share your thoughts about teaching writing

[my2kidsmom]

I would like to find a writing program to use with my 10 yr old dd. We are finishing up with Rod and Staff English and also use Spelling Workout. R&S teaches a little about HOW to write, but it is lacking and SWO has a writing assignment with each lesson, but does not teach technique. I really want DD to learn to write better. I bought the book If You Are Trying to Teach Kids to Write....", but it's not at all what I'm looking for. Any suggestions?

TIA

[MIch elle]

nt

[Beth in SW WA]

IEW is working wonders here w/ my reluctant writer. My blog has a paragraph she wrote this week. No tears in the process :)

[Kimber]

I have a 10 year old and I just purchased a little book that I think is going to be fabulous for the middle school writer.

To date, my daughter has done narration, copywork, and dictation alongside narrative writing done in Classical Writing Aesop and Homer. I've decided I don't want to continue with CW any longer.

I own IEW and I teach it at co-op, but I don't think it should be used with younger kids. I think narration, copywork, and dictation are the way to go. But when they get older, paragraphs, IMHO, should be the focus.

I found Paragraph Writing Made Easy on currclick. It actually teaches writing similar to IEW, but is way cheaper. It covers the paragraph, key word outlines and regular outlines, writing pargraphs from outlines, writing outlines from paragraphs, and different kinds of paragraphs. I think it should be easy to swap out the paragraphs from the book and use paragraphs from your child's readings. But having that little book gives you focus without having to reinvent the wheel.

I wrote more about it on my blog in the link below, but the link to the book on my blog is to currclick where the book is for 12 dollars or so. It is available through Amazon for cheaper. I'd feel cheated out of my 2 or 3 dollars, but I'm too happy with what I have seen so far to complain.

I looked at other programs for middle school kids and I think much of it is just too cluttered.

[Kim in SouthGa]

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and suggest you don't need a program for that age. Of course, if you dc love to write, you may want something to give them structure. But if it is a chore to them, I would suggest copywork, dictation, and summaries of history and science readings. When my ds was that age, having him read a section from Kingfisher and write at least four sentences on it daily did more to help than anything else I tried. But writing has always been a struggle for him. I would also suggest SWB's Writing Without Fear cd.

[elegantlion]

We are using CW Aesop this year. I tried a few stand alone writing books last year, mostly inexpensive ones, my son hated them and balked at every assignment.

CW has given him the direction for writing and I have been amazed at the progress this year.