How much writing for high school? What subjects?

[Katia]

This has been rolling around in my brain for a while now, about how much writing a high school student should do each year and in what subjects.

Should they be writing more than one paper at a time while still doing 'regular' school subjects? ex: one paper for Literature, one paper for History, one paper for Science

OR, should we just have one 'period' for writing and mix up the subjects within this time frame ex: one paper for Literature, next paper for History, etc.

I really struggle with this one. How much is too much (too overwhelming) and how little is too little? I know homeschoolers in our area that think they are doing good to have their high schoolers write two to three papers, in Literature only, for the entire year. That freaked me out!

My dd in 10th grade this year was writing papers in her Apologetics class while writing papers for her Literature class, and beginning to write a paper for her History class. It was TOO MUCH for our school day.

I'm looking to stream-line but I'm not sure if that would be hurting her. Is one writing period/one subject-at-a-time ok? Not enough?

What do you do?

[Veronica in VA]

Katia,

I struggle with this, also. My dd loves to write, but not academically. She would write fiction and poetry all day, but essays, no. I figure she needs to be writing something everyday, even if it is not a lot. Then I like to see an essay every 2 weeks or so. I mean a polished essay, finished, not partially done. She hasn't done a full blown research paper yet, we are saving that for next year in 11th grade.

Hope that helps,

Veronica

[percytruffle]

My dd in 10th grade this year was writing papers in her Apologetics class while writing papers for her Literature class, and beginning to write a paper for her History class. It was TOO MUCH for our school day.

I'm looking to stream-line but I'm not sure if that would be hurting her. Is one writing period/one subject-at-a-time ok? Not enough?

What do you do?

I try to schedule papers so that ds, my 11th grader and only one still at home, is working on one or two at a time, not usually three though. Most of the papers ds writes are lit analysis, backed up with quotes, or history analysis and regurgitation from the text or other reading. These papers take far less time than a research paper. I try not to schedule more than one paper at a time that is heavy on research.

For example: Right now ds is writing a research paper for history to wrap up the year. He writes every few days in history, but it is short essay type questions from the text, this is going to be a 10'ish page paper that he is working on now. His thesis is something about how Douglas Macarthur's background education, training, and family influences contributed to his becoming the kind of military leader that could be successful in the Pacific during WWII. It is taking a good amount of research and reading.

He is also writing a lit analysis paper on Perlendra, specifically how the main character, Ransom, is a redemptive figure. He doesn't need to research other sources for this paper, but he does need to pull quotes from the book. Since we used a Progeny Press tudy guide to discuss the work, he already has Biblical quotes handy, so there is very little to research for the paper, just lay it out and write it.

This is all he is writing at the moment. It is plenty. When he is finished with these papers we will do some poetry writing and he will be writing a paper for art history. I think we will discuss The Old Man and the Sea, which he is reading now, orally instead of writing about it because it would just be one more thing added on and we need to gear-down a little.

He also just took the SAT a couple of weeks ago, so he wrote some timed essays in preparation for that. He also had to write a timed essay for the community college placement test last week. The kid is due for a writing break! I can tell when enough is enough and we will be getting to that point soon.

[Jean in Wisc]

Each year I put together a writing program--this year my 11th grader is doing Warriner's English Comp and Grammar. We zipped through a review of paragraphs, slowed down to polish up a few essays, and now we are working on a research paper. We skipped the section on the literary analysis because we are done with lit right now. Next year, when we start our lit class again, we will blend the literary analysis/critical analysis type paper with our literature class. Many times, the "long" paper that I assign in composition class is a topic for another class (often history). I do not normally assign papers in our science class.

In history class, all the tests are short essay questions. I go over these not only for content but for style. If the child cannot write these well, we sit down and talk about the info that was left out, go into the text and outline or take notes, and then I have him write/rewrite the essays until he can do it well on his own. This becomes a comp/hist class for a short while.

When we study for the ACT, those writing portions become part of our comp exercises, too. We do not run this as a separate class. When the child applies for college and scholarships, he is required to write/rewrite essays--usually we suspend our composition class during this time (my dd wrote an essay a day during her senior year while getting all the applications/scholarships sent in).

So, sometimes my dc are writing more than one paper at a time, but I can't remember their working on more than 2. If I count a credit as 160 or 180 hours, by the time they get their bookwork done in most classes, we do not have time to be doing several papers on top of that. I try to blend comp and their subjects to help them have the time to do both.

HTH,
J

[Katia]

Thanks for all the examples and wonderful advice. It is such a relief to see that others question or struggle with making the writing of papers fit into their day.

I think I'll streamline our writing by making one 'writing' period in our schedule and have her only work on one paper, one subject at a time, while still writing short paragraph answers to questions in each subject.

That should do it, don't you think?