Good plan for writing? For a terrible writer, 6th grade

[Janeway]

My 6th grader is an awful writing. I think I maybe have a plan or idea to what to do, but really want feedback as a lot of this is so costly. I was thinking of doing IEW Student Intensive the first year, so he can learn outlining and such. Then after that, re-evaluate. The other programs I was really interested in were EIW, Jump In, and Writing and Rhetoric. I was open to switching to MP writing program too.  IEW is so expensive and I am unsure if I am making the best decision here. He is not creative at all. He is a box checker and he puts in what he is told to put in. If he is told to write a paper about walking to the park, that paper would literally say "I walked to the park." He would be unable to add details.

edited to change: After making this post, I went and asked him to write a creative paper on getting from our house to the park. I told him he can make it say anything, even getting there by bike, spaceship, etc. I told him to include the details. He actually came back with a good paper.

Edited August 1, 2021 by Janeway

[Quarter Note]

Hi @Janeway.  I don't have any experience with IEW or with the MP writing, but have you looked into the Killgallon middle school books?  Last year, when my older child was in 6th grade, I was in the same boat as you.  While I knew that she was smart enough at what she was learning, her writing was just so basic, so blah.  We took a break from WWS1 and did Killgallon Sentence Composing for Middle School and Paragraphs for Middle School. I skipped through a lot of the repetitive activities, and some of the activities I modified so that she could write about a preferred subject, but at the end of the year, her writing had really improved.  (She just previewed this post for me since it is about her, and she says, "If you even want to link to my website so that she can see how my writing has improved, you can!"  I won't for the sake of her privacy, but you can see that she's even become proud of her writing!)

One of the other nice things is that the books are fairly reasonable priced.  We even bought ours used.  

[Momto6inIN]

My daughter who doesn't like to do details is improving well with IEW. It is a definite investment of $, but it's been worth it in my opinion. She's someone who likes the checklists.

[Dianthus]

21 hours ago, Momto6inIN said:

My daughter who doesn't like to do details is improving well with IEW. It is a definite investment of $, but it's been worth it in my opinion. She's someone who likes the checklists.

Have you finished level B yet?  Or just starting?  I'm trying to figure out if I should stay with it or move to MP. 

 

For OP, if you child likes checklists, IEW has that built in. I think my daughter is overly concerned about meeting all the checklist items and ends up with things that don't quite fit the overall composition.  I know I am not using it as intended, and we had a lot of issues clouding our year. I only watched about 2 hours of the teacher training. Dd watched student videos and I checked papers afterward, after skimming lesson assignments. I don't feel I can watch 14 hours of teacher training now either. I'm not sure if it's better to go ahead with level B or if I should move on to MP Classical Compostion where I have to go back and do 5th/6th grade writing in an accelerated schedule to catch up. We did really enjoy Mr. Pudewa's videos.  My other kids would watch them also. 

[Momto6inIN]

1 hour ago, Spirea said:

Have you finished level B yet?  Or just starting?  I'm trying to figure out if I should stay with it or move to MP. 

 

She is halfway through level B and will finish the rest this coming school year.

Edited August 4, 2021 by Momto6inIN
eta: we use the ol version and she's done all of level B SWI and the first half of level B SICC

[EKS]

I highly recommend that you read the book Engaging Ideas by John Bean.  One of the key points he makes is that good writing reflects good thinking, so much of a writing teacher's energy should go towards getting students to engage with their question/problem and think about it deeply before writing a word.