I have taught writing for many years – to middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college level. I was a writing and English tutor for also – to both public school students and homeschoolers.
We don’t use a writing curriculum in our homeschool because I am confident in my teaching methods.
We have reviewed IEW and it’s a good program. We’ve used workbooks, monthly calendar journal topics, and scripted curricula to see if it would help or interest my kids with writing.
I found most of it was worthless busy work.
We do lots of informal writing in journals and notebooking pages from preschool on. When left alone, kids love to write, mimicking their parents, elder siblings, anyone they see writing regularly. I keep regular prayer journals and we love notebooking.
I never pressure my kids to write. I only encourage them to write formally in high school.
The early years are for the gathering of facts, memorizing, filling the empty bucket with so much knowledge, stored for use later on. These are the grammar years and we focus on play, experiential learning, basics of reading, writing, and math. Exploring with science and history and art and music and great literature. Journaling is more for handwriting practice with copywork, memorization, and fact recording. Form and quality is more important than quantity.
The middle years are for making connections with all that knowledge stored away. Grammar rules begin to make sense. I love to see the beginnings of self-correction in their behavior. The understanding of relationships among people, events, and experiences help with the overall comprehension of history, science, the arts, and literature. We continue to explore the world around us and journal about it more purposefully. I limit anxiety by eliminating grades – and correction unless asked. I begin teaching good writing methods, like eliminating slang, contractions, and filler phrases sucah as “needless to say.” I address indenting and correct pronunciation. Reader notebooks are a great way to interact with books and begin to synthesize with reading.
The upper years are for synthesis with the knowledge and connections. This is when abstract thinking comes into play. There’s no sense wasting time forcing kids to learn to write when they still can only think concretely. Sure, they can memorize the methods, but the magic is lost. Waiting until high school to encourage writing is so much more fulfilling. We work on analyzing literature, history, psychology, sociology – comparing and contrasting, research and criticism.
Here is a PDF file of my Paragraph Instruction outline.
I have used this paragraph outline with my own children, middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college level students.
The best way to learn how to write is to practice.
I don’t expect the same quality paragraph from an elementary student that I do from an 8th grader. I expect more from college students than I do high schoolers. But the difference lies mainly in complexity and vocabulary. The format is the same across the board.
I was just commenting to one of my sons at breakfast that so often people’s writing is hard to read because they don’t break it into paragraphs. And paragraphs get shorter and shorter the longer we become accustomed to reading on the fly on a screen.
Yes, yes… teach the world to write. I am amazed at how poorly people write these days. I acknowledge that grammar acquisition isn’t necessarily fun, but it is so important. There is a time and place for a clever tweet, for it is important to be able to craft a full-length document with intelligent paragraphs. (visiting from #BragAboutIt)
The best thing to do to write well and read a lot. I think the more they read the more they’ll instinctively know what’s the right format and what ‘sounds’ right! Thanks for sharing :)
#practicalmondays
Thank you for this post! When I started blogging, I had to get used to the “conversational style” that sometimes goes against complete sentences….and breaks all the rules I learned. I’ve always wondered how someone with a background in teaching writing feels about the blogging style? This is a great resource. I have a middle schooler and perhaps this could help me teacher her how to write a paragraph!
Occasionally, a blogger’s style turns me right off, but I do love some creative writing. I realize this is way different than formal essay writing. :)
As a new writer I need this for myself :) I love to read but did not catch on to writing until recently. I am trying to teach my daughter to write more and this will help so much. Thanks for sharing it.
Your friend at Moments of Hope and Intentional Tuesday.
Great philosophy. Visiting from #LiteraryMusingMonday.
This post needs to make it around the English-speaking world (a couple of times). :) Thank you for sharing it at #LiteracyMusingMonday. Too sweet not to tweet!
Hi Jennifer, Thanks for this post and the paragraph construction outline! Well done! Blessings, Janet
This is good Jennifer, now I don’t feel so bad about waiting to teach my son writing. A friend of mine who teaches high school English told me to make sure all the basics in grammar is understood before “forcing” writing on him. She said you can’t write clearly if your grammar is not known. I’ve downloaded your outline and will add it to my notebook of teaching tools. Thanks for sharing with Thankful Thursdays.
There’s no reason to “force” anything on a child, especially too soon. Glad to help!
Thanks for providing our readers at the #LMMLinkup with your formula for paragraph success. Happy writing!