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We are on day 3 of Write with the Best and both my son and I (and I have an English degree) found the "Underline the descriptive adjectives in blue, the descriptive nouns in red...etc" part to a bit too challenging for my son. He is a struggling writer and when he saw this part, he went to pieces. He is good at grammar, but this is not just plain grammar...it was pretty particular about finding the "descriptive" nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs and that threw him for a loop. He was in tears by the time he finished and his attempt was marginal, at best. Most of the nouns he circled were not descriptive, and so on. We went back and did it together and he seemed to understand a bit more.

I was about to just ditch it, and then I decided to read on. I really like the way the program is laid out and I think it is really worth its weight. My question for Carrie, Julie, or anyone else who can answer is: How important is that particular part of the program? Is it okay for us to work together, even though he is a 6th grader (11 years old). Any feedback or ideas to make him more successful.

Here is a link to a thread where I brought up the same problem. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6936

ETA Don't give up on it yet. I was disappointed at first but now I'm thrilled with it. My kids have liked the other assignments after that one and I will help them with that assignment next time.

Oh what a wonderful link! Thank you so much. I am so glad to see I was not alone, nor was my son, in finding this challenging and confusing. That you for directing me to your thread!

You're very welcome Rebecca!! And no you were not alone. On a side note my kids really liked the assignment that required them to find more descriptive words in a thesaurus. I don't have a thesaurus(need to buy one) so I used an online one and allowed them to pick from the list of words. They thought this was really fun and made each other promise they would use their new words in casual conversation that day. LOL They mostly picked funny words they'd never heard before like nice=ducky, house=flat or box. lol

Rebecca,

Yes, you're right that day is a challenge! I always did it with my kiddos. I actually did all of WWTB with my son, helping and guiding. So, that is a great way to do it! I, too, had to give myself permission to NOT make my son find all of the adjectives, adverbs, and nouns (even though WWTB did tell me I didn't have to find all of them in their directions).

On those days, I advise finding a few of each part of speech listed and moving on! The activity is a good one in moderation, and the rest of WWTB is excellent!

Great question!

Blessings,
Carrie

When we did this, I had Grant look for 8 of everything. (Except adverbs - I think we did 4 or 5 of those) And, it was pretty doable. Finding them all would have been way over the top for us, too!

Kathleen

Rebecca, we're in sync with our CTC. And we had an emotional time with that part also. I'm going to have to set the timer, because even though I sat down and helped him through it, we still went way too long. It really overwhelmed him, so I'll be helping out with that part every time in the future.

Hope your math went better! I plan on using LOF in the future.

Alison

Hi,

We had tears the first few times with that as well last year. However, I quickly realized I needed to work along side my dd and not find them all. We went sentence by sentence sometimes and other times we were more random. By the middle of the year we were doing much better and I wouldn't let the time linger on with how long we spent on it. 10-15 min. max.

anyway--I really liked this program and glad we persevered and found way to make it work for us. Keep on working with it and all will be well!

Off to 'school'--my ds is eagerly waiting to begin!

Jess

Thank you for preparing me for this lesson. We'll be starting CTC when we return from vacation after Labor Day. My dd gets over the top at times, and to know how to head it off beforehand = priceless!

Thank you for sharing this!