I am trying to think of specific areas that my kids need improvement. I want to focus more on reading for sure. Which obviously will be more reading aloud and quiet reading. Another area I think needs improvement is math, but I think just hanging in there with our math curriculum and not giving up will help on this one. My biggest question is about writing. I can tell that the kids are really needing improvement in this area. I can NOT go out and buy a new writing curriculum right now. I do have a writing book but we tried it at the beginning of the year and it was a little heavy for them at the time. I guess I am wanting a way to kind of build them up to it. What kind of things could we do that would introduce writing in a fun way???? I downloaded some book reports that build up from 1st grade, and even though they're in 3rd, thought it might be an easy way to slowly get them better there. But what could we do for writing that is just fun and the kids would actually ENJOY????? We have journals and we don't do them as much as we used to (because of the appointments) but I want something that I can edit and I don't edit journals because I keep that as a free writing thing. Anyhow, any ideas or suggestions are appreciated.
My opinion is that at their ages, just journaling is plenty - without editing. Free expression without "marking it up" is confidence-building, On the other hand, you might just suggest that they correct capitalization, periods and commas, and the occasional glaring spelling error, without really changing the substance of their writing. Later on, you can suggest that "this sentence isn't really a complete sentence. May I help you add to this to make a complete sentence?" If they say no, leave it until much later. I hate book reports, especially for some so young as third grade. If you get where you can buy some additional writing helps, you might try a little book from CLE called On Teaching Writing. It isn't really a "writing program" but rather is some very helpful tips for teaching writing when you're not a writer and the kids aren't either (including how to give grades). It is useful for any age students, especially third grade and up. You might also try Writing Strands level 3 to begin, no matter what grade the kids are in at the time - I used it pretty successfully with some 9th graders who hadn't had much writing instruction in public school before that time. It's not very expensive (at least it wasn't when I used it, and you might try the used curriculum sites too), and if they don't write in the book, you can resell it when they're done. You'll only need one, if they write on other paper.
I 110% reccomend Writing Strands!!! I also reccomend their Evaluating Writing for you to read, I have to read over it often to remind myself to lighten up and see the wonders at work. For their ages I would start with level 2, we are doing level 3 with Garrett who is in 5th grade
is it some letters are warse than other? I would just make an example of the perfect letter at the beginning and let your kid finish the line doing the best job. I would do it untill he (its a boy, right?) gets it. WHen i started writing with my 3 year old i made sure he has a habit of writing good letters. I didnt want him to know that "if a letter somehow resambles the letter than its good enough"... for me good enough was that all letters are streight and all the circles are round. He is now 4 years old and like how his letters now. Sometimes he points on the bad letter and wants to erase it to do over. We call them BAD letters, SICK letters...
www.freeology.com has some free writing prompt starters. I have had my DDs use them from time to time. We have IEW but haven't delved into it much yet....my oldest will start it next week since she's finished her Rod & Staff 6 grammar book and NEEDS to do more writing...so delaying the start of R & S 7 for a while. I have Writing Strands for the younger ones but for now, we're just doing what's in their English books.
Thanks for the tips everyone! I will check out the link and the curriculum suggestions! I am not trying to put an entire curriculum on them yet. Just a few fun things to get them used to writing real sentences. Like now if we do the journal, they'll write a picture and the writing (especially my ds) tends to be "it is a dog. it is happy. it is big." instead of more complete sentences. But I know that they're definitely not ready for anything full yet. And the book reports are more like fill in the blanks for now and work up slowly to actual book reports. I'm trying to figure out how to explain what I am looking for.... We played a board game tonight, the kids were reading their own cards but more importantly WANTING to read their own because it was fun. So I'm looking for something like that but for writing. Like the other day they made up their own menus when playing restaurant. But I'd like some ideas on ways I can have them write sentences but in a really fun way like that. I don't know if I'm making sense. lol!
This is where I have found writing strands helpful with my 7 year old! It has them writing out sentences like that to begin with. SO it will turn into "This is a big, happy dog that likes to run and play in the park."
you could try writing letters to a grandparent.... ....or sneaking writing into other subject areas....write a report or a story or a poem about something interesting in geography, or history, or science (maybe an animal?)...
I agree with Ksol, and that is why I love Writing Strands!!! They are sooooo easy and the kids don't even have a clue what they are doing <insert evil giggle here>
When I was teaching those ninth graders who had not had much exposure to writing yet, we had a lot of fun with one of the exercises from Writing Strands (I think it was from that!) where you start with a basic sentence such as "The dog ran." Then you add modifiers one or two at a time by asking questions such as "what color was the dog?" (The brown dog ran.) "how big was the dog?" (The little brown dog ran.) "where did he run?" (The little brown dog ran in the yard.) "How did he run?" (The little brown dog ran happily in the yard.) "When did he run?" (The little brown dog ran happily in the yard yesterday.) "Did he do anything else?" (The little brown dog ran and played happily in the yard yesterday.) "Did this dog have a name?" (The little brown dog named Bob ran and played happily in the yard yesterday.) "What was he doing while he ran and played?" (The little brown dog named Bob ran and played happily with a ball in the yard yesterday.) And so on. Some of the sentences got quite silly and involved, but the kids could see that it really wasn't all that hard to make nice descriptive sentences by asking yourself a few questions and adding the answers to your sentence. Then when we'd done quite enough with one sentence, we'd compare the result with the first "The dog ran" sentence and ask ourselves which one was more interesting to read. They got the point pretty quickly, but every now and then they'd ask if we could build some more sentences... They also "got" the idea of misplaced modifiers -- such as The little brown dog with the white tip on his tail named Bob (what? the tip of his tail was named Bob???) and so on.
I recommend Writing Strands, too. My 5th grader is doing the Level 3. My 3rd Grader is doing Level 2. And I might have him redo 2 next year, also....it's a great thought process book, I think. Each book is 14 lessons, and the lessons take anywhere from 3 to 10 days...depending on how you like to stretch it out. On the "off" weeks, my oldest will just write in her book...sometimes she'll pick starting or ending sentences out of a jar to get an idea. Someone once told me that "Writers, write". So giving free access and reasons for writing. I also work writing into all of our subjects. When we're answering history questions, it's not enough just to give the answer and write it in their book...I make them include the wording of the question in their answer. Even just verbally working through the way to answer the question in a way that the question is included is helping them think through and problem solve ways to write sentences.
Make your own Mad Libs? Writing strands is fun too, and or the differnt story starters out there.. it is fun to have each of htem take turns writing a story too! Mak eit on Bigger paper to make it exciting! Then have kids take turns drawing pictures to go with the story and put it together as a book, actually that reminds me!!! I had each of my kids write their own book at about that age. We wrote a rough copy, then had them either type it on computor or hand write, draw pics by hand of course, ( you can scan and copy for final draft) then we made a fabric cover for ds 1 ND FOR DS2 HE PUT his in a fair folder and got a ribbon for it! Dd I forget her story , but ds 1s I remember it was about a cat who sat on a hat, his was done in first or second grade and had to rhyme cause thats what we were working on then.
Okay okay...I'm checking out writing strands! lol! That does sound fun! I can see adding something fun and "game like" like this to our weekly work. I think they would enjoy it if it's something we're doing together like that. But from the sound of it, I'm checking into writing strands!!! And I like the letter idea. We had done pen pals before but we were so overwhelmed at the time with everything else that we had to stop. So maybe just writing to the grandparents occasionally would work too.
yeah! Writing strands really makes writing fun for my ds Autumn you will like it, I think your son and dd will too!
Autumn, it must be close to fun because Garrett, who HATES anything school has 2 subjects this year he doesn't complain about... TT for math and Writing Strands
I have been going through the same thing with my 11 y/o. She had been doing bob jones all through private school and we continued with it for homeschool. She seemed to be doing really well with sentence structure in the book, but once she was on her own to write a story/report it was a mess. I have read alot of people on here praising writing strands also, so I think I am going to give that a try too.
You may want to check out brucevanpatter on line (be sure to add the www. and .com). Click on the web site for Creative Writing for Kids. Once on the site, click on the left "A quick list of fun stuff." From there you can click on "The Story Kitchen" or "Mug Shot." I did these story starters with my son. I would read the story starter and then we would each think of how to end the story. He loved them. But he still hates writing.
