Write With the Best - Time for ths item

[Nealewill]

I feel like I am always spending WAY too much time on this box and I need some help to see if there are some improvements I can make as the teacher to not have us both spend so much time here. We are in unit 8 of HOD putting us into the 2nd writing assignment. I had briefly considered dropping WWTB and going with IYW but once I acquired and read through the book IYW, I think my dd is more than capable of WWTB and did not like IYW as much. Plus, she actually likes WWTB, it is me who is feeling like it is taking too long.

First, my dd has mild dyslexia and really struggles with reading the passages alone. She can do CTC fine and she reads fairly well but these small passages overwhelm her. So on the first day's assignment, I have to read the assignment to her. Plus, I am finding that the vocabulary in these books is very high level and I am having to explain what a lot of these sentences mean. I usually read it twice - first one time through and then line by line to help her get a better picture in her mind. This always take 20 -25 minutes and that is normal. Next is the grammar activity. Honestly, it is a great activity but I hate it! It takes FOR...EV...ER! I feel like we could easily spend 45 minutes on it. I have gotten to the point that we only work on it for 25 minutes and whatever we got done in 25 minutes is what we got done. The actual writing part is going fine but then this past assignment, she had to describe a place in which you appeal to the reader's sense. I guess we picked a hard one because we sat that the table for 40+ minutes brain storming the things asked of by the assignment. When we were done, we had a very large list and I think she is going to now have a long paper. I noticed in the assignment she gets 2 days to write the paper so I feel good about that at least.

But I guess I feel like I have to sit there with her the whole time for this item. I didn't anticipate that for this year! Last year in Preparing she did not struggle at all with the writing. But this year, she is struggling with using specific words so badly I am having to give her my undivided attention so that she can finish and not spend a lot of time redoing. For example, this writing assignment wants her to describe a place so well that a blind person could see it. So she picked the place we stayed in NC on the beach. But when she would describe things, she would use generic adjective, but not one that actually described. So for the house, she said it was beautiful. I told her beautiful doesn't tell me what it looks it. So then she came up with 3 stories and all of the house were many colors. She later listed that they were all on stilts as well. We talked about how to get to the beach. She said you walk outside and you are there. Uhm...no. If you walk outside, you are on the balcony You must descend a set of wooden stairs and cross a wooden boardwalk that parallels a full size sand volleyball court. At the end of the boardwalk you climb another set of wood stairs to cross over a sand dune that separates the beach from the house. So she listed the part about the wooden boardwalk and having to climb stairs to cross over the protected sand dune. For crabs, she said they were small. So I asked her how small? I told her compare it with the size of something we know. Small is not specific - Josie (my youngest) is small compared me to me but giant compared to her cousins. She described the sand as soft. Uhm no, it was firm because you easily walk on it and there were only a few place that you would sink down into it. She said there were shells every where. Uhm, technically they weren't "everywhere." So I asked her if shells were in the sand dune or on the wooden steps and she said no (because they weren't). So she was able to draw the conclusion that they were found in the intertidal zone. I could go on and on with this - she has a few more things she described and each needed a guiding question or two before she came to a more descript depiction. But every time she was very generic and not specific until each time I gave further guidance.

So I guess the questions is - is this normal? Did you all find you had invest this amount of time into your children's writing for this book? Are my expectations too great for a 9 year old (she will be 10 in 1 month)? I have come to terms that I am find investing this time. But I also realize that my descriptive abilities for this assignment will obviously exceed hers and I don't want to have unrealistic expectations for her. She doesn't usually seem "frustrated" when we are done. But it does seem like the assignment wears her out a bit because she has to think pretty hard. Again, she hasn't complained, this is just me noticing it in her.

Andy thoughts and advice would be great.

[LynnH]

First as far as the grammar day Carrie has said somewhere that you don't have them find all the other descriptive verbs, adjectives, nouns etc. I would either set a time limit probably 15 minutes or what I did was look at the key see how many there were and then ask him to find about 1/3 to a half of that number. That also usually took about 15-20 minutes.

For the actual assignment. I think maybe you are expecting a little too much out of her since she is only 9 and struggles with dyslexia. The more we read the better we write. If she has only been reading fluently for a short time then that could impact her ability to use descriptive phrases in her writing. When you struggle just to read and make out the words then you don't have energy to really put together all the descriptive phrasing or really even for the brain to register the "fancy" words. Your brain is just trying to grasp the basic meaning.

My ds has always struggles with the physical act of writing and therefore using lots of descriptive words and phrases has not been something he has done. It takes too much effort. What I did when he was in WWTB was I didn't expect a long paragraph and I also was happy if he used just a few descriptive words and phrases, especially for the early assignments. To do the assignment you are talking about we actually went and sat in his favorite bakery and he brainstormed his ideas where he could actually see, smell and taste what he was describing. It is challenging for some kids to recall details from a place they have visited in the past.

As the year went on and he met the goal for how many descriptive words I wanted to see then I raised the goal. I have just found with my son that giving him small incremental goals to achieve makes the world of difference. Also remember she will be working on writing descriptively her entire school career. She doesn't have to perfect it yet. My ds in the WG guide is writing descriptive paragraphs this week for EIW, so it does come back around many times.

[MelInKansas]

CTC you are starting out these skills so it will naturally take longer, and then with her struggles that will make it take longer still. So probably the best things to think through are how to minimize your frustration and how to work it in so that you have the time (though maybe with some of LynnH's suggestions you could cut down the time in some areas). I can forsee when we get there (which is soon) we will be working hard and long at it too. There has been some intro into descriptive writing in R&S 3 right now and my DD is not doing that much better at it, even without any learning struggles. Composition of writing is hard! Talking through those things certainly helps her, but I do think lowering your expectations will help too. You could work with her at it to a certain point, and then model or add things you think of as an encouragement or a model of how to improve. But I do think gradual steps, as LynnH suggested, are the way to go and to make it not such a huge burden on both of you.

[Rice]

I, too, am doing this one-on-two, lol, with my boys. We do most of it orally.

When they have to find the words I photocopy the passage for them and have them use the colors to find as many __ (adjectives?) as they can in, say, 3 minutes. We discuss them then move on to the next category.

When we did the writing assignment they both did fairly well the first time (ie with the first assignment - we'll see when it becomes more abstract!) but I would expect 5-7 sentences, without much for description to start, then help to add it in. "We stayed in the house by the beach." you could add to in order to make it become something like, "We stayed (when?) for our vacation in the (what kind of?) tiny yellow house with (what distinguishing features?) white flowers planted out front by the beach of (what kind of?) white sand." or something like that, getting them to add descriptive words/phrases into a simple sentence as a second step. Especially at this age (one of my boys is 9) making sure they have a complete paragraph (intro sentence, 3 developing sentences and a summary) is just as important as complex descriptions.

I am glad you asked the question, though. I'm reading with interest the other responses. . .
Blessings,

[Nealewill]

Thanks for all the suggestions and activity ideas. I really do realize that I am overdoing it a bit and don't want to torcher my kids LOL. But one of my biggest pet peeves from my youth is that I never learned how to write well in school. I went a high rated middle school and one of the top 100 high schools in the nation and graduated without any writing skills (plenty of other skills, just not writing.) So I want my kids to "think" about what they writing and to assess whether or not they are achieving the desired result of that writing. I think I will revisit my goals and approach for her writing differently, allowing her to comes up with her own descriptions first. Then we can make a list of some of her descriptive words and see which would be optimal for improvement. This way the writing is mostly hers but it will open her up some learning as well. And for me - I guess it hard because she is my oldest and my test child LOL. She writes beautifully for the written narrations so I just want her other writing to also be a high level too. But you are right Lynn - this will all come back around so I can probably chill a bit

[MelInKansas]

I am so hard on my oldest. So much harder than on her younger siblings. I don't know what realistic expectations are, so then when she can't do it all right the first time, I get frustrated, or we both get frustrated and things go downhill from there. I have grown a bit, I think, but I know my own tendencies have been a big cause of her not liking school (writing in particular) and I'm sure have left scars.

May the Lord use our efforts and help us to be loving, nurturing, giving parents! Also His love and grace are greater than our mistakes! And there's nothing wrong with you wanting your daughter to really learn good writing skills at a young age. I think this is the goal. I think you are totally on the right track with how to approach it in order to help her grow from where she is at right now.

Blessings

[8arrows]

I agree that we are often hard on our firstborns. We all want to be perfect parents and give them every skill they could ever need. I have 2 graduated and six at home, so I have the benefit of simply running out of time and having to set time limits. I think the time limit idea is a very good one (already suggested). 5 minutes of looking for adjectives will accomplish the goal. I would cut down the brainstorming time too. You are doing an excellent job of asking questions, but I would settle for asking just a few. Work on one part--I like that you got three stories and stilts concerning the beach house. The boardwalk part is more complicated, so I would have given more grace there and asked fewer questions. The entire assignment does not have to be perfect. I would be looking for a nice, completed writing assignment that we can grow from throughout the year. It is perfectly fine not to have that immediately.

[Nealewill]

Thank you for your prayer Melissa (Mel in Kansas). I don't think I have caused scars yet but definitely don't want to. I came from a very traditional curriculum that was lots of writing and very boring. We switch because it was horrible. That was causing scars! I have since relaxed some but it is still hard sometimes to find the balance. I am so much easier on my other two!

And Melissa (8arrows), yes, I do think the boardwalk was a little hard for her. Because did have a harder time describing that specific portion:-)

[Nealewill]

I am happy to report that I have managed to chill out a bit in this area and let her take the lead in writing her paper for this most recent assignment. This was the assignment for unit 2. Once she wrote it (day 6 & 7 of the assignment), we looked it over together per the instructions for day 8 and mad a few adjustments. I had her change one verb to a strong verb with the use of a thesaurus. I helped her to take out a few unnecessary words. I had her make a few changes to grammar. And she removed one sentence that was a good sentence but it just didn't fit as well as the other sentences. Now that I type up her changes, it seems like a lot but it really wasn't. I was very happy over all and I think she was too.

Here is her paper:

We stayed in a three story gray house in Topsail, North Carolina. To get to the beach, you descend two sets of wooden stairs, cross a wooden boardwalk, and climb ten or so stairs to cross the sand dune. On the beach near the dunes, I saw a four foot dead baby shark. It stunk! The whitish-yellow sand had shells and little holes everywhere. At night, crabs came out of the holes were scurrying all over the beach. It was interesting seeing all the shells and creatures on the beach.

Since we haven't talked about tense or person for writing purposes yet, I am not going to bring it up this time (that is - unless some one thinks I should?). But at this point, I don't want to squash her spirit. So I think I will leave it alone.

[MelInKansas]

Well I have never been an English teacher, but I would be proud of my DD for writing something like that! I think picking a few things to work on this time will help encourage her to improve and build her confidence. Good job Mama and good job to your DD!