Please help me help DS with WWS.

[Noreen Claire]

DS11 has been working through WWS level 1, and has been doing well so far. His outlining ability is much improved, and his descriptions of narrative writing are getting better as well. However, we have reached week #14 and are having trouble with writing a scientific description. In week 14/day 4, he was given a list of facts about Mars and an excerpt description and told to write his own description. What he did was write down EVERY SINGLE FACT and try to form them into sentences. I don't know how to help him write this description. He did have trouble a couple of lessons ago doing the same type of lesson about volcanoes, so it is definitely a scientific description thing he's having trouble with. 

FWIW - I have read that I am supposed to "work through the book first", but I DO NOT have time to do that. Also, I'm no writing slouch - I have a couple of degrees and was ABD in my Ed.D. program. I just don't know how to TEACH this to him. We will spend as much time as we need to on this before moving on to the next lesson. 

Help, please? 

[wendyroo]

Has your son carefully read through the instructions for Day Four, Step 1? Have you read through the Instructor's Guide for that step?

In the student instructions, it specifically says, "You should not try to include details about every part of Mars; you can focus on the exterior, the interior, or a few select major features of both."

And then, in the Instructor Guide, it says, "You may need to help the student decide which parts to leave out of the description", and then gives more specific instructions about ways to do so.

My DS11 is on Week 33 of WWS. I've made the assumption that any time it tells me it is okay to help the student, that that must be a skill that will be spiraled back to in higher levels.

When my DS did this particular exercise, I encouraged him to think about what point of view he wanted to write about in Step 2. Obviously, if he wanted to write from the perspective of looking at Mars from space or standing on Mars, then it wouldn't work to focus his Step 1 description on just the interior of the planet. Similarly, I had him think about his Step 3 metaphor or simile early on. If he landed on a metaphor he liked then that could guide his choices in Steps 1 and 2.

One general idea that really helped my DS in WWS: The instructions were too narrative, conversational and out-of-order for him. He was often missing or forgetting or trying to skip steps. I started requiring DS to go line by line through the instructions each day and put check boxes next to each individual task. 

So in Step 1, he would have a check box next to "Look carefully at the labelled diagrams..." He would put one where it tells him to read and another where it tells him to write his rough draft. But then the instructions backtrack and start telling him specific instructions for writing...especially the "not trying to include all the details" instruction which is really an indirect way of saying the students needs to choose which details to include.

For that step, DS would end up with a checklist of 1) Look, 2) Read, 3) Choose interior, exterior, or a few features from each, 4) Write (with two subpoints: 4a) describe what made of & what looks like, 4b) 200-400 words).

[Noreen Claire]

Thanks, that was helpful to see how you have your son breakdown the directions.

I'm confused with the given excerpts... Is he expected to incorporate language from those? Isn't that plagiarism? I'm not sure how to have him combine the lists and excerpts together into a description. I've had him reread the descriptions from week 13/day 3 to give him a model, but it doesn't seem to be helping.

*sigh*

[wendyroo]

2 hours ago, Noreen Claire said:

Thanks, that was helpful to see how you have your son breakdown the directions.

I'm confused with the given excerpts... Is he expected to incorporate language from those? Isn't that plagiarism? I'm not sure how to have him combine the lists and excerpts together into a description. I've had him reread the descriptions from week 13/day 3 to give him a model, but it doesn't seem to be helping.

*sigh*

Later in WWS 1, the student learns all about "common knowledge" and how it does not need to be cited.
Here is what it says:

Quote

If a piece of information is widely known by a large group of people, it is called “common knowledge.” You don’t have to footnote common knowledge.
Here’s an example: Jacob Abbott’s biography of Charles I begins with this paragraph:
King Charles the First was born in Scotland. It may perhaps surprise the reader than an English king should be born in Scotland.
You could begin your own chronological narrative with:
Charles I was born in Scotland.
without having to footnote. Hundreds of historians know that Charles I was born in Scotland. Every biography of Charles I points out that Charles was born in Scotland. You could have discovered this without ever picking up Jacob Abbott’s book. That is common knowledge.

It then goes on to list "widely accepted scientific facts" as one category of knowledge that is generally considered common knowledge. I suspect that is why the facts about Mars are taken out of their original narrative structure and provided as a list of very short phrases. I don't think it is possible to plagiarize "fourth planet from the sun" or "shield volcanoes in northern hemisphere". Obviously the student has to put those tidbits into sentences, and any similarity to the original sentences they were pulled from is clearly coincidence since the student has never even seen those sentences.

[wendyroo]

If it is any help, this is what my son wrote for that assignment.

     If you could visit Mars, it would not be a very pleasant place. There is nothing even a tad bit interesting on the whole planet. You would die instantly because the stinky air is poisonous and unbreathable. If you somehow survived the lack of oxygen, you’d die of thirst and hunger because there's not a single drop of water or delicious morsel of food on the seemingly endless surface. Overall, Mars is like a torture chamber the size of a planet. 
     Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. It has a diameter of about 6,760 kilometers, which is about half of Earth’s. Mars takes 686 Earth days to go around the Sun. Phobos and Deimos are Mars's two moons. 
     Mars's atmosphere consists mostly of carbon dioxide with a little bit of nitrogen and argon. The atmosphere is about 95% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen and 1.6% Argon. Traces of oxygen, water vapor, and carbon monoxide have also been detected in Mars's atmosphere. 
     The reddish dust on the surface is made of iron-oxide, also known as rust. There is no liquid water, but the north polar cap is made of frozen water about 2 kilometers thick. The south polar cap on the other hand, is covered in 8 meter thick frozen carbon dioxide. 
 

[Noreen Claire]

Thank you!