copywork revisited

[catbeth]

I have been requiring dd to copy one 4-line stanza of a poem each day, which usually results in a completed poem at the end of the week. She has come a long way in the last several weeks and completes this task easily.

However, last week when dd was writing her sentence for dictation, I noticed she was talking to herself as she wrote, doing sort of a "play by play" as she directed herself how to form the letters. She wrote more slowly than usual, but that was one beautifully written sentence! Yesterday for copywork I told her to copy just one line of the poem and do it just as carefully as she had done the dictation. It turned out looking almost as if an adult had written it!

My questions - isn't one beautiful line better than four mediocre ones? Do I need to encourage her to work up to four beautiful lines? What is the end goal for copywork output in Beyond, anyway?

[my3sons]

...My questions - isn't one beautiful line better than four mediocre ones? Do I need to encourage her to work up to four beautiful lines? What is the end goal for copywork output in Beyond, anyway?

Good question! It is so important to know the intended skill of each lesson, as that drives the purpose of the lesson. Copywork is something new to most of us, as we didn't have copywork in school. The "Introduction" of Beyond has this to say about copywork...
Daily written language practice is provided through copywork. By copying
from a correctly written model, students gain practice in handwriting, spelling,
grammar, capitalization, punctuation, and vocabulary. Copywork also
prepares students to eventually write original compositions.

Copywork sessions should be limited to 5-10 minutes. Work should be
required to be done neatly and correctly. It is more important for students
to produce careful, quality work, rather than a large quantity that is
carelessly done. Copywork assignments can be done in a notebook or
on loose-leaf paper to be collected in a binder.

So, the main goal of copywork is best met by dc copying the poem neatly. This helps dc gain practice in handwriting, spelling, grammar, capitalization, punctuation, and vocabulary. I'll add that I felt it helped each of our dc be ready for the increased writing in Bigger Hearts as well. It is better to have students do neat, correct, quality work as opposed to doing careless work. I hope this helps!

In Christ,
Julie

[catbeth]

Thank you so much, Julie! I had thought that copywork was primarily a handwriting exercise with grammar and spelling as the side benefits, but apparently I had things backwards. It is very helpful to have it explained again!

So the eventual output goal is 28 lines, which is the longest poem in Beyond. But next week's poem is only 4 lines. I think the wide variety in poem length from week to week is another reason I thought that it didn't really matter how much the student was copying on any given day. Next week I guess dd gets a break, lol.

[my3sons]

Thank you so much, Julie! I had thought that copywork was primarily a handwriting exercise with grammar and spelling as the side benefits, but apparently I had things backwards. It is very helpful to have it explained again!

So the eventual output goal is 28 lines, which is the longest poem in Beyond. But next week's poem is only 4 lines. I think the wide variety in poem length from week to week is another reason I thought that it didn't really matter how much the student was copying on any given day. Next week I guess dd gets a break, lol.

Your comments here really got me thinking about this, and I decided to go back to the source (Charlotte Mason), as I know that is Carrie's intention in writing the guides. I realize that I have managed to confuse my goals with Charlotte Mason's goals here, and have thus been confusing. Charlotte Mason would say in answer to your question "Isn't one beautiful line better than four mediocre ones?" Yes. In fact she would even consider one beautifully copied letter as better copywork than one fairly good copied sentence. I have a (personal - not HOD) goal for my dc to be able to work up to copying all of the poetry by the end of Beyond, as I feel it helps them better be able to handle the writing in BHFHG. However, I need to make clear that this is a goal of mine, not a goal of HOD's, and that this doesn't supersede the primary goal of copywork, which is to be neat and well done. So, CM would say quality IS more important than quantity. I am sorry I responded with my thoughts instead of hers, and if your dd copies a very beautiful one line of poetry instead of 4 lines of mediocre poetry, she is probably doing just as CM and Carrie would want her to do. If I had my very own copywork utopia, it would be to have my own dc copy beautiful lines of poetry in ever increasing amounts so that by the end of the year they were able to copy more than at the start, and maybe even the entire poem. So sorry for any confusion I caused, and in the hopes I'm not confusing anyone else, I edited a bit of my above post - HTH!

In Christ,
Julie