piraterose
10-21-2010, 01:09 PM
but I'm not really sure how it can be done any other way. Boo (first grade) had a spelling assignment to write a story entitled "The Big Mess" that had to include all of her spelling words: don't, can't, mess, less, lend, bend, come, help, tell, fell
My daughter hates to write stories to begin with, so I wanted to be involved from the get go - because to me it seems like a bunch of random words to meld into a story. It became a two night project with lots of tears (Boo) and head banging (me) on how to make these words into a cohesive story.
This is the note I wrote the teacher and her comments back - I'm not sure what I am missing because how can you write a short story with all those words and have it make sense with out a little forethought?
My email:
"Last night's spelling assignment was quite a struggle for "Boo". Were you expecting a lot of hand holding with this assignment? Because there was no way "Boo" could have done this on her own.
We even started talking about it the night before, how the spelling words could apply to the characters, setting and plot. She had a complete meltdown just trying to come up with names for her characters, even when I gave her suggestions, and tried to explained that there was no wrong answers. While she was in bed, I finally got her to calm down and she chose names from the ones I sugglested, decided that goggles were the object that would lent, and setting would be at water where someone would fall in. Last night we pull out the dictionary and wrote out words that she would use that she didn't know how to spell, like lean, goggles and water.
THEN we finally started writing the story, with me having an outline in my head and feeding her the word(s) that would work in each sentence. Basically it just ended up with me telling her what to write, based on her story prompts. Just writing the story took us 90 minutes from finding words in the dictionary to the final word written. This morning we spent 30 minutes rewriting the story in her nice handwriting and with name and title on the paper.
Is this normal? How can I have handle this better in the future, so that she could have been more independent with her writing. Honestly I had trouble figuring out how to make all the words fit in the story myself.
She's already labeling herself as someone who hates to write stories (based on the same struggle last year), so I would like to find a way that makes the process more natural for her. She hasn't struggled with the individual spelling sentences up to this point, but this story was a major meltdown block for her and the assignment would not have gotten done, without my direct involvement."
her response:
"Way too much work for that assignment. I went over this in class and showed the children how to make a story about a mess. It was just suppose to be a simple little story.
No outline necessary. Next time, just let Elisabeth write a story on her own. If is not what I expected I will go over it with her. I am sorry that she had a meltdown. I'm sure it was hard for you as well. We have been very successful writing stories in class. However, I realize this was the first time the children had to do it at home.
Just a practice test tonight so you can both get a good night's sleep. Thanks for your email and for helping her."
I realized I used a bad trigger word with "outline" - in reality we just talked about it and had an idea in my head on how all these words could word together in he story that Elisabeth wanted.
Am I crazy or was this more like a puzzle than a story? your talking about a 7-10 sentence story, (we managed to get two words in the same sentence a couple of times, but mostly is was on one per sentence.)
Thanks in advance.
My daughter hates to write stories to begin with, so I wanted to be involved from the get go - because to me it seems like a bunch of random words to meld into a story. It became a two night project with lots of tears (Boo) and head banging (me) on how to make these words into a cohesive story.
This is the note I wrote the teacher and her comments back - I'm not sure what I am missing because how can you write a short story with all those words and have it make sense with out a little forethought?
My email:
"Last night's spelling assignment was quite a struggle for "Boo". Were you expecting a lot of hand holding with this assignment? Because there was no way "Boo" could have done this on her own.
We even started talking about it the night before, how the spelling words could apply to the characters, setting and plot. She had a complete meltdown just trying to come up with names for her characters, even when I gave her suggestions, and tried to explained that there was no wrong answers. While she was in bed, I finally got her to calm down and she chose names from the ones I sugglested, decided that goggles were the object that would lent, and setting would be at water where someone would fall in. Last night we pull out the dictionary and wrote out words that she would use that she didn't know how to spell, like lean, goggles and water.
THEN we finally started writing the story, with me having an outline in my head and feeding her the word(s) that would work in each sentence. Basically it just ended up with me telling her what to write, based on her story prompts. Just writing the story took us 90 minutes from finding words in the dictionary to the final word written. This morning we spent 30 minutes rewriting the story in her nice handwriting and with name and title on the paper.
Is this normal? How can I have handle this better in the future, so that she could have been more independent with her writing. Honestly I had trouble figuring out how to make all the words fit in the story myself.
She's already labeling herself as someone who hates to write stories (based on the same struggle last year), so I would like to find a way that makes the process more natural for her. She hasn't struggled with the individual spelling sentences up to this point, but this story was a major meltdown block for her and the assignment would not have gotten done, without my direct involvement."
her response:
"Way too much work for that assignment. I went over this in class and showed the children how to make a story about a mess. It was just suppose to be a simple little story.
No outline necessary. Next time, just let Elisabeth write a story on her own. If is not what I expected I will go over it with her. I am sorry that she had a meltdown. I'm sure it was hard for you as well. We have been very successful writing stories in class. However, I realize this was the first time the children had to do it at home.
Just a practice test tonight so you can both get a good night's sleep. Thanks for your email and for helping her."
I realized I used a bad trigger word with "outline" - in reality we just talked about it and had an idea in my head on how all these words could word together in he story that Elisabeth wanted.
Am I crazy or was this more like a puzzle than a story? your talking about a 7-10 sentence story, (we managed to get two words in the same sentence a couple of times, but mostly is was on one per sentence.)
Thanks in advance.