Jump to content

Menu

School Jumped into CAP W&R Book 5 - Not going well. Any advice?


monalisa
 Share

Recommended Posts

I posted this on an old thread, but realized it would be better to ask on a new thread.... Looking for W&R Book 5 (Ref/Con) advice:

My dd11 goes to a classical 3 day hybrid school that adopted W&R this year (threw out IEW, much to my chagrin).  They are starting all 3rd graders in W&R book 1, but then from 4th through 10th grade, are jumping into W&R at different levels.  They sold this as "we're going to transition students" but I don't see that happening at all in my daughter's class.  They put the 6th graders in Book 5 (will also do Book 6 this year).  My daughter is really struggling.  I'd hoped the teacher would be making up for skipping books 1-4 with scaffolding of what was taught from book 1, but it seems she is just plowing through the lessons with very little teaching of concepts in the earlier books.  My daughter did great with IEW, but is hating and resisting W&R.  It feels like the W&R Book 5 assignments are just "write this" with very little instruction, and a whole lot of work book pages.  Prior to this she did (successfully) 2 years of IEW Level A (with an online class the first year).  The passages that they are asked to narrate or summarize are very long in W&R5, without any instruction on how to do this.  I've tried to get dd to use her IEW techniques, but because the teacher isn't asking them to do this, she is resistant.  She says she is overwhelmed with how long the stories are and she doesn't know where to start.  The teacher says my daughter should have learned outlining and narration from IEW (she has never taught IEW, however). If you've used IEW, you know it doesn't teach traditional outlining, but looking at the W&R TE, it seems to me that they've taught outlining at some point are assuming kids know how to do this.  Also, none of the IEW we ever used had much of any narrating (other than tell back your key word outline). Any advice on how to help her? Should I buy one or more of the prior levels of W&R and do some of the work to help her get up to speed?  Honestly, I don't like W&R at all myself.  This book seems beyond an average 6th grader.

After 6 weeks of being underwhelmed by W&R, I'm tempted to pull her out of the class and just teach writing (with something else) at home (which is possible but causes some other logistical issues since it isn't the last class of the day).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think some of your answer about what makes sense to do depends on your future plans with the hybrid school - do you want her to continue there in future years? If you pull her out and use other materials for writing this year, it will be just as hard most likely to jump to W&R the following year.  Unless you are prepared to always do writing separately. 

W&R follows such a different trajectory to many other writing programs that it is surprising more students don't struggle with jumping in to a random point in the sequence.  I've used the first 3 books in the series with more than one kid. Then at one point I needed a 1 semester writing option for a 7th grader to finish out the year after a class he signed up for was cancelled, and I tried him on one of the W&R books that could be suggested for that age (book 7 or 8 maybe?).  It was a bit tricky despite having had experience with a couple other writing programs, including IEW.   

I feel like starting in book 4, the difficulty ramped up quite a bit - my kids weren't ready for what book 4 asked of them, so my kids that used W&R 1-3 did IEW after that.  If you are committed to sticking with the school and making W&R work, buying book 4 and taking a look at that might be an option?  They start to teach the essay format more in that book, and it probably lays a lot of the foundations for what you are seeing in book 5. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi. Writing and rhetoric is an intensive writing course. My daughter did books 5 and 6 last year with schole and her writing improved immensely. I taught her books 1-4 prior to putting her in schole. 

Outlining is taught in books 2 and 4 I believe. I think book 1 would be too easy for her if she has had IEW experience. 

If it was my kid, I’d pull her out. It’s hard catching up. There are IEW classes via outschool. 


Go back to IEW. It’s not worth all this pain she is going through. 

I’m sorry you guys are going through this. I hope you guys figure something out. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, kirstenhill said:

I think some of your answer about what makes sense to do depends on your future plans with the hybrid school - do you want her to continue there in future years? If you pull her out and use other materials for writing this year, it will be just as hard most likely to jump to W&R the following year.  Unless you are prepared to always do writing separately. 

That is a great point.  I'm already in my mind not enrolling for next year, but this is my youngest, uber extroverted child who has thrived with outside teachers and friends she can see a few times a week.  We enrolled again this year primarily for that reason, so I need to really think about so I don't back into a corner for next year.

22 hours ago, kirstenhill said:

W&R follows such a different trajectory to many other writing programs that it is surprising more students don't struggle with jumping in to a random point in the sequence.  I've used the first 3 books in the series with more than one kid. Then at one point I needed a 1 semester writing option for a 7th grader to finish out the year after a class he signed up for was cancelled, and I tried him on one of the W&R books that could be suggested for that age (book 7 or 8 maybe?).  It was a bit tricky despite having had experience with a couple other writing programs, including IEW.   

All my HS friends who have used W&R have only used the first 3-4 books, and are also surprised about trying to jump in at book 5.  I'm not sure about the other students in her class struggling or not.  I don't really have any contact with any of the other parents.

22 hours ago, kirstenhill said:

I feel like starting in book 4, the difficulty ramped up quite a bit - my kids weren't ready for what book 4 asked of them, so my kids that used W&R 1-3 did IEW after that.  If you are committed to sticking with the school and making W&R work, buying book 4 and taking a look at that might be an option?  They start to teach the essay format more in that book, and it probably lays a lot of the foundations for what you are seeing in book 5. 

Interesting.  That makes me feel better, knowing that your kids had done the previous books and still had issues in book 4.  I will probably try to get a hold of books 2-4 and see if I can remediate if I decide to stick it out.  She did so great in IEW I think because it was very concrete, explicit instruction.  I feel like that's not really what W&R is meant to be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, desertflower said:

Hi. Writing and rhetoric is an intensive writing course. My daughter did books 5 and 6 last year with schole and her writing improved immensely. I taught her books 1-4 prior to putting her in schole. 

Outlining is taught in books 2 and 4 I believe. I think book 1 would be too easy for her if she has had IEW experience. 

If it was my kid, I’d pull her out. It’s hard catching up. There are IEW classes via outschool. 


Go back to IEW. It’s not worth all this pain she is going through. 

I’m sorry you guys are going through this. I hope you guys figure something out. 

Thanks for that encouragement.  That's what I really WANT to do, but the question is am I ready to commit to not enrolling her next year.  Not a lot of great options for outside interaction where I live, and she's my youngest and very extroverted.  No good co-ops, only lots of CC campuses (been there with older dd, done that, not going back! ;).  There's one other minimally classical hybrid that starts in 7th but it takes a very different approach.

She's really into Narnia right now so I might just buy the IEW Narnia Book 1 and do that on the side so she's getting more actual writing instruction, and help her extensively with W&R. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...