Can I limit writing to just English in High School?

[summerreading]

I want to know if I can just limit writing like essays and papers to my son's English credit. He is dyslexic and dysgraphic. Do I need to make him try to write papers for history? Would short essays be enough for English? Are term papers an absolute must? Right now he is working on taking notes for his history chapters and answering questions out loud. Can I call that enough? 

He wants to be an engineer and he does have short writing that's required in the engineering class he is taking, so I feel he is getting some practice in professional communication. 

Thanks. 

[texasmama]

Yes, both of my teens essentially followed this plan and have transitioned well to the CC.  I was their writing/English teacher and used EIW with great results.  They combined literature analysis with writing, and they wrote six papers of 700-ish words each per year in addition to class discussion on the novels.  For a reluctant literature and writing kid, I loved Windows to the World.  Uses short stories for lit analysis and a slow ramp up to writing.  IEW experience not necessary.  

I also like to tell people  how I failed to compel one son to do any writing program for very long until his 9th grade year (he was 12 at the time).  Our home is still  littered  with writing programs one quarter of the way done.  In spite of mine and his failings in this area, he is a fabulous writer when necessary, and he has done quite well in CC.

They summarized salient points in a handwritten spiral notebook for history in high school until they transitioned to CC.  I think your plan is fine for a STEM kid.

 

[summerreading]

2 hours ago, texasmama said:

Yes, both of my teens essentially followed this plan and have transitioned well to the CC.  I was their writing/English teacher and used EIW with great results.  They combined literature analysis with writing, and they wrote six papers of 700-ish words each per year in addition to class discussion on the novels.  For a reluctant literature and writing kid, I loved Windows to the World.  Uses short stories for lit analysis and a slow ramp up to writing.  IEW experience not necessary.  

I also like to tell people  how I failed to compel one son to do any writing program for very long until his 9th grade year (he was 12 at the time).  Our home is still  littered  with writing programs one quarter of the way done.  In spite of mine and his failings in this area, he is a fabulous writer when necessary, and he has done quite well in CC.

They summarized salient points in a handwritten spiral notebook for history in high school until they transitioned to CC.  I think your plan is fine for a STEM kid.

 

 

Thank you, this makes me feel a bit better. Glad things are working out for your teens and CC. I had a ton of writing programs and then sold them, now I need to rebuy one of them!

[Heathermomster]

My son is a sophomore at uni and took an intro to history class where he turned in an 8 page term paper and every exam was essay answer.  In high school while taking algebra based physics, several of his labs required writing with abstract paragraphs, the process, and concluding results of the labs.  For college freshmen writing first and second semesters, he wrote essays once per week and was required to write a 8-10 paged research paper.  Both his bio and earth science classes required summary sentence responses.  My DS is diagnosed dyslexic and dysgraphic too, and I’m telling you now that he needs to learn to write plenty and often, and I say that as a BSEE.

Edited October 28, 2019 by Heathermomster

[lewelma]

Just an FYI in case you had never thought about it, writing for English class does not mean you have to write about literature.  My focus with my boys has been purpose, audience, and evaluating sources. For my older boy who wants to be a scientist, he wrote research papers on Genetic Engineering and Fracking (evaluating sources was goal). He also wrote papers mimicking The Economist science news articles, and the Scientific American policy recommendation articles (Purpose and Audience was the goal). We studied how these different genre were created, what kind of support they used, and then he wrote about space flight, nuclear power, fracking, etc. These papers were much more useful to him than any literary analysis would be

My younger boy who has dysgraphia wants to be a geographer. So has written research papers on Demography and Environmental use. His purpose and audience paper he is writing this term is mimicking a National Geographic article.  He is studying how they sway your opinion through creative nonfiction rather than straight argument. He will also be working on synthesis of sources in essay writing, and this one will be under time pressure so he will be prepared for exams in university. But he is Not writing about literature.

So, if you want to teach writing for an engineer, perhaps focus on topics that might actually help him in the future. People need to be able to write, but they don't have to be able to write literary analysis. 

Ruth in NZ

Edited October 28, 2019 by lewelma

[kbutton]

1 minute ago, lewelma said:

So, if you want get-it-done writing for an engineer, perhaps focus on topics that might actually help him in the future. People need to be able to write, but they don't have to be able to write literary analysis. 

This is kind of what we are doing, but we're not to paper level yet. We're also uneven across subjects--in some subjects, my son can write a paragraph response or a short summary. For other things, it's a lot harder. He seems to write good science lab reports, but we talk them out together some of the time. His lab reports are less formal than college reports, but they are helpful for getting words out. We write up about half of his labs--and those have procedures.

[lewelma]

I will add that I required 1 hour of writing per day.  For my older Physic/math kid this was enough. For my younger with dysgraphia it has not been enough.  We are currently at 2 hours per day, but he does want to be a geographer so he is motivated to accomplish the goal of learning to write. 

[lewelma]

1 minute ago, kbutton said:

This is kind of what we are doing, but we're not to paper level yet. We're also uneven across subjects--in some subjects, my son can write a paragraph response or a short summary. For other things, it's a lot harder. 

I do a LOT of scaffolding. My younger read his most recent report to his dad, and at the end, I asked him "how much of that was your work."  And he said "about 85%". Yup, that was exactly what I was thinking.  However, the current paper on the impact of leadership on the economics of Botswana, he is closer to 50% I think. 

I have found that he is way more motivated by big interesting projects done jointly, than easier projects done independently.  We are making progress, but he is definitely NOT independent in his writing.  

[summerreading]

 

9 minutes ago, lewelma said:

Just an FYI in case you had never thought about it, writing for English class does not mean you have to write about literature.  My focus with my boys has been purpose, audience, and evaluating sources. For my older boy who wants to be a scientist, he wrote research papers on Genetic Engineering and Fracking (evaluating sources was goal). He also wrote papers mimicking The Economist science news articles, and the Scientific American policy recommendation articles (Purpose and Audience was the goal). We studied how these different genre were created, what kind of support they used, and then he wrote about space flight, nuclear power, fracking, etc. These papers were much more useful to him than any literary analysis would be

My younger boy who has dysgraphia wants to be a geographer. So has written research papers on Demography and Environmental use. His purpose and audience paper he is writing this term is mimicking a National Geographic article.  He is studying how they sway your opinion through creative nonfiction rather than straight argument. He will also be working on synthesis of sources in essay writing, and this one will be under time pressure so he will be prepared for exams in university. But he is Not writing about literature.

So, if you want to teach writing for an engineer, perhaps focus on topics that might actually help him in the future. People need to be able to write, but they don't have to be able to write literary analysis. 

Ruth in NZ

 

This makes a lot of sense. What did you use to teach writing at this level?

 

[8filltheheart]

You could try alternating subjects for writing assignments. They don't have write something about every book they read. For example, my Dd just finished a novel in English, but she is moving on to a new novel bc she is currently writing a paper on Hume for her philosophy class. She has already written several essays in English, so no biggie to skip this novel.  We discussed it. She can move on. Her next writing assignment will either be  from science or history.

[kbutton]

9 minutes ago, lewelma said:

I do a LOT of scaffolding. My younger read his most recent report to his dad, and at the end, I asked him "how much of that was your work."  And he said "about 85%". Yup, that was exactly what I was thinking.  However, the current paper on the impact of leadership on the economics of Botswana, he is closer to 50% I think. 

I have found that he is way more motivated by big interesting projects done jointly, than easier projects done independently.  We are making progress, but he is definitely NOT independent in his writing.  

When you asked about how much was his work, do you mean his own original thought? Argumentation? There are a lot of kinds of writing, so I am curious what you mean by this question.

My son has a receptive language problem, so we're playing major catch up with therapy level materials (with a tutor). I do only writing that is already going well, but we have yet to be able to scale anything to something very long at all. Lab reports are the longest things, so far.

[lewelma]

2 hours ago, summerreading said:

This makes a lot of sense. What did you use to teach writing at this level?

We used magazines and real life writing. 

For example, for my older ds's Scientific American policy article: 1) We read 4-5 articles out loud and discussed them, 2) we picked our favorite, and 3) then we spent about 3 hours analyzing *how* it was constructed.  What was the thesis? How was it supported?  What kind of supports were used - authority, statistics, logic, what?  What was the style - sentence length, scientific words, formal/informal? How was the introduction catchy?  How did the conclusion bring it together?  How was the title created?  Etc. 4) Research a topic, and read for a few days, 5) Then, we would work together to brainstorm ideas, write a thesis, outline the paper. 6) he would write it independently (this is the part that my younger boy cannot do yet). 7) we would edit together and compare it to the model. Then we would edit it again.  8) Finally, rinse and repeat with a new article or a new genre.  

Very straight forward approach.  Plus, it felt useful and interesting to my science boy. Next term at university, he is required to take a writing class, and plans to take the one on scientific writing for a lay audience.  Exactly, what we worked on throughout high school. 

Edited October 28, 2019 by lewelma

[lewelma]

2 hours ago, kbutton said:

When you asked about how much was his work, do you mean his own original thought? Argumentation? There are a lot of kinds of writing, so I am curious what you mean by this question.

Well, basically for the whole process. The paper he read to dh was about how colonialism impacted the economic and social development of the DRC.  There is NO WAY I could have given my ds this topic and said, 'go for it.'  We sat on the sofa for a week researching and reading out loud to each other. We sat on the sofa and made a list of facts and brainstormed ideas (he typed). We sat on the sofa and outlined the paper and wrote a started thesis. We sat on the sofa, and I did something else while he wrote the paper from his outline. During the writing time, he would ask me for advice, or a word, or a starter sentence.  Sometimes during the writing time, we would need to brainstorm what should go in the *next* sentence, then try to outline the ideas so that he could write just that one sentence. Sometimes, he would realize his outline for a paragraph was not quite right, but was not sure why. So we would work together to figure out that it was not supporting the thesis.  Then we would brainstorm how to cluster ideas for support rather than just for a generic narrative of events.  After writing was done, he was able to edit on his own for basics (style, spelling, grammar, word choice.) Then we would sit on the sofa and work together on bigger editing. Does each sentence have a purpose?  Are they in a good order? Do you have an intro and concluding sentence (he often doesn't)?  etc. Then, after a couple weeks of work, he reads it to his dad at dinner!

So notice that I SAT ON THE SOFA WITH HIM every single day.  Sometimes doing something else, but always available. Sometimes completely involved as a co-writer, sometimes just as an adviser, sometimes as a cheerleader, and sometimes even as a teacher.  We work collaboratively, and when he asks for help, I give it. 

So when he said 85% for the DRC colonialism paper, that was 85% of everything above.  For the 50% of the Botswana leadership paper it was 50% of the above. Writing about leadership is much harder than colonialism!

Is that what you were asking?

Edited October 28, 2019 by lewelma

[PeterPan]

6 hours ago, summerreading said:

I want to know if I can just limit writing like essays and papers to my son's English credit. He is dyslexic and dysgraphic. Do I need to make him try to write papers for history? Would short essays be enough for English? Are term papers an absolute must? Right now he is working on taking notes for his history chapters and answering questions out loud. Can I call that enough? 

He wants to be an engineer and he does have short writing that's required in the engineering class he is taking, so I feel he is getting some practice in professional communication. 

Thanks. 

Sigh, here's the thing. I don't give a rip about term papers, they don't matter. But he needs to be comfortable in using his tech to get his thoughts out, and he needs to be doing enough that you're bringing to light any serious issues he has with expressive language, EF, organization, narrative language, etc. so he can work on them. 

I also think you're SERIOUSLY underestimating the amount of writing he may need to do for an engineering program. My dh's major was engineering at a very nice smaller private university, and they wrote their BUTTS OFF. Now writing in the majors these days might be related to their minor or professional communication or something, sure. They may also have some papers for liberal arts or gen ed classes. But I think he will end up writing more than you anticipate, and the question is whether he's developing the language skills.

So term papers I wouldn't care about, but I'd be assigning stuff, yes. Small things if you want. Things that ensure he's developing the stages of narrative/expository language, things that ensure he's increasing his skill to get his thoughts out independently using tech.

-response journals

-debate prompts

-summaries of what he learned researching topics of interest each week

-outlines of opinion pieces, rhetorical analysis (oral)

-quick 5 point essay responses, any kind of essay response (boom, boom, crank it out, have a thesis, have some points to support it, have some counter arguments)

My dd's hardest thing in college has just been GETTING IT OUT. Given that she isn't even diagnosed with SLDs and has such a hard time, I would be very cautious about at least not building the comfort. Comfort with tech, comfort getting your thoughts into logical arguments, comfort getting something out and on screen. But short is fine, sure.

Fwiw, my dd came back from college blessing me that I had made her keep response journals, haha. They were a low key thing I could require when life was crazy, but they were good prep. Editing is another good thing. Can't go wrong with emphasizing editing. Makes you popular in the dorms. 

Edited October 28, 2019 by PeterPan

[summerreading]

Thanks all. Was just feeling a bit overwhelmed today with the whole topic. Will take the advice to heart. 

Cheers

[kbutton]

1 hour ago, lewelma said:

Is that what you were asking?

Yes, that answers my question and is a great description of how you do things to boot. Thanks!

[lewelma]

1 hour ago, PeterPan said:

-quick 5 point essay responses, any kind of essay response (boom, boom, crank it out, have a thesis, have some points to support it, have some counter arguments)

This is what we need to work on.  

[PeterPan]

1 hour ago, lewelma said:

This is what we need to work on.  

With my dd that was a long term thing, not something I'm saying was like wow. 

I also don't want to make it sound like we did a *lot* of writing. We probably did way less than might have been ideal. We did what we could realistically make happen. I'm just saying with my hindsight the most important things are still the basics like can you get it out comfortably, do you have the language skills (expressive, narrative), can you organize. 

Three years in at the university, it's going better. Like now she can crank out 6 pages in a matter of hours. But it's still very, very hard. If she writes essay tests she is WIPED. That's even with meds, extended time, tech, everything she is allowed. So it's not like we could make it better by working her harder or some magic curriculum. You just don't want to under work it to the point where the kid gets overwhelmed in college. Do what you can and they step up to the plate for the rest.

[City Mouse]

I agree that a student who plans to go to college needs to be able to do the 5-paragraph essay for any subject. My DH has reading and writing issues (not officially dyslexia, but “learning disability”) and is taking college DE courses. He has had to write essays for psychology and Introduction to Art so far. 

You may want to have him start learning to use speech to text software to compose his writing. 

[summerreading]

On 11/6/2019 at 2:56 PM, City Mouse said:

I agree that a student who plans to go to college needs to be able to do the 5-paragraph essay for any subject. My DH has reading and writing issues (not officially dyslexia, but “learning disability”) and is taking college DE courses. He has had to write essays for psychology and Introduction to Art so far. 

You may want to have him start learning to use speech to text software to compose his writing. 

 

Thanks. Did you require term papers as well in high school?

[ktgrok]

On 10/28/2019 at 3:27 PM, lewelma said:

I will add that I required 1 hour of writing per day.  For my older Physic/math kid this was enough. For my younger with dysgraphia it has not been enough.  We are currently at 2 hours per day, but he does want to be a geographer so he is motivated to accomplish the goal of learning to write. 

Wow. 

I honestly think it is amazing your kid with dyslexia and dysgraphia can tolerate two hours a day of writing. I think perhaps a lot of kids with those issues could not and would not. 

I have most likely dysgraphia and I might have run away from home!

[lewelma]

5 hours ago, Ktgrok said:

Wow. 

I honestly think it is amazing your kid with dyslexia and dysgraphia can tolerate two hours a day of writing. I think perhaps a lot of kids with those issues could not and would not. 

I have most likely dysgraphia and I might have run away from home!

We are interest led -- almost unschooling in style. So the 2 hours is because *he* wants to.  Fortunately or unfortunately, his best and worst thing is in English.  He is a highly-gifted writer with the inability to handle the *encoding* of his ideas. So we did 'typing dictation' for 30 minutes per day where he worked on spelling and mechanics and punctuation for four years 7th-10th grade, and then 1.5 hours of studying other's writing and having him dictate to me. 

Now that his encoding piece is finally cleaning up, we are focusing on him writing high-interest papers with LOTS of scaffolding as I described above. 

So right now he is trying to write a high-end National Geographic article; he wants to make it adult-level of publishable quality with nuance and deep insight.  To accomplish *his* goal, for the past 10 days we have spent 45 minutes per day reading 4 different National Geographic articles and then analyzing one in a really deep way (likely 5 hours). Now we are on our 3rd day of 45 minutes working on a thesis and outlining his article (the *thesis* has been really hard to identify). He will try to write the first 3 paragraphs tomorrow, and I will sit next to him but do something else at the time. I expect this 10 paragraph paper to take 8 full days to write, at that point we will edit.  

So I'm not pushing, nor are we doing a 'program.' He is writing what he wants to write, in a way he wants to write it, with a ton of support from me!

 

 

Edited November 11, 2019 by lewelma

[ktgrok]

5 hours ago, lewelma said:

We are interest led -- almost unschooling in style. So the 2 hours is because *he* wants to.  Fortunately or unfortunately, his best and worst thing is in English.  He is a highly-gifted writer with the inability to handle the *encoding* of his ideas. So we did 'typing dictation' for 30 minutes per day where he worked on spelling and mechanics and punctuation for four years 7th-10th grade, and then 1.5 hours of studying other's writing and having him dictate to me. 

Now that his encoding piece is finally cleaning up, we are focusing on him writing high-interest papers with LOTS of scaffolding as I described above. 

So right now he is trying to write a high-end National Geographic article; he wants to make it adult-level of publishable quality with nuance and deep insight.  To accomplish *his* goal, for the past 10 days we have spent 45 minutes per day reading 4 different National Geographic articles and then analyzing one in a really deep way (likely 5 hours). Now we are on our 3rd day of 45 minutes working on a thesis and outlining his article (the *thesis* has been really hard to identify). He will try to write the first 3 paragraphs tomorrow, and I will sit next to him but do something else at the time. I expect this 10 paragraph paper to take 8 full days to write, at that point we will edit.  

So I'm not pushing, nor are we doing a 'program.' He is writing what he wants to write, in a way he wants to write it, with a ton of support from me!

 

 

Ah! It sounds almost like a special interest at this point! 

He definitely sounds very unique! I can't imagine most kids doing that, but kudos to him.