How should I explain how to write a paragraph? This is frustrating both my ds and I. Yesterdays assignment ended with Noah in tears. He can recognize a complete sentence on a worksheet but asking him to write a complete sentence is disastrous too. I need a little help here.
My ds had a hard time with writing. Not that he didn't know how to do it but just coming up with the words. So I had heard a speaker on hslda and tried it. I would have both kids sit down and give them a topic, something goofy or that pertains to them, such as "I woke up and a monkey was in my bed. I....." . They need to complete the story and only in one minute. They would really enjoy hearing each others stories and it became where they would just beg to do it more. After a while I would let them pick out a topic. They would then count their words and as time went on they couldn't believe how many words they were writing. When my ds would do his language arts it was so much easier.
I gave up, and sent Rachael to a class taught by a former high school English teacher. He performed a minor miracle on my daughter!!! To me, you don't "teach" writing, just like you don't "teach" talking. Kids just "do" it automatically! (Yeah, right!!! LOL!)
Right at the moment the kids are taking a writing class. It is being taught by the teacher Elianna had in Kindergarten which thrills Elianna to no end. The class only has 6 kids which I love! They do skits, play games, and even draw. My kids love the class and they are learning something too!!
One thing I do is I will have Aaron "dictate" to me what he wants to say and I will write it down and then have him copy it. We do it this way because being dyslexic it's sometimes hard for him to get what he wants to say down on paper. Ann
I struggle with this too....writing is one of my eldests fear...I like the dictation part....I've done that with her before for things like reports and stuff and just help her organize her thoughts. I think that's the hardest part. The lady who wrote Story of the World and Well Trained Mind (I think) Susan Wise Bauer said that you have to train the brain to retain the words before they can think and write the same time. Like they need to be able to hold the sentence in their head long enough to get it onto paper and that's where the breakdown occurs...that's why narration and dictation are important - to train the brain to hold onto words long enough to get them down on paper. I don't know how true that is, but wea re using FLL with my middle boy. Anyway...I digress...one thing I do with my eldest SOMETIMES is write all different kinds of words on different colored index cards (like nouns on pink, verbs on green, adjectives on purple, adverbs on yellow, etc) and let her "construct" sentences. That seems to help her figure out what she wants to say. I have a friend who does this with ALL of her daughters vocabulary words too (word on front, definition on the back) that way she has a "word bank" to choose from when writing reports. I haven't done it to this extension, but it seems to make sense! Hope this helps.
Writing was one of the subjects I backed off on until this year - 5th grade. He hated it and we mostly did copy work previously. That worked. This year for the first semester he did free writing - I have him the topic every morning and he could write whatever he wanted. That worked too. We JUST started formal writing, and in fact we just did paragraphs Wednesday. I'm using the workbook "Writing Fabuous Sentences and Paragraphs" from Evan-Moor. They explained the paragraph first by picking up ANY book and showing your child what one is. How it starts and ends. Then it explained the main idea with topic sentence and supporting details. The exercise was read the following paragraphs and state the main idea and topic sentence. Today we are doing supporting details. He seemed to grasp the concept fast, but he's ready now. In my opinion writing is a developmental skill, being able to hold the pencil for a long time, being able to write quickly enough to make progress and not be frustrated, being able to imagine a structure to your words. That was why I backed off for so song. He wasn't ready and would cry everyday. Now, he still doesn't really "like" writing, but he's mroe than capable of performing the exercises so he does it like any other subject.
I think writing is one of those things that most kids aren't ready to do well until they are a bit older. I think narration is a good start for a child to get their thoughts together. Samantha didn't begin writing well until 5th grade anyway.
I have a workbook called "Writing with the Five-Paragraph Model" by Children's Publishing (McGraw Hill) that explains the process but is middle school level. They may have something similar for the lower grades. This is the website on the back of the book www.MHteachers.com (I don't know if it still works) that you could try. We never used the book as my dd learned this in ps and writes well. If you need some story/paragraph starters try www.freeology.com as they have some really neat ones.
My dd struggled with writing also. It was hard for her to come up with the words, yet she could tell a story well. It is something I have found that cannot be forced. She can finally write a sentence, paragraph or story fairly well. It took me laying off and telling her to think of it in her head...like what she would say and then write that down regardless of spelling or grammer errors. Once something was written then we worked on the spelling and grammer. There are graphic organizers that also may help out. I have one of a hamburger...the top bun is the topic sentence..the lettuce, tomatoes and burger are the details and the bottem bun is the closing sentence. It is pretty cute. I found it somewhere online. I wish I could tell you where...but I tried looking myself and couldn't find it again. LOL. I think it may have been freeology. However, there are many graphic organizers like that and just as cute that I printed off free come various sites.
I have one child who struggles with this also. Here are a few links that may or may not be helpful. Writing Resources, Write Source Writing Models, How to Write a Paragraph and Cyberseminar. Though I just noticed you have a 71/2 year old, at that age I wouldn't worry at all.
we have something similar on our kitchen wall, except it's a traffic light that dd11 made, based on a small graphic i saw online somewhere. (excuse the smudges, one of the cats walked across it when it was on the table)
Thanks for the ideas. I ordered some sentence building, word magnet "thingys" for Noah. They look like fun. Maybe once we get the sentences down pat he will be ready to move onto paragraphs and stories. I love the hamburger idea and the traffic light idea. I'll try those too. Yeah he's just 7 but his Language curriculum is already getting into them. I will hold off for a while and try the suggestion of Having him write a silly story and then count the words after he's finished writing it. It sounds like something Noah would enjoy after he gets used to it.
Good suggestion, How to Write a Paragraph! I have that one. Someone had it at a yard sale and I bought it for 25 cents.
We use Bob Jones English, and wow, does it teach the child how to write. They explain the paragraph this way, and it ends up like the hamburger graphic- topic sentence two or three supporting details closing sentence Jeannie had to write a story this week and BJUP walks you right through the whole process. My Jeannie is 7, also.
haha - that's where i saw the traffic light before! :lol: ...i couldn't remember what site it had been! ..we flipped them around though, because traffic lights have the green at the bottom.
I don't do anything REALLY formal until about grade three, and them we just begin introducing the idea of a paragraph, work with that until Grade 6 - that is when we really start - we do full papers (1 pg or more - right now we are working on the more!! full notebooking and the like. This is not so good for my ds as his handwriting is SO BAD but when he can then type up his essay and they look pretty, it really gets him going.
I used to really struggle with this one in my classroom, but somehow it just “clicked” with me one year. This is how I do it: I start off with basic statements. I spend a good week or more (depending on how they are doing with it). We write statements up the ying-yang!! I like cats. Pizza is good. Frogs are interesting. The girl is cute. Riding bikes is fun. Chairs are comfortable. Etc…. I make a huge chart to hang on the wall and we add all these statement to it. By the end of the week, we have literally hundreds of statements there. The next step is to get some ideas to go along with the statements. I have the kids tell me three things that explain why they like cats, or three things that make pizza good, or whatever. I like cats. Fluffy, soft, playful Pizza is good. Lots of cheese, pepperoni, black olives Frogs are interesting. Croaks, smiles on faces, yellow eyes Once they have the basic structure of the paragraph, they can flesh out the details into sentences. I like cats. They are fluffy. Cats are soft. They are playful. Voila!! You’ve got a basic paragraph. Granted, it’s really only a skeleton at this point so you need to work on developing more complicated sentences, but the basic structure is in place. Now what you’ll do is take ONE sentence and flesh it out. I like cats. They have long, fluffy fur. Etc…. If you break it downlike this, kids can get it quite easily – honest!!
Nancy thank you so much! I'm going to try this with Noah next week. It sounds easy enough, I hope it clicks with him. I like having him make uo the statements, that should make it easier for him to think of supporting sentences to add to it. Great idea!
