Logic stage writing for the creative child

[silver]

I have a child that loves coming up with stories to tell her siblings and would probably be labeled a natural writer. If my other kids have writing assignments that involve playing around with sentences, I have to remind her not to insert herself into their assignments. We've been reading through MCT writing books without doing assignments and she has come to the conclusion that academic writing is boring. 

I'm looking for a logic stage writing program that won't make her wilt (I don't think she'd mesh well with WWS). My goals for her would be learning to outline and organize her thoughts before writing along with continuing to work on mechanics. I'm currently using TC for writing and MCT for grammar (voyage level), but I'm open to changing next year if need be. 

Suggestions? Currently on my radar are W&R and CW. I'd likely skip the fable level for both of those, as she has had plenty of rewriting fable practice by using ELTL in previous years.

[Lori D.]

A comment in response to your request for something to learn how to outline/organizer her thoughts: from having taught a number of homeschool co-op classes in Lit & Comp for grades 7-12: I will say that from what I see in my classes, not all students *can* outline. It is NOT the way all brains function, and some students can only produce an outline *after* completing the piece of writing.

Outlining in more of a parts-to-whole type of learner, and creative writers are frequently more of a whole-to-parts type of learner, or just have to write to figure out what they want to say. As a result, a traditional outline does NOT *help* them (which is the bottom line purpose of an outline), and actually can be more of a hurdle to them for producing writing. In those cases, a lot of scaffolding helps -- talking through and helping to guide the brainstorming and organizing process. Or asking guided questions to help the student stay within the scope of the general subject.

Rather than trying to produce a traditional "Roman numeral" outline, perhaps your DD might find it easier to use a white board and colored markers to brainstorm, and then turn her ideas into a "mind map" or "bubble graphic organizer", and then take a photo of it to work from. Or try a visual graphic organizer app or software helpful for the brainstorming and organizing aspects of the writing process. Inspiration is a great one, or possibly Popplet might be a fit for her. Or see this list of free mind-mapping tools for teachers & students. These allow the student to get ideas down as visual bites, move them around, add/subtract ideas, and then organize them to streamline the writing process.

If she is still below 7th/8th grade, I don't see a problem with allowing her to develop her writing skills through just sticking with the creative writing that she loves. She can still work on aspects of writing that are needed in all kinds of writing -- complete sentences; complete paragraphs; supporting details for ideas; and the stages of writing, esp. the revising and proof-editing stages. And, you can gently/informally introduce short (1 paragraph) more "formal" or "academic" types of writing that allow her to be creative. For example, if practicing orderly sentence flow for the details in a short piece of descriptive writing (i.e., left to right, near to far, top to bottom), let her describe the person or landscape of her own creation and imagination. If writing an expository "process" (how-to) paragraph, let her make up the steps for whatever real or made up process that would be fun for her. If doing real-life writing such as a resume, let her make up a resume for a favorite book or movie character, or for a character from one of her own stories -- she creates the details, and then puts them into a traditional resume format, and learns what kinds of specific details are needed for a resume. She can learn how to organize her sentences and paragraphs into an orderly, smooth flow through writing blog articles, making her own newspaper or newsletter, creating a brochure or advertisement, etc. that involve her creative writing ideas.

In middle school (gr. 7-8) she can branch into more "formal" or "academic" writing, but still do lots of creative writing to feed her natural interest. And again, the formal/academic writing can frequently be done in a more creative way. Some resources that might help you provide her with more creative types of writing assignments during the Logic stage years:

Don't Forget to Write (Traig)
Rip the Page (Benke)
Comicstrip Writing Prompts (Kallaher)
If You're Trying to Teach Kids How to Write You've Gotta Have This Book (Franks) -- Cathy Duffy review
100 Writing Lessons (McCarthy)

And check out this recent thread for more ideas: "Needed: Quick Improvement for Writing".

You didn't mean your DD's age/grade, so I'll include several program ideas for different ages in the Logic stage range:

Wordsmith Apprentice (gr. 4-6)
A great program for writing phobic children, but also terrific for creative writers, as it provides scope for creativity, but also gentle boundaries for containing the writing. Your DD may be older and past this program, and it is not really a full year program -- depending on how big of a "bite" of the program your student can cover in a day, it is likely going to take between 18-28 weeks to complete. It has a fun "cub reporter" theme, and silly 1-page cartoons to introduce each "department" of the newspaper, and the student writes for each department. Overall, the program includes: complete sentences, putting your sentences into order to create a paragraph that flows smoothly, using vivid words, and writing in the four areas of Descriptive, Narrative, Expository, and Persuasive writing.

Adventures in Fantasy Writing (gr. 5-9)

Cover Story (gr. 6-8)

BEST of luck in finding what moves your DD forward in writing while still keeping alive her love of writing! Warmest regards, Lori D.

 

Edited September 22, 2018 by Lori D.

[silver]

Thanks for all the ideas, I'll look into them. I'm not a creative writer, and neither is her older brother, so I'm at a loss for how to ease a creative writer into academic writing. 

I would have thought that she would hate outlines, but we're going through TC, which does outlines that vaguely resemble KWO, and she has said that she finds it really helpful. I don't think she'd want to plan a novel out paragraph by paragraph that way, but for shorter stories, she really took to it.

[Farrar]

I agree with all of Lori's suggestions. I think those 826 books are really good. But I also think Brave Writer's Faltering Ownership is probably a good bet and would introduce the academic writing in a gentle and creative way.

[Farrar]

Another idea... there's now a free curriculum by the authors of Breakfast on Mars for using it as a basis for essay writing. I saw it the other day... it was shared in a Brave Writer Facebook group. Let me see if I can find it because it's not showing up on search for me, but I know it looked really good.

Here you go:
http://breakfastonmarsbook.weebly.com/teachers.html

Edited September 24, 2018 by Farrar

[silver]

Thanks!