Struggling with writing

[Doran]

We are using Learning Lang. Arts Through Lit. (LLATL)/Orange Book - for our dd11 this year. By and large, it is a good fit for where she is and where she needs to be. I think I've heard that this book is roughly 4th grade level, so that tells you something about the gap in her abilities, which are improving rapidly in reading but still well behind in writing and spelling.

We are currently working on the research paper portion of the lessons. She is doing a paper on our state, and we have collected a number of mostly age appropriate resources from our library for her to use. We are a project of note taking followed by writing simple 3-4 sentence summaries of very precise topics - eg: Numbers of people in the state and the sort of work most of them do, major farm product in the state, etc.

As I sit alongside my dd to work with her (coaching everything from sentence structure to spelling to flow), my biggest concern is that it often feels more like MY composition than hers. I make so many corrections/suggestions as she goes along that it's hard to tell how much is original to her and how much isn't.

I'm not explaining this very well. Summarize it this way: If you are there to coach your kids along, how do you separate your input from their work? If you require them to work alone (remember the age we're talking about here), how do you not overwhelm them with corrections afterwards? Is there some smooth way to partner these two things?

Doran

[Claire]

I would recommend starting her on keyboarding skills if you haven't already. Using a word processor helps a lot with basic spelling and grammar. (Keyboarding Skills by Diana Hanbury King was the only typing program that worked for my dd.)

To help with flow and organization, I would have her write each idea on a post-it note and let her re-arrange the post-its until she has a good flow.

Spelling and grammatical sentence construction are actually editing functions. You can do this a paragraph at a time for a research paper, but basically she needs to write the rough draft herself. If there are ideas that need to be elaborated, changed around, or eliminated, your first edit would point those out to her. At that point she would re-write by herself and hand it back to you for editing. During the second round of editing, I would add in sentence construction changes that need to be made and circle major spelling errors. She would re-write again. This entire process is easier if she is keyboarding into a word processor.

[Laurie4b]

I think IEW does a good job of teaching the parent how to do just what you are asking: to give help when needed while moving the child to the goal of independent writing. There is a lot to the method they use, but one thing that I think is really important is the idea that there is no such thing as a first draft being the final draft. They teach making a sloppy copy (double spaced) as the first draft, and focusing on the written expression without editing as one goes. (They also have what I think is a very good structure for teaching the expression.) After the sloppy copy is handed in, the editor (mom) makes a certain number of corrections, letting a good bit of stuff go, so that the child isn't overwhelmed by the impression of errors. Mom does NOT teach at this point, just gives back the edited copy. The child then makes a final draft from that. The final draft may contain errors, just not the ones being focused on right now. For instance, the editor may correct run-on sentences, but not correct comma placement until complete sentences are down pat. The editor would not necessarily correct all spelling either.

If a child has produced the first draft on a computer, then the final draft is especially easy. However, if a child knows from the get-go that there will be a "sloppy copy" and a subsequent "final draft" there is less fuss about it because the need for the final draft doesn't make it about having handed in a "bad" paper.

IEW is expensive, but if you can possibly borrow a set of the DVD's, there is a lot worth learning in them. (They are a bit aggravating to sit through, as the presenter is in a real workshop and is the "chatty" type. There are some real gems that come out, but not in the order of the presentation; then again, there is a fair amount of just plain off-topic anecdotes that I'm sure are charming in person and annoying on a DvD. If you can get through that, though, the content is good.)

[Doran]

...deleted due to double post....apologies!

Doran

[Doran]

I never thought I'd have this much difficulty with helping a child develop good writing skills. But, I realize that having those skills myself and teaching those skills are not synonymous.

I appreciate the suggestions. Yes, Laurie, the IEW purchase wouldn't be a simple one for us just now (maybe if I could then drop the private tutor whom we pay $45 a visit...we'd get to $300 pretty quickly wouldn't we!? :rolleyes:). Any thoughts on where to try to borrow the dvd's? Library I assume?

Just to help me understand both of your general suggestions, please let me know how you'd approach the paragraph below, which is what she wrote today (on her own) after reading/listening to/and taking notes (w/ help) on some pages of Maryland history.

Maryland was founded frist in 1634 it was founded by Sir George Calvert. Maryland was the 7th state to join the Union 1788. famring was the main indistry but soon transportaion also becam one of the main indistry.
What would you tackle first?

Thanks,
Doran

[NCW]

Maryland was founded frist in 1634 it was founded by Sir George Calvert. Maryland was the 7th state to join the Union 1788. famring was the main indistry but soon transportaion also becam one of the main indistry.
What would you tackle first?

Wow, she writes much like my dd did a couple of years ago! I'd first compliment her on getting in so much essential information. She did a good job distilling the main points of her reading (it looks like from here).

Don't know what others would recommend, but with my dd I first ignored the spelling errors. They are actually minor to writing. I'd ask her to read her first sentence out loud and see how it sounds to her ear. If she didn't catch any awkwardness, perhaps I'd read it for her (kids often add the punctuation orally that they left out on paper). She may or may not have ideas for change herself. If not, suggest trying to read it without "first" and "it was founded" and ask her if she thinks that flows better.

Anyway, that's sort of how I work through writing with my dd. All I know is that my kids can catch awkwardness/flow problems best when they hear it, rather than when they read it. I always always try to start out complimenting something - a sentence, a phrase, etc.

It's taxing for kids to have every sentence needing work. Once we get through smoothing the sentences out on the rough draft, I generally let them know I'll help with any spelling issues right before they write up their final draft the next day. I'd probably note mentally for myself if there are any spelling error patterns or words I want to work on at another time.

For better or worse, that's what we've been doing here. After a couple of years, my dysgraphic dd just told me the other day that she "loves to write". She does wordprocess all of her writing assignments, and is adept as using spellcheck now.

hths,
NCW

[EKS]

A few years ago, writing with my son consisted of just what you are talking about. And all he was getting from it was the idea that he was a terrible writer who would never be able to write on his own. And he was right. At the time he was a terrible writer and if we had kept going on that way he would never have been able to write on his own. It doesn't help that I wrote professionally in a former life.

Finally, we tried the IEW keyword outlining method. The beauty of this is that you don't have to buy anything to try it. In fact, I don't particularly like the rest of the IEW method, but the keyword outlining part is very powerful to get a kid writing.

Here's what you do.

Find a paragraph on a topic of interest (we used relevant topics from our history and science studies mostly). Try to find (or write yourself) a piece that has only one clause per sentence. It also helps if the student knows something about the topic going into it. Have the student pick 3 key words per sentence and write them down on their paper. Now the example paragraph goes away. We usually did this part the next day, so that there would be some time between outlining and writing. Now the student writes a new paragraph from their outline. Once the student understands what he/she is supposed to do, the best thing is for mom to get out of the way. Then you can come back and help with edits.

The keyword outline approach really worked on two fronts for us. First, it got me out of the way and out of the room, which was absolutely critical for my son to develop as a writer. Second, it gave me son the confidence he desperately needed to develop as a writer.

[Claire]

Maryland was founded frist in 1634 it was founded by Sir George Calvert. Maryland was the 7th state to join the Union 1788. famring was the main indistry but soon transportaion also becam one of the main indistry.
What would you tackle first?

The above sample is actually much better than my dd's writing at that age. My dd is 17yo now and her rough drafts would still look very similar to this if she were working by hand. On the word processor, she would have caught many of the spelling mistakes and at least some of the sentence construction mistakes. For important papers, I do a final edit. (We have accommodations in place at the high school that allow for this, plus my dd always hands in her final draft along with the edited copy.)

NCW's advice is great! I think my problem working with my dd on writing was that I was a good writer myself and really was not very good at teaching my dd.

Dd's IEW co-op teacher, who was very experienced, always put a big positive comment at the top of every draft. On first drafts, she focused on organization and ideas (suggesting beefing up a paragraph here, crossing out duplicate information there), and major grammatical issues (she had a special funny stamp for incomplete sentences). On subsequent drafts she got pickier on the grammatical details and started circling major spelling mistakes. After several drafts, the final one always included at least one positive comment and only a few suggested changes. She basically ignored minor punctuation and spelling errors at that point. She was probably more rigorous with students who were better writers. As it was, she helped my dd a lot with this approach.

Although my dd is still not a great writer, as high school students go, she gets a lot of points from teachers for her ideas and organization. An editor can always polish up the mechanics of writing as long as the ideas are there.

[Doran]

Making "suggestions" such as the ones offered by NCW, do you not feel that you're writing the thing for the child? This is my biggest hang-up. I fear that in making such suggestions (now, I am assuming here that she won't catch this on her own...we've not yet gone back to it), I'm actually putting thoughts into her head and that, without my input, she won't get it on her own...ever. It's too soon to say. We are only just getting to the place where I can ask her to write this kind of thing on her own at all. Jumping off from history narrations, I've been asking her to tell me how she might form her thoughts first, before writing them. I find that she can speak her thoughts in a more organized fashion than she can write them. So, if she says them first, it helps her know what to put on paper. But, again, I am so inclined to "lead" her in that process. I can't tell where teaching stops and leading begins...kwim?

Doran

[Claire]

Can you leave her alone to write her ideas on post-it notes, organize those notes into an outline, and write her own rought draft? If so, the point where you become involved is when she hands you that first rough draft for revision. Writing consists of a rough draft, revision, revision, revision, final draft. Your job is to provide a layer of editing after the rought draft and after each revision. You point out where she needs to make changes to improve the paper, and she makes the changes. That's not writing the paper for her; it's teaching her the steps in the writing process and having her practice them. Eventually, as an adult, she will probably be able to do her own editing. While she's learning to write, though, the teacher's job is to be her editor.

Don't be too heavily involved in that first rough draft. Is that what you mean by leading her? Our co-op teacher made general suggestions, threw out ideas that students could choose to use or not use, but the writing of the outline (3-word sentence outline) and the writing of the rough draft were left up to the student. All of the revisions were left up to the student also. The teacher, though, did the editing.

[NCW]

I like the post-it note idea. Another thing I've read to do (from BraveWriter, which I love) is to physically cut apart a rough draft and rearrange sentences. We haven't done this yet, but probably will.

Yup, two years ago when using this technique with dd I was very afraid I was doing her writing for her. However, over time I've been able to pull back further and further. Sometimes now I can just say "take a look at your second sentence again" and she'll be able to fix it herself.

If your daughter can organize her thoughts orally, I'd be tempted to act as notetaker for her (actually, I've done this, but not often) and jot just a few words down in a sort of outline for her to fill in for her rough draft. That would be if she's not up to the post-it note idea that Claire had...sort of as a demonstration to her of how to do an outline, and encouragement that she does have it in her to do it. After all, she just did it orally. No one can write well if they can't first speak with organized thoughts, so she's already got step one in learning to write down.

Anyway, it's what's worked for us.

NCW

[Laurie4b]

In IEW, the student would have a list of specific criteria to have met--a checklist. If they did what was on the checklist, they get an A, even if there are other mistakes.

What I would do with a reluctant writer and that paragraph is postive reinforcement of what is good. "This paragraph is well-organized . She uses chronology as her organizing scheme. I would show her that she did that and congratulate her on it. She also did a good job of picking out main tidbits of info. I'd reinforce that, too. I'd tell her there are a couple of spelling errors etc, but that the main point is that it's well-organized. That's it for this piece of writing.

If you do things in a slightly IEW way, you could teach her that any good writer who submits work for publication has errors corrected by an editor. Therefore, from now on, she'll do one sloppy copy, you'll be the editor , and she'll make corrections for her final copy. Remember, you won't correct everything, just focus on one or two things until she gets them and then move on. The idea is to give as much positive reinforcement as possible so that the child starts to think, "Hey. I can do this. I can write. I even like it."

What I would also do is to keep track myself of misspelled words that are common words or patterns. I've posted before how I use an overteaching method to cover spelling. I would add those words to the words that I am working on with that message. Once a word had been through the overteaching system, I'd hold her responsible for it, by putting it back on the Day1 list. Eventually, I'd also add "FYI" spelling corrections. (FYI meaning I haven't taught this yet, and you're misspelling it is not therefore an issue, but FYI, it's spelled this way.)

She also has a run-on sentence in the paragraph. I'd teach that topic repeatedly (and only that topic) in GRAMMAR (not directly with her writing for a while) and after a while, start to correct run-on's in her work.

By borrow, I meant ask around to see if other homeschoolers have the DVD's and ask if you could borrow them. Some homeschool groups maintain libraries as well (usually at someone's house or a church.)

[Laurie]

(I haven't figured out how to do the quote thing yet...)

I just wanted to let you know that your style of working with your dd is actually recommended by writing coaches. Julie Bogart (Brave Writer/The Writer's Jungle ) uses the term "Partnership Writing" to describe this stage of developing writing skills. She encourages this style of co-writing.

Another book that encourages this is: Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World (J.Freed and L.Parsons). These authors use the term "writing and weaning" ...parent modeling the writing process, with more parent than child input in the beginning.

I'm not sure if this helps at all, but I thought I'd go ahead and throw this into the discussion anyway!

[Doran]

We've had a slow recovery after our flu, so we are only just getting back into the school books. I wanted to thank you all for your remarks and ideas. Very helpful and encouraging!

Unrelated to English but still on the topic of writing for this child, our most recent history narration had a slightly different approach thanks to you all. Generally, I read the chapter of SOTW (or section, if it's a long chapter), sometimes stopping along the way for dd to retell what she's heard so far. Then, we go over review questions, followed by the narrations. Lately, I've been having dd write at least one of the narrations herself, rather than dictating to me. Again, this sometimes feels so "behind" because I know many 11 yo's are well beyond this point. But, for us, it felt more important that she understand the material than to struggle with writing it herself -- so this is a big step for her. Anyway, this time, we were on a particularly short chapter, so I simply asked dd to tell me what she remembered sentence by sentence. I wrote her words on post-it notes and gave them back to her. From these, she created the following one page handwritten history review.

frederick was Prince of Prussia and brandenberg. but he wanted to become king so he asked the holy Roman Emperor if he could become King of Prussia. the holy Roman Emperor agreed and Frederick crowned himself king. Frederick marched into brandenberg though and acted lik a king there to. frederick made Academies and spred the German language. Frederick also made the people of prussia feel like they could call them selves Prussians. Fredericks son carried his fathers ideas even farther by making the army stronger. Fredericks grandson carried Prussia even farther and it is now called Germany.

I liked using post-its in that fashion, though because I wrote more than just "notes", I realize that's not quite what was suggested here. But, I also think dd liked that process. It felt less threatening to her. I'm thinking I could try that system a few times and then work more toward a key word/notes outline, to get her more accustomed to how it works.

Claire, for the record, I checked out the keyboarding book online and it looks great (at a very reasonable price). Thanks!

Doran