Writing Curriculum for a 3rd-Grade Reluctant Writer

[kristamaranatha]

Hello! I am just wetting my feet and I have a lot of questions. I am taking my kids out of public school next year.

 

My son, who is currently in 2nd grade, hates writing. His current teacher used to teach middle school, and that, coupled with Common Core, has forced him to write essays (!!) at this level, before he has learned to form his letters neatly or correctly. Now he hates writing. His teacher has allowed me to write for him as he dictates, because if I don't, he won't even start his homework. I think he is really discouraged by all the writing. So next year, I hope to get him writing on his own, but I want to do it without pressuring him or pushing him too fast. He is brilliant and articulate, knows how to explain himself, and dictates well. I need suggestions for writing curriculum for him. I would like to get him working on some grammar and proper sentence structure at least by the end of the year, but I think he needs to catch up with penmanship first. I could really use some suggestions. Thanks in advance!

Edited April 27, 2017 by kristamaranatha

[Kiara.I]

Wow, that school set up sounds unfortunate.

 

I would probably stop all "writing" for a while.  Just do letter formation practice for a while.  Because of his age, you can probably very quickly move into copying words for his letter formation, and if that goes well, into short copywork sentences.

 

In the meantime if you want to work on his composition (if he actually WANTS to compose anything) or if you want to do narration for literature or history or anything, just scribe everything for him.  I would take probably at least 6 months before you require him to write anything that isn't copywork.

 

But basically, you don't need curriculum for that for a while!

 

 

[coastalfam]

We kind of had the same situation, only I started homeschooling my son in 2nd grade with a curriculum that was requiring him to come up with original thoughts to write, and he was not ready. What we did this year for writing is use a program that is along the lines of Writing With Ease, by WTM Press. I have found this approach to be the most developmentally appropriate for my boys. There is a big leap between the skill of writing and the skill of coming up with original thought, and expecting kiddos to be able to combine those two skills so early is really an affront to their human development, IMO. The WWE approach breaks the skills of writing by copying excellent literary examples, listening, narrating and describing, and writing from dictation apart from each other. This has been a much more appropriate and enjoyable approach for my reluctant writer. He has made a lot of progress this year through this methodology, and a focus on spelling, and he no longer dreads Language Arts. In fact he is able to easily write out a paragraph all on his own. Maybe check out WWE and also some of the articles about teaching writing on the WTM website. 

[Farrar]

Brave Writer.

[kristamaranatha]

We kind of had the same situation, only I started homeschooling my son in 2nd grade with a curriculum that was requiring him to come up with original thoughts to write, and he was not ready. What we did this year for writing is use a program that is along the lines of Writing With Ease, by WTM Press. I have found this approach to be the most developmentally appropriate for my boys. There is a big leap between the skill of writing and the skill of coming up with original thought, and expecting kiddos to be able to combine those two skills so early is really an affront to their human development, IMO. The WWE approach breaks the skills of writing by copying excellent literary examples, listening, narrating and describing, and writing from dictation apart from each other. This has been a much more appropriate and enjoyable approach for my reluctant writer. He has made a lot of progress this year through this methodology, and a focus on spelling, and he no longer dreads Language Arts. In fact he is able to easily write out a paragraph all on his own. Maybe check out WWE and also some of the articles about teaching writing on the WTM website. 

 

Thank you for your suggestion. I will look into this resource. One question I have from looking at the WTM store: Are these books graded? My son will be in 3rd Grade next year, but should I start with Book 1?

Edited April 27, 2017 by kristamaranatha

[winterbaby]

I also had a reluctant writer, and a former middle school teacher in second grade that led to unrealistic expectations... but essays?! Wow. So sorry to hear that. I do think Writing With Ease pretty much has what you're looking for... right down to the parent taking dictation at first... but another thing I would suggest is a fun, non-"curriculum" writing prompts book. We used 642 Things to Write About Young People's Edition. You could also take dictation for this but in our house it ended up being filled with a lot of captioned and labeled drawings as she eased into putting more words down. Just something to maybe weaken the association between writing and being made to work.

[NormaElle]

I would start with book 1; it'll start slowly and not be overwhelming and will help him learn the narration and copy work skills.

[blondeviolin]

I wouldn't start with book 1. I'd probably start with WWE 2.

[Mom27kidz]

I'd agree with Kiara (first post). Stop all writing for the first half of the year. Confidence is everything.

Focus on just enjoying school for a little bit. Let him become proud of his penmanship first, then maybe a couple sentences of "what's your favourite part of that story" or just writing a sentence each of "beginning, middle, end". Literally only 3 sentences.... just until he begins to relax and enjoy learning again.

There's lots of time to plug him into a curriculum later on if you need to. :)

Edited April 28, 2017 by Mom27kidz

[Creekside5]

My kid was the same way.  Had wonderful ideas, but couldn't put them on paper.  The problem was actually the fact that his brain worked so much faster than his hand could. He would always loose track of this thought.  He needed practice with just writing fluency and speed.  Until a kid is able to write as fast as they think (or almost) it can be a very frustrating experience.  I would work on copy work (focus on neatness) and speed writing (make it a fun game-not focussed on neatness).  I would also dictate spelling words. As teacher's we work on reading fluency, but rarely work on writing fluency.

 

I strongly believe that for these kind of kids we should focus on orally narrating and allow them to dictate their amazing ideas. That way they get the composing practice without the frustration of handwriting.  They can also work on grammar and mechanics by adding it to copywork.  Later, 2nd or 3rd work on composing short sentences.  3rd and 4th can be short paragraphs.  

 

The good news is  my kiddo is now in 5th grade and he finally writes as quickly as he thinks and very much enjoys writing. It isn't beautiful, but the word choice, ideas, and mechanics are amazing. He is a prolific writer and very much enjoys putting his amazing words on paper.  He has no problem writing an essay with more than five large paragraphs.  Typing is around the corner for us.  Also, I do regret not looking into occupational therapy at an earlier age.  He is a lefty and I think that hand strengthening would have helped.  Think about all of your child's fine motor skills and strengthen them all.  Please don't frustrate your kid and have him dumb down his amazing ideas just to write a 1st grade sentence. 

[bethben]

IEW.  But don't do it as recommended.  Just do simple paragraphs until he can do them easily, then move on.  With IEW, the child doesn't have to think of "what" to write and can concentrate on "how" to write. 

[CAtoVA]

IEW helped my reluctant writer DS when he was in 3rd grade. His strengths are sentence fluency, voice and vocabulary but not so much idea origination or organization so the Key Word Outline process was ideal for building his confidence and proving to himself that he could actually compose meaningful paragraphs!

 

However, that said, I agree with other posters upthread who have suggested focusing less on composition for awhile and more on penmanship and helping him to just enjoy language arts, the beauty of language, etc. There is plenty of time for "serious" composition instruction later.

[Parkway Academy]

BRAVE WRITER.  Extremely gentle ease into writing.  Child focused.  The writing level you want is probably their Partnership Writing guide (linked to BW site for details and samples, but buy for a significant discount at Homeschool Buyer's Co-op), possibly Jot It Down, but I would also look into individual copies of their Arrow guides, which contain copywork passages and literary elements, and can work in conjunction with Partnership Writing.  Don't buy the year-long subscription.  Your reluctant writer is going to go slowly at first, and chances are likely that only a few of the subscription books will appeal to him.