Colleen in NS
07-31-2008, 02:09 PM
Ds is starting 5th grade. He has progressed pretty well with composing narrations in 1st - 4th, and with dictation. He can "marry" narration and dictation together pretty well now, but we'll still work on building his ability to "hold words in his mind" while writing them down, via dictation. I've taken my direction for teaching these things from WTM and the Writing Without Fear CD.
We've begun one level outlining in history and science. That's going pretty well, so far. It takes some talking through to find the main idea of a paragraph, but he understands the general idea of finding it.
But I'm not sure where to go with narration in these years....someone told me the other day that narration can be dropped and rewriting from an outline can be started around grade 7 (I'm guessing this is so that the student has had a couple of years of experience in ordering ideas via outlining?). What should my goals be for grades 5 and 6 for narrations, then? Should I be transitioning him from writing two or three sentence narrations, to writing a half page? A couple of paragraphs? If so, how do I do this? Or do I just let him write write as much about the topic as he wishes, as long as it's about the main ideas in whatever passage he read? I don't imagine it would have to be more than a page, since on the writing CD, SWB mentions that towards the end of logic stage, it's useful to the student for the rewrites to be often, but short (a half to one page). But, I just am not sure what goals I'm supposed to be aiming for with narrations at this stage, so I can't figure out the steps to reach them.
Also, if I'm going by the WTM and writing CD suggestions, we'd be doing the following each week (I'm trying very hard to keep our week to 4 days): a history outline (one level, from 5 or 6 paragraphs), a science outline, a lit. narration (after discussion), two history narrations (two is suggested in WTM, but I'm not sure why two instead of one), and a science narration (again, as suggested in WTM - but called a report there). Plus writing up the science experiment. If we do all this, there will be more than one writing assignment on some days. Is this too much for this age, even if each narration is just a few sentences? Or do I pare down the amount of narrations per week and just make sure there are at least two outlines per week? Or do I still write some of his narrations for him as he composes? I'm trying to sift out what is truly important, and I don't know exactly what is! He's one of those boys who hates the physical act of writing (I'm thinking of teaching typing sometime in the next year or two, but am also unsure about the whole "handwriting vs. typing" and at what age to transition to typing). But he doesn't mind the thinking part that happens when I coach him through putting his thoughts into words with proper grammar and all that.
I'm just not sure about the progression in skills that is supposed to happen in the next few years. Any advice on anything I appear to be unsure of? Thank you!
We've begun one level outlining in history and science. That's going pretty well, so far. It takes some talking through to find the main idea of a paragraph, but he understands the general idea of finding it.
But I'm not sure where to go with narration in these years....someone told me the other day that narration can be dropped and rewriting from an outline can be started around grade 7 (I'm guessing this is so that the student has had a couple of years of experience in ordering ideas via outlining?). What should my goals be for grades 5 and 6 for narrations, then? Should I be transitioning him from writing two or three sentence narrations, to writing a half page? A couple of paragraphs? If so, how do I do this? Or do I just let him write write as much about the topic as he wishes, as long as it's about the main ideas in whatever passage he read? I don't imagine it would have to be more than a page, since on the writing CD, SWB mentions that towards the end of logic stage, it's useful to the student for the rewrites to be often, but short (a half to one page). But, I just am not sure what goals I'm supposed to be aiming for with narrations at this stage, so I can't figure out the steps to reach them.
Also, if I'm going by the WTM and writing CD suggestions, we'd be doing the following each week (I'm trying very hard to keep our week to 4 days): a history outline (one level, from 5 or 6 paragraphs), a science outline, a lit. narration (after discussion), two history narrations (two is suggested in WTM, but I'm not sure why two instead of one), and a science narration (again, as suggested in WTM - but called a report there). Plus writing up the science experiment. If we do all this, there will be more than one writing assignment on some days. Is this too much for this age, even if each narration is just a few sentences? Or do I pare down the amount of narrations per week and just make sure there are at least two outlines per week? Or do I still write some of his narrations for him as he composes? I'm trying to sift out what is truly important, and I don't know exactly what is! He's one of those boys who hates the physical act of writing (I'm thinking of teaching typing sometime in the next year or two, but am also unsure about the whole "handwriting vs. typing" and at what age to transition to typing). But he doesn't mind the thinking part that happens when I coach him through putting his thoughts into words with proper grammar and all that.
I'm just not sure about the progression in skills that is supposed to happen in the next few years. Any advice on anything I appear to be unsure of? Thank you!