Writing rant!

[dirty ethel rackham]

Why, oh why does writing have to come with tears, knashing of teeth and tearing of hair?!?! Each time I have worked on writing with my kids, it has always taken at least 6 months of balking, crying, procrastinating, more crying, before they could write more than a paragraph without my holding their hand. I dread doing this again with dd!

My son has been working on a research paper for Abeka grammar for a month now. He is still not done with his research. Must all life in the house stop until we can get 5 paragraphs on paper?

Okay, now back to your regular programming!

[Michelle in MO]

because I just recently posted something on the High School boards about being in "writing purgatory" last Friday with my older two girls! It took them forever to make some changes to an essay they were writing, and I was ready to tear my hair out by the time they were done.

I must have more writing curricula than anything else. I don't find writing that difficult, but I feel more insecure about teaching writing to my own kids than anything else.

The research report you're talking about----is it the Abeka 5th grade research report? If this is any balm to your soul, about five years ago I got to hear SWB speak at a conference in Kansas City. I remember specifically her mentioning the "5th grade Abeka research report" and how difficult it was for her. I was shocked! (SWB---if you're reading this, I hope I'm not misquoting you!) Susan Wise Bauer---struggling with a report! She's a natural writer! Yet, I believe I remember her saying that that report was very difficult and caused a lot of frustration. My youngest daughter is working on that very same report right now, and yes, it is very difficult for her, too. I feel like I have to hold her hand for every single step!

One thing that has helped to alleviate some of this pain is that I bought IEW for my youngest and am trying to stick with the program. Andrew Pudewa does a very good (and entertaining) job of explaining the writing process to kids and adults alike. Also, I bought Julie Bogart's book (her website is Bravewriter) called The Writer's Jungle and it's very much a nurturing, Charlotte Mason-type approach to writing, which is actually what SWB recommends in the younger years. Perhaps doing dictation with your kids and simple narrations and scaling things "back" (kind of a pejorative term here, but I don't mean it that way) a bit will help your reluctant writers. Julie's book seems to emphasize more of a "writing lifestyle" and allowing discussions with your kids, freewriting, and other tools to help "draw them out."

Also, with my older two girls, we've done several online writing tutorials with Cindy Marsch of Writing Assessment Services, and that has helped relieve the strain on me considerably. Cindy's tutorials are very, very good----she's thorough, she's kind, and she teaches them to think logically. I'm not sure if her tutorials are geared towards younger kids or not---you might check with her. My older two girls like to write (they're 15 and 13), but they're exceedingly slow, very private (i.e., they turn the screen off if they're typing on the computer so that I can't see what they're writing! My middle daughter can type whole pages with the screen completely black!). Plus, they both want to write only what they want to write, and setting deadlines for them made me crazy! The writing tutorials have helped with that, and I finally got to the point with them that I wanted an expert hand in guiding them. Cindy has helped tremendously with that. So---perhaps a writing tutorial would help?

There are a lot of good tools and curricula out there---I'm only suggesting the ones that have helped us----but please don't feel alone. I think writing is difficult because it does force kids to put their thoughts logically onto paper, and that is a lifelong process. HTH!

[Sophia]

Ds 14 threw a three hour fit last week over having to re-do his topic sentence.

A topic sentence.

Do you know how many topic sentences he could have written in that time?

He did feel sheepish after he calmed down and apologized, but sheesh...
I'm still shaking my head over that one:eek:

[Michelle in MO]

I don't know what grade your dc is in now that is doing the Abeka research paper, but I'd like to share a few thoughts. I've always thought that Abeka's instructions for writing a research paper were good, i.e., the mechanics, citations, etc. However, I've always felt that not enough time was allowed for the child to choose a topic, read books pertaining to that topic, and in general think and ponder over what they are to write and how to formulate or frame that topic (i.e., a thesis statement). I don't always know what I think about an issue right away, until I've had time to read and ponder more about it. Sometimes I think they ought to state in the lesson plans somewhere, "OK, in two months you're going to start a research paper, so begin to think now about what you want to write and start reading books pertaining to that topic." I usually gave my dc more latitutde in choosing a topic than what Abeka offers, as well.

Just an additional .02 to throw into the hopper! :D