Sneaky mama, that was me, I think, with the problem writer. She loooves the computer but it's a tad difficult to practise handwriting with! lol. She has actually begun writing miles of stuff as her own creative writing stuff but won't share in case I make her do an edit & fix all the punctuation.:roll: She needs her writing to have a purpose & that can be exhausting to come up with practical reasons to practise writing reports, business letters etc. I tend to find if she HAS to do it because it is her own project, she'll check with me to make sure she's got everything right. The day she found spell check on the computer was a red letter day for her. (I hadn't shown her becuase I was monitoring her spelling.) It is valid to model report writing ~ or any other type of writing. I am still doing this but I have a visual/spatial learner & suspect too many steps overwhelm her :There's the report format to remember, then spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, information, sequence ... the list goes on & on. She's a miniumlist too. She never writes more than the bare minium.
Okay, for a report on say, a country what do I need in it? Like Population, climate, stats, right? Then Who re the people of that country... maybe to bring in a Christian aspect I can ask what the main religion status is in the country? What are the exports and imports of the country... what else? Oh she will want clothing styles etc
Very good thread! I was glad to type the word "report" in the search engine and come up with this. I'd be looking for encouragement to keep our kids learning how to write reports or stories or poetry. Any type of writing. I liked the Panda report! Sometimes for a report you can answer the questions, what, who, where, why, how and when about the topic or subject chosen. This is good for the draft stage.
Can you tell I like Geography? I took it as my Senior Social study as well as Phsycology back in highschool. My kids get to learn about the world all the time! When we hear about a place we look it up to see where it is and play geography games. I want more than just pictures in my reports though I want to know they did good research... I just need to know what in laymans terms do we put IN a report... Bibliography, uh... name , and title page, national resources? what was happening in history at the time of our study on this part of the world? what else?? Anyone?
Jeannie is finishing a report on beavers. The first day she chose her topic. We reviewed sentences/papagraphs/ topic sentences/etc. We went and got books from the library. The second day we decided what to include. She read her book and took notes . The third day she wrote a rough draft of paragraph one. Over the next two days she did a rough drafts of paragraph 2&3. I asked her questions about what she read, to help her decide what to write. Today she has to revise, and tomorrow is her final-I HOPE- copy. I made this nifty folder for her, a Stages of Writing Folder. Staple two manilla folders together. The first space is labeled Notes and Rough Draft. The second space is Revisions, and the third space is Final Copy. You just move it each day, but the pages stay nice and you know at a glance what you have to do the next day.
BTW- we use Bob Jones English, and it always gives a finished sample of what they want you to do. In this assignment they showed a sample report on elephants, plus all the notes and what not.
OH cool , thats what my ds9 is takign for 5th grade! I have it down on my list, English5? It says that they work with them on this stuff too. So that will help a lot! BJU has good enlish and so does Abeka I am finding, and hopefully these will help them to work together on projects this year, I am doing Abeka english for 10th grader. I was looking at LLATL for her but decided since we re doing a literature based History we better go with a workbookbased english. Thanks for the input BeckY! I like how you said you set it up in a booklet. So I could do for my son at least, and my dd probably since this is an area she lacks in... ONe page for brain storming, what to do it on, give suggestions maybe? One page for information collected? ( 2 for dd) one page for rough draft per section maybe since I am thinking reports on states and countries..... Maybe then the good copy and pictures I want pictures, maps and diagrams in my reports.... what do you think? Graphs too for history, cause that means population graph agrriculture inport exports, etc...
That folder idea is the best thing I've ever seen to help you stay on track and keep your papers nice. Look in the front of your English 5 TE to get more cool ideas like that.
It's full of good ideas, TM. My year might have been smoother had I read all that before we started. All kinds of options and ideas and tips.
Great, I will make sure and read it before I start too! I cant' wait to start purchasing... hey one question when you order on line via liek Rainbow Resources, which has not sent my catalogue btw! HOw long do you wait for the stuff? I have always done CBD and AOP and know thier times.
Oh, I ordered straight from BJUP. I can't imagine it would take that long, though. Don't they say 7-10 days from the day you order?
The one thing we have been focusing on in our learning process is project management. This year we are doing total syllabus learning like they do in college. Within the syllabus I set the parameters of their projects and assignments, but it doesn't mean I don't give them a little guidance when they are asking for it. I just let them figure out different approaches to getting it done. That is the only way I have found to increase their problem solving ability. The template I use is found under Teacher Resources at thehomeschoolexchange.com It has worked wonders, they can see what is expected of them and the project or assignment they are working on, and they can refer to it when they need to. Hopefully this will teach them the learning style of college learning and how to handle projects when they enter the workforce. Educate4Kids thehomeschoolexhcange.com
I went there and then went to Donnas again lol! I love her site, and I got lots of ideas for my own on the computer Home Schooling tracking stuff! Reember I am gonna put it on Network so kids and I can all acess it each day /week/ quarter! I AM GETTTING EXCITED!
