Switching to Classical in 10th/11th grade

[Spock]

My boys are in 10th and 11th grade this year. They have always been homeschooled and overall are doing well, though I have changed approaches many times, looking for the right fit for us. However, I haven't done enough writing with them, and have discovered this year that they really aren't ready to write anything resembling a term paper yet. (They struggle with a simple report, or anything longer than a paragraph or two!)

I have ordered Writing Strands 5 for my 10th grader, and Writing Strands 7 for my 11th grader (who I hope doesn't need to go back to Writing Strands 6).

What else do I need to do to help them learn to think deeply about books and write about them? My 11th grader in particular does pretty well noticing themes in books and relationships between books (and between books and history/books and everyday life). He has been especially insightful with comments on the relationship between history and the present. How do I get him to put this in writing? My 10th grader is less articulate both in speech and in writing. How do I help him?

(I also am switching to WTM methods NOW for the 1st and 3rd grader, so they don't have this problem in high school.)

[Nan in Mass]

Welcome!
It isn't a big leap from Writing Strands 6 to Writing Strands 7, so hopefully that will be ok.
And I have had better luck getting mine to write about their thoughts if I grab the thought when they have it and instantly tell them how I would expand it. I make sure they know how to expand, like adding examples, etc. This was something mine didn't understand at all. Then if I want them to actually write up the paper, I help them take notes on what I said. I don't really know how to teach writing at all, so I just sort of do it with them and then have them do something like it on their own. You can make sure they have a method of organization that works for them, like some people draw spider shaped things to expand their ideas and some people like outlines. I find an outline is useful, but not at the beginning of the writing process. It requires too many decisions early on about which level and which catagory. We like the way recommended in Writing Strands, which is simply to write down all your ideas and then pick which ones you want to include and number them in the order in which you want to present them. This is nice and unintimidating. Mine were so bad at writing that before they could even begin, we did quite a lot with retelling stories and magazine articles, and then worked with "three things". This is an idea someone here suggested. You pick a topic, and then have your children tell you three things about it. After a bit, you get them to tell you an introductory sentence ("Birds are interesting." Boring but a good first step.), three things ("Birds have different sorts of beaks, depending on what sort of food they eat. They have feathers. They lay eggs.") and a concluding sentence ("What kind of birds come to your feeder?"). This was easy. Then we practised expanding each sentence into three sentences. Then I began giving harder topics, ones less report-like and more argument-like. Because we were doing it orally, nobody objected. We tended to do it in the car. I think the trick is to pick the topics carefully - not too big, not too small, something the student has an opinion about and can think of arguments to support. I had better luck getting mine to write lots of small papers, so they got plenty of practice and the writing process sped up, than getting them to write a few long papers. Not that mine are great writers, sigh. Other people here probably have lots better advice. This is an area where we've really struggled. I like Writing Strands, though. It has helped my children see the sorts of choices that authors make and how it changes the story.

Have fun!
-Nan

[Spock]

Thank you.

I'm not sure where exactly my boys have trouble, other than choosing a topic (they have NO clue how to select an area and narrow it down). They also don't really know much about notetaking, references, etc.

My oldest tends to just start writing with no outline or pre-planning, and then get stuck when there is no point that follows from what he just said. He also often focuses on simple retelling of things he has read, or on expressing his opinion. He has pretty good logic skills, but doesn't give the necessary evidence to back up what he says. He also tends to write as if the reader of his paper has also read all the books he has read, so he doesn't explain where he got his ideas. (This is the better writer of the two.)

My second son tends to list all the facts related to his topic and stop. He doesn't try to tie the facts together, prove any point based on the facts, or even transition from one idea to the next very smoothly. He even leaves in the outline numbers and topic phrases as captions for each paragraph. He also doesn't usually give any references as to where he got his information, though he will sometimes quote several sentences in a row, with no explanation of what those sentences have to do with the sentences before and after them (though they are at least on the same topic).

They do both know how to write a decent paragraph summarizing something they have just read.

Kathleen

[Chris in VA]

Kathleen, you may be interested in The Lively Art of Writing, a very small paperback book that shows the process of writing a term paper (an essay, a research paper, and other things, too) very clearly. It is especially good in the first few sections, where it teaches how to choose and narrow a topic, and how to come up with a thesis statement. Write@ Home online writing course uses it--very cheap, very good. For about 5 bucks, a great supplement.