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My oldest 2 dc are in preparing. My oldest dd is almost 11, and is doing the extension readings and assignments. She has to write a couple paragraphs a couple times/week. How much should I correct these? Should I go over them with a red pen and make her rewrite them? Do we just correct them together? Or nothing? I'd appreciate hearing what other people do at this stage. Thanks.

Hi,

I wondered this as well back when we did Preparing (2 years ago). I would recommend going over the steps to Written Narration Skills in the appendix of your guide one by one. the first one is 'indent each paragraph'. I would focus on that until it become 'natural' forgetting about all the other errors until this first step is mastered. Then move onto the second step which is 'make sure the first sentence is on the right topic' while still expecting number one on the list to be completed. In this way, I think the children are not discouraged by having all their mistakes pointed out to them all at once and they can also have time to grow into written narrations. For us, our oldest dd is a natural writer, but has some difficulties with the technicalities so this list was really helpful.

I hope this helps!!

Jess

Jess - thank you, I was hoping someone would give me some input! Today my daughter and I sort of went toe-to-toe over who knew more about writing. That's not the way I'd like to approach it! So I like your suggestions - we can work on one thing at a time. She also has the potential to be a good writer, so I'd like to train her in that without crushing her with too many corrections at once. Thanks.

Tracey

mamas4loves wrote:...I would recommend going over the steps to Written Narration Skills in the appendix of your guide one by one. the first one is 'indent each paragraph'. I would focus on that until it become 'natural' forgetting about all the other errors until this first step is mastered. Then move onto the second step which is 'make sure the first sentence is on the right topic' while still expecting number one on the list to be completed. In this way, I think the children are not discouraged by having all their mistakes pointed out to them all at once and they can also have time to grow into written narrations...

This is what we did too, and it had good results! I had to make myself focus on 1 skill on the Written Narration Skills list at a time. It was tougher than one would think! However, we used the list together, and I explained to him that we'd be working through them one at a time until he just naturally would do them all. It helps to have the guide be the "one" to tell them what has to be fixed. If it's in the guide, it's what we're doing. The kids know that, and it makes it so much easier than me just randomly choosing what needs to be fixed and having my ds feel like it will never be "good enough" for me. Also, whatever you can do to encourage writing is good. I tried to point out he was "becoming a writer" now, and that all good writers fix things... always.

In Christ,
Julie

tbarr12 wrote:My oldest 2 dc are in preparing. My oldest dd is almost 11, and is doing the extension readings and assignments. She has to write a couple paragraphs a couple times/week. How much should I correct these? Should I go over them with a red pen and make her rewrite them? Do we just correct them together? Or nothing? I'd appreciate hearing what other people do at this stage. Thanks.

Personally, I would discuss them with her and if there is some huge issue that you are seeing over and over and over (run-on sentences, poor spelling, bad grammar), then I would discuss these with her. If there are only a few minor mistakes, but she "got" what she was reading and was able to narrate it on paper, then I would leave it be. At least this is what I did when my older son did the extensions in Bigger.