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Dear Carrie, Julie, and everyone,


My ddalmost11 will be starting CtC in January, along with Write with the Best. Creative writing is not her strong point academically. She gets overwhelmed very easily by it. My question is this...will WWB overwhelm her?? Will it be too advanced for a reluctant 5th grade writer?? I have not done much writing instruction with her yet.

Thank you in advance!!

Choosing joy,
Liz

My ds is 11 and has mild Cerebral Palsy and dysgraphia which makes writing very challenging for him. He is not up to where he should be with creative writing. I was concerned that Write with the Best would overwhelm him, but it hasn't at all. The lessons are broken up in small chunks that seem very manageable to him. It gives very specific instructions. They tackle things one thing at a time and they aren't expected to write multiple paragraphs at first. For example my ds has been working several weeks on writing a description of a character. This is a one paragraph description. There is one day that you may see people complain about on reviews where they have to find nouns, adverbs, adjectives and verbs in a passage. Carrie has said it is fine to not have them find all of them, but set a time limit or a certain number for you dd to find. That is really the only day that could be overwhelming.

striving2Bprov31 wrote:...Creative writing is not her strong point academically. She gets overwhelmed very easily by it...

This describes my ds when we began Write with the Best in CTC. After a slower start, he did well with the writing of the poetry in PHFHG, but he never wrote anything outside of school on his own creatively. Still doesn't actually - but that's okay - it's not an inherent interest of his. He did do very well with Write with the Best. It just seems to take dc wherever they are and move them along. I loved WWTB - really loved it! It made teaching writing easy on me because it made it naturally possible for my ds to be successful - always - every writing assignment. He grew soooooooo much as a writer last year in CTC. The bite-sized plans HOD has written for it ensures it won't be overwhelming, but instead will feel very manageable, and enjoyable too. One word of caution - on the first assignment where WWTB asks dc to find the adjectives, verbs, etc. and circle them in the source - the plans say dc do NOT need to find them ALL. I somehow missed that, and I made my ds find them ALL with me brandishing the answer key like it was the law. Anyway, that was not a good start on my part because I didn't read carefully enough. From then on, I never made my ds find every one, but instead, we had fun with it and tried to find as many as we could TOGETHER in 5-10 minutes worth of time. It went much better then! The rest is extremely easy to follow, but I thought I'd mention that as I missed that part of the directions and caused my ds some angst I didn't need to. I think both you and your dd will really enjoy WWTB! HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

my3sons wrote:

striving2Bprov31 wrote: One word of caution - on the first assignment where WWTB asks dc to find the adjectives, verbs, etc. and circle them in the source - the plans say dc do NOT need to find them ALL. I somehow missed that, and I made my ds find them ALL with me brandishing the answer key like it was the law. Anyway, that was not a good start on my part because I didn't read carefully enough. From then on, I never made my ds find every one, but instead, we had fun with it and tried to find as many as we could TOGETHER in 5-10 minutes worth of time.

I did this too. It was a huge faux paux on my part. Praise God I came here and aired my concerns, had them put to rest, and continued on with WWTB. We LOVE Write with the Best and my ds was a very reluctant writer too. I have a degree in English with a focus in...writing. LOL You can imagine how hard that was for me. However, using WWTB only for half a school year now, I have seen HUGE improvements in his creative writing. We are on the 3rd assignment - describing a character and he is just absolutely nailing it! The bite size chunks that are scheduled in HOD have never overwhelmed him. He loves it too!

Oh, my the suggestion of 5 -10 minutes of time to find the adjectives and adverbs is GOLDEN! One more great idea to add to the toolbox.