WWS Readiness

[silver]

We're partway into our school year, and my 6th grader is finding WWS1 to be very difficult. We're in the weeks 4-15 section and he does just fine with the days where he has to do a narration, outline, or update/write notes on one of the topos. It's the "practicing the topos" sections where he has to write from the list of notes that he breaks down and struggles to get it in a reasonable amount of time. We've already slowed it down so that he gets 2-3 days to do those sections. 

So, is this an indication that he's not ready and that we should shelve this for later? If so, what should I use in the meantime that could get him ready? To give his background, we've used ELTL (levels 1-4), Treasured Conversations, Killgallon (the yellow sentences book), and Imitation in Writing (fables) in years past.

Or is this something that we should just keep on working through, slowly, and he'll eventually get it after enough practice?

[Miss Tick]

Is his final product ok and it just takes extra time to get there? If so, you are not alone. Some students seem to be able to do those writing assignment in the time allotted and some, like mine, need a week. When we got to that point I decided I was so happy with the quality of the writing that they were (eventually) producing that we would spread the three books or over 4 years. 

We are at the end of book 2 now and it is really going well. I think speed may be improving also, but that is not my focus for this curriculum. Instead, I plan to introduce Lori D.'s scheme for approaching timed essays. Level A is wrote a paragraph about a prompt in 10 minutes and the Level F is a 3-5 paragraph paper in 25 minutes. 

This plan has really taken the pressure off of writing and made it much more of a non-issue in my house, which is a real benefit!

[silver]

The writing he produces is OK. I've given him a basic checklist of editing that helps. Sometimes I have to point out when a sentence doesn't make sense or the thoughts don't flow coherently--but when I do, he's typically able to figure out how to fix it. Once we've finished the editing process, I'm happy with his output--but, yes, it does take him a long time to get there. 

[stlily]

I agree with Susan C.  WWS is an excellent program but we experienced a lot of frustration at the beginning for two reasons: 1) We tried to follow the schedule and complete the assignments in the time indicated, and 2) I had my daughter read the text and do the work on her own with minimal help from me.  My plan for my next child is to give her as much time as she needs and read most of the lessons with her. I agree that taking 4 years to complete all three books is a good plan. Give you son as much time as he needs.  The program is great, the schedule, not so much. I usually had my daughter work on writing for about 45 min. to 1 hr. and then move on.  

[LMD]

I agree with pp's

We did end up taking a break around week 24 and circling back to finish it in 7th grade.

[silver]

Thanks everyone! We'll keep plodding along, giving him more time for the assignments he needs it on.

[SanDiegoMom]

We definitely took a lot of time (1 1/2 years for the first book) and i found I had to be there with them while they worked through it.  The passages are really tough and one kid needed me to read it out loud and discuss to be able to understand. I basically talk them through the process the whole time. They have gotten a lot out of the program but they don't love it because it is always hard.  Which I am ok with:) . It just helps them to know I'm right there with them while they work through it. Misery loves company and all that. 

[FairProspects]

I actually think the recommendations on this program are too young for many students. I'm a certified secondary English teacher and I taught both 6th and 8th grade full time the last couple of years. I started my own 8th grader on WWS 1 this year and it is the perfect level for him. It is not the only writing he will be doing this year, but the skills he is refining are the essential basics of middle school writing. They are also skills that tend to take longer to grasp developmentally. I probably won't start my younger child on WWS before late 7th/8th either. These are really secondary skills and many 5th/6th graders are still in that elementary writing stage cognitively.

Edited September 14, 2018 by FairProspects

[PeterPan]

20 hours ago, FairProspects said:

I actually think the recommendations on this program are too young for many students. I'm a certified secondary English teacher and I taught both 6th and 8th grade full time the last couple of years. I started my own 8th grader on WWS 1 this year and it is the perfect level for him.

Yup, we did WWS1 in 8th, WWS2 in 9th, iirc. 

On September 13, 2018 at 4:13 PM, silver said:

It's the "practicing the topos" sections where he has to write from the list of notes that he breaks down and struggles to get it in a reasonable amount of time.

I think if the dc is ENJOYING it, it's fine to spread the work for this section out over two days. Is he typing or writing all this by hand? Definitely make sure he can type, mercy.

If he's not enjoying it, pause. There are tons of other great things to do at this age. There's no rush. I actually think it's good to do things later. They say education is wasted on the young, but it's more that they need the chance to have experiences and know WHY they want this. Or be on the leading edge of his development, sure. It's not a wrong/right answer, just an answer. If he's enjoying it overall, I wouldn't worry. Does he seem engaged or put his whole self into it? 

[silver]

2 minutes ago, PeterPan said:

Yup, we did WWS1 in 8th, WWS2 in 9th, iirc. 

I think if the dc is ENJOYING it, it's fine to spread the work for this section out over two days. Is he typing or writing all this by hand? Definitely make sure he can type, mercy.

If he's not enjoying it, pause. There are tons of other great things to do at this age. There's no rush. I actually think it's good to do things later. They say education is wasted on the young, but it's more that they need the chance to have experiences and know WHY they want this. Or be on the leading edge of his development, sure. It's not a wrong/right answer, just an answer. If he's enjoying it overall, I wouldn't worry. Does he seem engaged or put his whole self into it? 

 

He's typing his work; his typing skills are fine and there are no complaints from him on that.

I wouldn't say that he enjoys it. He enjoys a challenge in math, and comes out feel excited about the subject and his capabilities. He does not have that attitude about writing. Last year I had him using Imitation in Writing. By the end of the year, writing the outline was drudgery, but he said he enjoyed writing from the outline. He does fine writing from notes/outlines when the notes/outlines are his own. I'm not sure what it is about these assignments that causes him angst. I just asked him what he doesn't like about it and he says that sometimes he doesn't like the topic (he generally likes non-fiction, so I thought this would be a good fit for him), sometimes it's that his younger siblings are done with school and out playing, and he wants to be out playing with them. I'd say that maybe I need to move this to earlier in the day, but since this is a subject I need to be sitting with him, then his siblings would be inside playing (waiting for me to be available to work with them).

If we did set it aside, what resources have you found that are good for this age?

[PeterPan]

6 minutes ago, silver said:

If we did set it aside, what resources have you found that are good for this age?

How old is he? I'm old school WTM, haha, so we actually did outlining of stuff. We did a book 50 Debate Prompts for Kids. We did some Classical Writing (so-so). Dd took up fan fiction writing around that age. There was writing in Beautiful Feet in one of the guides we did. We did one of those newpaper-y themed apprentice writing workbooks. She really liked that one.

I think when you know what you want to happen (your goal), then you'll identify what you want to use. For that age, a lot of the goal with my dd was just comfort getting it out. So as long as she was writing anything, we were cool. There were really great books we used like the Don't Forget to Write series. At that age I think I was using book projects from the Mrs. Renz site. The lady was a Disney teacher of the year, and she has these AMAZING projects. I like Michael Gravois' stuff. 

Around then I had her start getting emails (old, haha) with the news stories for the day, and she would pick one to rabbit trail and write up. We did response essays later. 

Maybe what you'd like to do, if you're really killing time developmentally, is pick a genre he hasn't explored that would fit with some of his special interests, and try to extend his LA skills into that. Like maybe he's really into rockets or tanks or breeding rabbits or whatever, and he could read trade magazines for those and outline an article each week. Maybe he could read more challenging trade material than he's read before and analyze the structure. 

My ds was really young then (1-3) and starting speech therapy, and some of it is a blur. Really though, these are your years to have fun, to put his skills into a context, to let him see why he would want to be able to write a certain way, to let him see the breadth of LA utility in his fields of interest. Like if he's into science, read Scientific American, kwim? What do people who have his interests like to write? Do they write opinion pieces to the paper or political arguments or persuasion documents? Just outlining and summarizing, slowing down and noticing why writing works and discussing that, can go a long way. I'm trying to inspire you here. That's how I thought through subjects all the way through high school, and it worked out pretty well for us.

If you want curriculum, I think the CW (Classical Writing) that I used is now out of vogue and people use another progym series. I would just jump a few levels and go into that, sure. Books 4 and 5 might be about right. https://classicalacademicpress.com/product/writing-rhetoric-book-4-chreia-proverb-program/ See if the tasks they're doing (proverbs in book 4, refutation/argument in book 5) are what he's developmentally itching to do.