History, 5th grade question

[inashoe]

I have read and reread WTM, and still don't feel comfortable with what we are doing in History. ds reads Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, marks info from that on his timeline. We need to do about four pages of KHE each week if we are going to get through Ancients in one year.

 

My question is what do others do for the outline or report ? ds couldn't possibly do more than one outline / report per week - his writing is very slow and painful. So we are thinking of picking one topic / event / historical figure out of those covered in KHE, reading related library books, and then doing an outline based on these.

 

So what do your 5th graders do ?

Outline only ?

or a report - with full sentences and paragraphs ?

How long are the reports ?

one a week ?

 

I will obviously not try and follow what others are doing exactly, but getting an idea of what other 5th graders are doing would be helpful.

[Colleen in NS]

I have read and reread WTM, and still don't feel comfortable with what we are doing in History. ds reads Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, marks info from that on his timeline. We need to do about four pages of KHE each week if we are going to get through Ancients in one year.

 

My question is what do others do for the outline or report ? ds couldn't possibly do more than one outline / report per week - his writing is very slow and painful. So we are thinking of picking one topic / event / historical figure out of those covered in KHE, reading related library books, and then doing an outline based on these.

 

So what do your 5th graders do ?

Outline only ?

or a report - with full sentences and paragraphs ?

How long are the reports ?

one a week ?

 

I will obviously not try and follow what others are doing exactly, but getting an idea of what other 5th graders are doing would be helpful.

 

I think your plan sounds fine, one outline per week. Maybe make it a one level outline (main idea per paragraph) of about 4-6 paragraphs from one easily outlineable lib. book or encyclopedia article (I haven't found KF to be good for outlining, and have heard that SWB doesn't recommend it anymore for this, either). Then on another day have him write a narration on a topic of interest. This is pretty much what we've been doing (except for a detour into WWE to fix some writing skills!)

 

Specifics of what we do: one history outline per week, one narration per week. The narration is basically a paragraph. Yes, full sentences, but not more than a paragraph, unless ds is really ambitious that day. I'm using this narration time to apply the R&S paragraph writing skills on ONE paragraph, so that they are solid.

 

I *think* that when ds learns 2 level outlining, and starts rewriting from those, the rewrites will translate into writing more than one paragraph for a report, and then his paragraph writing skills will get practiced more. For, as many main ideas are in his 2-4 level outlines, there will be that many paragraphs or more in his rewrite.

[Rhondabee]

Like Colleen, I aim to do one outline (main idea of the paragraph only) and one paragraph. (Not on the same day or topic)

 

If you wanted, you could always let him dictate a paragraph to you, and then use that as copywork/handwriting the next day. I wind up doing that quite a bit, since sometimes we seem to run out of "history" time - and that way the work still gets done. (And my ds could *never* have enough handwriting practice!) I started 5th grade asking for 3 sentences only - a topic sentence and two or three supporting details.

[mcconnellboys]

I read from Kingfisher and other history encyclopedias and books about our topic for the week. My son reads any associated chapter(s) from Story of the World and outlines one section of one of those chapters. I try to pick one that does not contain a story, but just factual information. I also have other related books for him to read on his own during the week.

 

At the end of the week, he writes a report on either some topic related to the history we've been studying, or a book report on a story he's read during the week. These have ranged from a paragraph to a couple of pages in length. I do not place any restrictions on length, whether short or long.

 

The last week we were in school, we were studying the early Greek period. He wrote a report on the ancient Greeks (pre-classical). The week before that, we were finishing up our studies of Egypt. He wrote a report on Tutankhamun. The week before that it was on heiroglyphics. That was a short one. This last was one of the longest. I let him say whatever he feels he has to say on the subject. I'm just glad to finally be getting him writing, LOL.... At the end of this week, he'll be writing about Arabian Nights.

 

So, he generally does one outline near the beginning of the week and one report near the end of the week, related to history/lit. He also does outlining, with my help, from the science book I'm using as our spine, but that's not every single week; just when we begin a new section. He sometimes writes reports for science, but that's not weekly, either.

[newlifemom]

I have dd outlining from SOTW. Writing narrations from the stories in SOTW, and reading from KF. I also have her doing other readings related to history and sometimes narrating that. Not much else.

[Harriet Vane]

We love history at our house and have ended up taking more than four years to finish SOTW. In our case we just didn't want to rush through--we love savoring things as we go and reading a ton of extra library books. Therefore my plan morphed into allowing dd to take six years rather than four on SOTW. When finished with that we are going to do a year of American History and Government. After that she will jump right into Ancient History for 8th grade rather than 9th, and plan to take five years to complete the history cycle.