year as WWE (or our own via the first part of plan A) if he turns out to need it. I, honestly, would be surprised if we needed to do C - mainly because narration is this kid's thing. He spends half of his waking time in narration mode. Half of our conversations begin with, "Mom, I want to tell you about [x]! Do you want me to narrate or retell it?" (Narrate will get me the quick and dirty summarization. Retelling will give me all the juicy details that he wants to impart.)

 

Anyway, I figure this plan covers all my bases. I honestly think that his skills/maturity are just fine for Fable as is but it definitely won't hurt anything to spend 12-18 weeks beefing up those skills some more.  (In retrospect I think we could have straight into WWE2 for 2nd grade, or at least done half of 1 and half of 2. But 1st grade ended up being very "unschooly" - or at least it seemed that way in the face of my initial plans - and I didn't have much faith in the stuff that we had done. Apparently I should have because Mr. Inquisitive's #1 complaint was "It's too easy. It doesn't make me think.")

[Clear Creek]

How is he on written narrations? I think that is a good skill to have in place before beginning W&R Fable.