What is your writing plan (not curriculum) for K-12?

[Melissa B]

I am not sure how much writing my 10 yo should be doing. I know what curriculum we will likely use. I do not have any reluctant writers or children complaining about writing etc. But my 10 yo spends more time per day than I would have anticipated, on writing. I want to have reasonable expectations. So I am looking for examples of what different families expect - maybe per week?

How many pages or assignments or papers, etc. How much informal vs. formal writing? Do you write in every subject, every week? Do you set an amount of time spent writing each day?

Thanks!

[Kimber]

My 9 year old writes well only because she reads alot and has a great vocabulary. But now that she's writing everything herself, by hand, the quality of her writing is suffering. Anyway, to your question :), my daughter uses CW Homer and all week is working on her weekly writing assignment.

In addition to this, I am having her write a paragraph for me about each weekly book that is assigned to her. She will be doing two of those this week because she didn't get her paragraph done last week. She waste a lot of time when she's overwhelmed. But she is doing better.

She also does copy work and dictation weekly. One or two days of copywork, and one day of dictation. I don't require more dictation because of her other writing.

I have a question for you about having two children in different Latin programs. My dd is ready for LP, but not my son. How is it having one in Lively Latin, and one in Latin Prep. How much are you involved in those two programs? Are they easy to teach?

[8FillTheHeart]

I probably have my kids writing less than many people on the board. I am definitely in the quality over quantity category. They write on assignments across curriculum (in younger yrs, usually history/science and then from lit as well as they get older.)

My kids write one assignment per week. We break the writing process down into days. For younger kids, it looks something like this: Mon-brainstorm, organize, write topic sentence, Tuesday--rough draft, Wed--revise and improve, Thurs-final copy.

I teach directly from writing. Each step is reviewed by me and we discuss/plan the writing process for each step.

On average, they spend about 30-45 mins on writing per day in elementary school. They have varied greatly in ability. So on average, they write 1-3 paragraphs in third/fourth and 3-5 paragraphs in fourth/fifth. (BTW, I don't have them doing any independent writing for school work until 3rd grade. K-2 is strictly copywork with instruction.)

This approached has worked well in preparing my kids for college level writing. :)

[Melissa B]

Kimber -

I am completely involved in Lively Latin, but I find it fun and very easy to teach. I do all of the work with dd8. Actually, both girls are doing Lively Latin together. My dd10 feels like she missed out not using this program. The vocabulary is obviously easy for her, but they enjoy doing it together.

Latin Prep my dd10 is doing almost completely on her own. I review vocabulary with her daily and look over her work. I think it would be more difficult to teach with no Latin background or with a student that wasn't really self-motivated. That said, I think it is an excellent program!