Writing in Bigger/Preparing

[girlboygirlboy]

We will be finishing up Bigger at the beginning of the school year(last 8 weeks) and then start Preparing immediately after with my ds10 and dd8. We are enrolled in a charter school and this year, the state is requiring all 4th graders to take a writing test. It looks like it's basically that they will give the child a prompt and the child will write a couple paragraphs about the topic. Is there anything in the end of Bigger or in Preparing that would prepare my son for this kind of work, or is there something that you all could recommend I supplement with?

[chillin'inandover]

Having just finished Preparing with my ds there is practice with writing skills-in the R & S (ds did R & S 3). Also there are written narrations and oral narrations of history Written narration is 3-5 sentences 1 x/wk after answering questions listed in guide. R & S 3 had sentence writing. Poetry had writing either a poem or a descriptive paragraph using the unit poem.
Tammy

[exodus4]

I would like to hear more about this as well. My son will be using Bigger next year and we are required to do a writing test at the end of the year. Basically it'll be a writing prompt like " Tell about a place you would like to go and why" or " Write about a day at the beach ". They are supposed to write at least two paragraphs ( about 100 words or more ) in 3rd grade .

Is R&S enough to teach writing or does Bigger H provide enough writing other than narrations ? Or do you recommend another program to use for this purpose ?

[lharris]

Hello everyone,
I know that the temptation to "panic" over writing is strong. My advice - try not to stress the young child on writing (i.e. original composition). The Bigger narrations develop the mind for writing. So technically, the mind is already writing -- its just not required to be put down on paper by the author. Copywork is the way to go for this age to develop the practice of lengthy writing. This is not just HOD philosophy, this is what all classical educators and Charlotte Mason followers do. If the child has the desire to write on his/her own, it is perfectly acceptable to encourage that in writing letters or notes or stories etc. , just don't stress about requiring it. I believe that if pressed, a graduating Bigger or Preparing child will be able to write 2 paragraphs in a test environment. If you are using the R&S English, there are lots of sentence writing exercises that the child will be doing. If they are ready, they can begin to copy their own narrations or start recording their own narrations on paper early. Sounds like the test requirement for a couple of paragraphs is identical to a narration. You can do your own semester checks on this but the mental processing is already developed. The grammar stage for the child is to soak up literature, tons of history, Bible (stories-content), science(content), great sentences from great writers, and internalize composition elements (copying the masters), soaking up information so they can start putting it all together when they get older. The public school systems have such a flawed theory on writing: the older kids can't write because they can't think, and public educators think the fix is to require writing earlier and earlier when they don't have anything to say because there's nothing upstairs. Pretty soon they will expect 4 year olds to write a paragraph and still wonder why they are producing students that cannot do any task that involves thinking. Much love,
Trust your path,
In Christ,
Laura

[3sweeties]

Hello everyone,
I know that the temptation to "panic" over writing is strong. My advice - try not to stress the young child on writing (i.e. original composition). The Bigger narrations develop the mind for writing. So technically, the mind is already writing -- its just not required to be put down on paper by the author. Copywork is the way to go for this age to develop the practice of lengthy writing. This is not just HOD philosophy, this is what all classical educators and Charlotte Mason followers do. If the child has the desire to write on his/her own, it is perfectly acceptable to encourage that in writing letters or notes or stories etc. , just don't stress about requiring it. I believe that if pressed, a graduating Bigger or Preparing child will be able to write 2 paragraphs in a test environment. If you are using the R&S English, there are lots of sentence writing exercises that the child will be doing. If they are ready, they can begin to copy their own narrations or start recording their own narrations on paper early. Sounds like the test requirement for a couple of paragraphs is identical to a narration. You can do your own semester checks on this but the mental processing is already developed. The grammar stage for the child is to soak up literature, tons of history, Bible (stories-content), science(content), great sentences from great writers, and internalize composition elements (copying the masters), soaking up information so they can start putting it all together when they get older. The public school systems have such a flawed theory on writing: the older kids can't write because they can't think, and public educators think the fix is to require writing earlier and earlier when they don't have anything to say because there's nothing upstairs. Pretty soon they will expect 4 year olds to write a paragraph and still wonder why they are producing students that cannot do any task that involves thinking. Much love,
Trust your path,
In Christ,
Laura

GREAT POST, Laura! I totally agree with everything you said (I have an English degree and so writing is my thing)!

My DS BLEW me AWAY when it came time to write out his narrations in Preparing this past year. He wrote a good one to two paragraphs (he was only required to write 3-5 sentences) that were very well-written, made sense, and were much more than I expected out of him at the age he was at (8.5 yo). The only formal writing he had had at that point was R & S and learning to orally narrate in Bigger the year before! I did have a "journal" for him to draw and write in about once a week, but it was just for fun and to mark down special things he had done/was going to do.

[holdinon]

Is there anything in the end of Bigger or in Preparing that would prepare my son for this kind of work, or is there something that you all could recommend I supplement with?

I totally agree with the previous posters in regards to writing philosophy. Mine have had no other writing instruction than is integrated into HOD. Are you using R&S? Simple paragraphs are covered in all levels, beginning with simple paragraphs in level 2 and increasing level of instruction in level 3 and up.

I would not feel the need at all to supplement. The only thing that I would do is a week or so before the testing. I would practice just once or twice with doing exactly what you think the proctor will do. That way, he will kind of know what to expect and won't freeze up. I wouldn't add anything extra though. I have never been a school teacher, but I have taught 5th grade Sunday school, and have seen the written answers they do for their lesson pages. I have no doubt that my ds9, who has not completed Bigger going into 4th grade can write at least as well as the majority in that class. (And most of them are from the area "good" school). I am sure your guy will do just fine.
Angie

[off2workigo]

I HAVE been a public school teacher. I taught for 19 years, and spent at least a year in every grade from 1st through 6th.

The public schools are under pressure to outperform children in other countries. They write new "standards" for students, legislating that higher-order thinking skills come earlier and earlier. In order to do so, they "gloss over" the basics, such as full memorization of the multiplication tables, or spending the time needed to learn to make a coherent paragraph.

As a former teacher, I would have preferred that a "not on grade level" child entering my classroom have mastered the basics instead of the higher concept items (knows his facts tables so I can TEACH him reducing fractions, knows how to write an organized paragraph so I can TEACH her the qualities expected in different types of writing) rather than knowing the higher concept items, but not the basic (knows the formula for reducing fractions but cannot perform the operations due to lack of knowledge of basic multiplication facts, knows if an essay is persuasive but can't stay on topic or organize details in a paragraph).

The beauty of homeschool is that we can meet our children "where they are". We can be certain they know the basics (and practice them often in their HOD lessons, such as written narrations, copywork, and dictation), which they will later use to breeze through the higher concept writing, which is just a matter of using their well polished skills to put their own ideas on paper.

Concentrate for the first part of the year on good, solid paragraphs in written narrations, even if those paragraphs aren't very long. Gradually ask for longer, well developed paragraphs as the writing progresses through the year. See if you can find a few examples of the type of writing he will be asked to do and study them as the writing test draws closer. Two weeks before, discuss how to organize ideas on paper before writing, and time management (how much time planning, how much actually writing, and how much reading over and revising). The week before, do one or two "cold runs": give him a prompt and let him go to it. Afterward, talk together to analyze your child's time management and whether the writing fulfilled the task required in the prompt.

You will be fine. More importantly, by concentrating on getting the "small stuff" right instead of focusing on the "big picture" right out of the gate, you will have a student who can actually WRITE, which is more important than any test.

-Rebecca, who has suddenly become enamored with putting everything in quotation marks?