Language Arts with a Prolific Writer

[Clarita]

We are not a family of writers, except for DD6. WTM doesn't seem to have a lot of guidance on how to handle this. How do you teach them everything they "need" to  know about writing correctly, while keeping their enjoyment of writing? Is just exposing them to well written work without direct instruction and letting them do their own writing enough?? Discuss your thoughts.

[mathmarm]

Well, I would look for ways to try to train myself how to teach and develop various ELA skills (Reading, spelling, handwriting, writing/composition) and take some time each day (or most days) to really familiarize myself with some of the things to look for in Language Arts learning and teaching that aren't curriculum/program specific because you may wind up wanting to use specific materials, various materials or no materials at different seasons throughout her ELA education.

For our elementary years, Hubby and I definitely strive to give our kids high levels of quality exposure, but we lay a solid foundation of actual skills so even with our Word Nerd eldest, we definitely leveraged direct instruction of skills that kids need to know in order to be able to read, handwrite, spell and compose essays  (ironically, we used an actually Direct Instruction program for writing stories/essays, lol).

One things that kind of arose organically when our eldest was young, but grew into something so powerful for our homeschool is we made an effort to create and provide as many highly visible references as possible so that independently, they could access whatever he might like to know for his own efforts. We hung educational reminders throughout the house so he didn't have to always come ask how something was spelled if he decided on his own time that he cared.

So, a 15 minute lesson on multi-syllable words/spelling patterns/sentence patterns could be hung up and displayed around the house.

It was "schoolish" but has been super effective for our kids and after a few years they've got a certain canon of skills down pat across multiple areas. We were big on language development and language rich environments for the young kids, but we didn't feel that it alone was enough. We chose to also teach both ourselves and our kids what was "needed".

 

The result is that my Word Nerd is empowered to tackle pretty much whatever he wants to create/read/write do.

[Clarita]

5 hours ago, mathmarm said:

One things that kind of arose organically when our eldest was young, but grew into something so powerful for our homeschool is we made an effort to create and provide as many highly visible references as possible so that independently, they could access whatever he might like to know for his own efforts. We hung educational reminders throughout the house so he didn't have to always come ask how something was spelled if he decided on his own time that he cared.

Hmm... I have to figure out how I can do that. The communal space in my house doesn't have a lot of wall space. (A lot of giant windows and doorways.)

Yes this is exactly the stuff I'm looking for because she has ideas of things she wants/needs to write everyday and no matter how much creative writing a curriculum is including it always feels a little too rigid for her because she has her own writing project that she wants to work on that day. 

Then both my husband and I both read a lot and that didn't transfer into us being good writers. So the just language rich environment gives us some pause. 

[Momof4sweetkids]

I don't know but my dd6 likes her spelling dictionary (a free printable I found online) so that her writing is accurate enough to be readable but she doesn't have to ask me how to spell things.

[wendyroo]

I don't have any prolific writers, but I do have a couple ODD kiddos who vehemently oppose all instruction that feels like it is attacking or belittling them.

For them I tend to expose them to high-level ideas (so they don't feel talked down to), and I teach skills I see them misusing in their writing without EVER pointing out the mistakes in their writing (or, heaven forbid, suggesting that they fix them). I just hope that over time they will internalize the right way to do things and start to incorporate that into their writing.

Two resources I like are Michael Clay Thompson grammar and this TPT Mentor Sentences resource. With both of those we can discuss ideas without it feeling like I am lecturing them, or them having to do exercises to practice the skills...which they would resist strongly.

As for helping young writers be successful, we often use Talk to Text to allow them to write for fun before the act of writing (and spelling, and spacing, etc) is easy or fun. We do have a dictionary wall where I post the common words they misspell often, but they can also use our Google Home Assistants to ask how things are spelled.

 

[Clarita]

25 minutes ago, Momof4sweetkids said:

I don't know but my dd6 likes her spelling dictionary (a free printable I found online) so that her writing is accurate enough to be readable but she doesn't have to ask me how to spell things.

I do have one of  those for DD6 as well; it's starting to work better now that she can read better. By prolific writer, I also mean she's been wanting to write before she could read. 

[Penderwink]

I was a prolific writer as a child, and still enjoy writing stories recreationally as an adult. As a child, I used to write and illustrate lots of stories. I had a lot of extra time to do things at elementary school, and wrote lots of long adventure type stories. Sometimes they would make a few corrections, and I’d have to copy it out nicely, but mostly I could just write. At that time, the educational policy was that lots of corrections might harm a child’s self expression so I actually never had formal grammar. I was also a prolific reader though, so I think I absorbed quite a bit.

In my late teens I got very into writing fanfiction and then I noticed some gaps in what I knew (e.g. punctuation of speech). I learnt from copying patterns from books, and also mutually proofreading with other fanfiction writers. It was really fun and I learnt a lot - I would say I still benefit from the hundreds of thousands of words of extra writing I did for fun. I also separately had a lot of practice in technical academic writing as part of my studies. I do wish my grammar background was stronger, but it doesn‘t hold me back. Losing the joy in writing would definitely have held me back.

I still write for fun. It’s one of the hobbies I most look forward to being able to spend more time on when this busy phase of life with young children passes. I have a whole story world inside my head, and it’s magical. If your daughter has that drive to write, I’d keep formal grammar/spelling instruction to something quick and efficient, and supply lots of nice new pens and beautiful notebooks for her to write in. 

[macmacmoo]

EDIT: posted to wrong thread opps

Edited July 7 by macmacmoo

[Ellie]

On 6/26/2024 at 3:55 PM, Clarita said:

Yes this is exactly the stuff I'm looking for because she has ideas of things she wants/needs to write everyday and no matter how much creative writing a curriculum is including it always feels a little too rigid for her because she has her own writing project that she wants to work on that day. 

Then both my husband and I both read a lot and that didn't transfer into us being good writers. So the just language rich environment gives us some pause. 

Don't worry about "creative writing." That's only one kind of writing. For this age, I wouldn't even use any sort of a "curriculum" for writing. I would teach her good spelling, and basic punctuation and capitalization (e.g., sentences must begin with a capital letter and end with some sort of punctuation), and let her write her stories and whatnot on her own, whenever she wants. You can introduce things like writing than-you notes, and the general form of letters and envelopes.

[Clarita]

2 hours ago, Ellie said:

For this age, I wouldn't even use any sort of a "curriculum" for writing.

My plan for this upcoming year I think is just to give her a shelf/box of inspiration and let her go from there. Lots of fun stationary, a set of gel pens, one of those art daily calendars (for pictures), a personal spelling dictionary, a pretty notebook and let her do her thing. 

[ieta_cassiopeia]

One idea I thought of, that may or may not work in this context, would be to go find a good solid book of all the language things (grammar, style, plot, character, handwriting, anything else you feel should be in language arts) for your own reference. Each day, Each session (this format may lend itself to multiple short lessons in a day rather than being forced to put all the language in one lesson), ask DD6 to write something that includes the particular point you'd like to teach. For example, "Write something including the word [spelling word of the session]" or "Write something with a beginning, a middle and an end" (the expectations for 6-year-olds are not stringent, and you only need to include points DD6 has not demonstrably mastered from the many writings you have already seen). DD6 can decide what is written, as long as it includes the point of the session. You can take natural opportunities to do less desired forms of writing (such as thank-you letters and short pieces of writing across the curriculum - though neither is compulsory at age 6).

When you writing is finished, you know what to look for. If the thing you asked for is done well, job well done. If not, more specific instruction may be needed (which the reference can help you to provide, as might any other books you already have about language arts). The state of the rest of the writing will give you ideas on what to focus on in the next session, but at this age and at the beginning of using this technique, 1 request per session is plenty.