Writing 2011-12

Oh how I dread the writing.

Pete loves to write so I don't want to squash that interest, but his writing needs work.  Granted he's only eleven and I've been teaching him grammar and sentence structure, but I still think it's an area where he can improve and he'll need to improve in the coming years.

So bless those folks at Peace Hill Press.  They are working on the middle or logic years for writing as well.  The only formal writing program we've used is Writing Strands (WS) and it bores Pete silly.  So silly that his sentences usually end up with the word poop in them.  So I knew I had to find something that focused more on the mechanics of his writing than the creative.  He's plenty creative when he's interested and obviously WS was not interesting to him.

So once again, Susan generously provided chapters of her upcoming book Writing With Skill (WWS) to all the begging WTMers on the board and shared it on her blog .

I really like that Susan focuses on the mechanics before the creative.  I think she is spot on in desiring to have the students understand how to put the words on the page before letting them loose to do their own writing.  And being able to find the main ideas and supporting ideas will be a huge boon to his report writing skills later on.

All that said, he's is struggling with it.  We didn't have the luxury of using the Writing With Ease series geared towards the lower grades and I love that process, one also used by Charlotte Mason.  We started using the WWE 4 book last year and he seemed to do okay with it so I'm not sure if the trouble he's having now stems from not having enough practice at narrating or if he's just being reluctant.

Time will tell, but I'm sold on this program.

~R

ps  once again, WS is a perfectly valid program and many people sing its praises, just not what we need right now.
pss I use the word so too much which is strange because I don't use it when I speak.