How much writing daily/weekly?

[SporkUK]

Just interested in getting some general idea of how much and what kinds of writing others are doing really.

Writing has been a difficult subject in my house. Two of my children are autistic with language difficulties and it's been a lot of trial and error. We seem to be getting there though, this year has gone by far more smoothly than any before and we're all pretty happy with the progress being made. I'm starting to plan the upcoming academic year and I'm considering what to tweak and possibly expand on, particularly for my oldest who is hoping to go to the local technical high school for GCSEs starting in September 2019. Writing will never be his favourite and I'm trying to balance helping him reach his potential without going overboard while tempering my concerns about exams in a few years so I guess I'm hoping seeing what others do will give me ideas on how to do that.

Right now Write On! is our writing spine which I'm happy with and my older three use daily along with some for spelling/vocabulary. My older two also do science writing at least twice a week, other subjects are a bit less consistent (for example, the older three did history writing 4 days last week and everything was done orally the week before). 

[HomeAgain]

I have an 8yo.  This past year he did 4 days a week: copywork & dictation.  Occasionally he would write a narration of varying lengths, from 3 sentences at the beginning of the year down to a full page at the end of the year.
Next year we're doing Writing Strands, which does a week rest between writing assignments that last anywhere from 4 to 10 days.  He'll end up working on only that writing assignment and dictation for the week or so, and then when it directs a rest we're doing copywork and dictation.  As he gets older I want to start increasing the expectations in his writing before I focus on length, if that makes sense. 

I don't have him write across the curriculum yet.  That will pick up in the middle school years as some of writing class will focus on research or learning how to write a paper.  I don't know.  I'll have to think about my goals in writing - is producing one well-written piece worth more than doing scraps of written work in each subject during the day?  Or is a paper trail of accomplishment worth more than focusing on one written piece at a time?

[Stibalfamily]

My son is 7 and in first grade. I like traditional writing programs personally. We have done these this year.

https://www.amazon.com/Evan-Moor-Sentence-Workbook-Teachers-Supplement/dp/1557996067

https://www.amazon.com/Scholastic-Success-Writing-Grade-1/dp/0545200792/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=P6D8AZ9VMJ7931R05ZW1

https://www.amazon.com/Daily-6-Trait-Writing-Grade-Practice/dp/1596732865/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1528864307&sr=1-5&keywords=6+trait+writing

And half of this...

https://www.amazon.com/Days-Writing-First-Grade-Practice/dp/1425815243/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1528864369&sr=1-5&keywords=180+days+of+writing

I like The 180 days of Writing the most but we are moving on to Write Source Grade 2. It was exactly what we have been looking for in a writing curriculum.

https://www.rainbowresource.com/product/sku/051628

 

[Holly]

My oldest two are using WWS.  I'm hoping to have them get through books 1-3 before graduating.  My 2nd child may have a bit of time for an additional program, but he's a stronger writer than my oldest.  My next two are using WWE.  We do writing 4 days per week and aim for a creative writing project on every other Friday.

My kids are all using Pentime for penmanship right now because I want to solidify their cursive handwriting.  Only my 3rd child has gotten to the point where she uses cursive for her other subjects.  My oldest two prefer to type, so they don't write as much by hand.

I'm working on adding some writing to their history or science lessons following the WTM writing methods.  Next year we'll be using Elemental Science, so it will be already included in their science lessons.  I hope to add a similar writing assignment for history once a week (dictation, copywork, list of facts, outline, summary, etc).  It's hard because my kids are such reluctant writers, but WWE/WWS has been a big help so far.

[Momto6inIN]

DD age 6 - one handwriting page and one copywork sentence per day

DD age 10 - about 30 min/day on composition - includes thinking and planning and key word outlines and editing - also once/week one paragraph history summary - once/day a few sentences as a response to a journal question

In high school it goes up, obviously, because they're writing for many more subjects by then.

[hollyhock2]

16yo - one essay per week plus 4x a week summaries (2-3 paragraphs) in other subjects (except for the day he writes the first draft of the essay).

14yo - daily summaries across all subjects, usually 2-3 paragraphs (earlier in the year he was doing two summaries plus one 3-level outline and one rewrite). We will begin transitioning summaries to essays in fall and I'm thinking we'll probably alternate a week of daily summaries with a week of working on a single essay.

12yo - two summaries per week in whatever subject he chooses (usually 1-3 paragraphs), one outline per week and then one day rewriting that outline back into a composition. In fall I will probably add some sort of writing about books once per week, in the style of a SWB lit essay.

10yo - two summaries per week (still doing 3-4 sentence paragraphs, occasionally longer), and two one-level outlines

[MinivanMom]

I have kids in a similar range of ages. Here is what they did this past year:

12yo: 1 science & 2 history outlines per week, a short science report each month, 2 literary essays per year, & 2 research papers per year (he wrote 1 essay & 1 research paper in the fall and then 1 essay & 1 research paper in the spring). 

10yo: Daily cursive practice, 2 science & 2 history summaries per week, and a variety of writing projects over the course of the year (2 letters, 2 stories, 2 poems, & 1 research paper).

8yo: 2 journal entries per week and a variety of writing projects over the course of the year (2 letters, 2 stories, 2 poems, & 2 simple reports).

6yo: Daily printing practice & 2 journal entries per week.

My oldest daughter opted to go to public high school. During her last year at home we focused on the types of writing I thought she might encounter in public school. She practiced taking notes from Great Course lectures, she wrote 2 literary essays (1 in the fall & 1 in the spring), she wrote a research paper (with a big focus on proper citations), and I made her take formal history tests with short answer questions and a timed essay. I think there were 5 history tests altogether, so she wrote 5 timed essays. She did some additional creative writing, but I didn't assign or check-up on that. Academic writing was our focus.

[Sarah0000]

My six year old does 2-4 sentences of copywork or 1-2 original sentences plus 2-3 worksheets in other subjects and whatever writing/drawing he does on his own.

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

DS did either copy work sentences or one 3-4 sentence paragraph each week last year for Kindy.

This year for 1st each week he’ll be doing some combination of: copying & editing/diagramming a sentence (grammar), writing out equations & solutions (math), defining vocabulary terms (history / science), sorting spelling words, occasional creative writing assignments of about a paragraph in length. 

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

My 11yo writes about a paragraph a day, usually a summary from history or science reading, occasionally creative writing.  About 1-2x a semester, we spend a week and do a research report of some kind.  

[PeterPan]

On June 12, 2018 at 4:36 PM, SporkUK said:

Just interested in getting some general idea of how much and what kinds of writing others are doing really.

Writing has been a difficult subject in my house. Two of my children are autistic with language difficulties and it's been a lot of trial and error. We seem to be getting there though, this year has gone by far more smoothly than any before and we're all pretty happy with the progress being made. I'm starting to plan the upcoming academic year and I'm considering what to tweak and possibly expand on, particularly for my oldest who is hoping to go to the local technical high school for GCSEs starting in September 2019. Writing will never be his favourite and I'm trying to balance helping him reach his potential without going overboard while tempering my concerns about exams in a few years so I guess I'm hoping seeing what others do will give me ideas on how to do that.

Right now Write On! is our writing spine which I'm happy with and my older three use daily along with some for spelling/vocabulary. My older two also do science writing at least twice a week, other subjects are a bit less consistent (for example, the older three did history writing 4 days last week and everything was done orally the week before). 

Do you feel like your oldest has had a maturity-related growth spurt yet? Many kids do, sometime between 12 and 16. It kind of all gels in their brains and their ability to get out their thoughts and write more increases. You might watch for that. I'm not saying don't keep working on increasing, but it could be that what you want to see happen will come at some point with that surge. For my dd it was around age 13, but I've seen people on the boards saying 16. 

As far as quantities, you seem like you're on a good trajectory. Your planning for increasing slowly but gently is wise. You seem to be doing a good job of nurturing their ability to get out their thoughts. What you might consider doing, instead of looking for more quantity, is to consider increasing their understanding of *structure*. There are a variety of ways to do this. WTM talks about outlining and teaching rhetoric. There are curricula that do this. Something like Mindwings Story Grammar Marker will teach expository structures explicitly. In autism we talk about central coherence, the question of whether they see how things fit together, whether they get the big picture. So they're getting their thoughts out, but we'd like their thoughts to build to a point, to have coherence, to have connector words. You can do this for free, totally for free, by outlining any articles they enjoy using mindmapping software (Inspiration is awesome) or a whiteboard and then discussing. What are they doing in this paragraph? What is the point of the paragraph? What things did they include to support that point? Just work through an article in their preferred subjects or areas of interest once a week. Do that analysis and let it build, so they realize ok THOSE are structures I could carry over into my own writing!

Are they able to type on the GCSEs or do they have to hand write? And are they typing now or using dictation or hand writing? If using tech improves what they're able to get out, use tech.

As far as quantity, I tried to have my dd (ADHD) write something every day in high school. I didn't include very brief things (2-3 sentence response journal entries for lit reading) in that. So it could be a page response to a philosophy reading, outlining and analyzing an article, writing for WWS, whatever, but she had a longer assignment like that every day to be working on. I don't anticipate my ds with ASD will be able to keep that page. Nuts, he doesn't write more than words right now and he's almost 10. Work with them where they are, keep stretching. To me, if the GCSEs aren't gonna work out, do something different. I don't know how they work, but it's not worth discouraging them over. In the US, we have technical schools that offer remedial instruction if the person doesn't pass the placement exams. They still get in and they just take extra classes to get there. Bloom time can help. 

[SporkUK]

Thank you to everyone who has posted, it's given me a lot of food for thought. It's interesting seeing the range and different ways people are doing this. 

Peter Pan : I'm not sure on the maturity-related growth spurt. I would lean towards no though my oldest has come leaps and bounds in the past year, it's been in the gentle diligent practice growth and a few things clicking into place than a surge. I will keep my eye out for it. 

I agree that pushing for understanding the structure is a good goal and what I think I've been trying to do. I appreciate you outlining more ways to do that. My push for quantity now is mainly due to wanting to make the transition between home education and the technical school easier for him as well as the exams, but also because he has so many ideas but struggles to figure out how to express them. GCSEs and other exams are usually done by hand at the end of Year 11 and while some students do get accommodations that allow them to type which I will likely try to get my oldest assessed for, whether or not he will get it is mostly out of my hands. It's a school-by-school, exam board-by-exam board decision. So, currently, we do a mix of handwritten and typed with the idea of being comfortable doing both. Entry into the technical school at Year 10 is thankfully not an issue, admission policy for Y10 is mainly location based and we're well within the catchment, the exams will partially determine what he will do for Year 12 and beyond.