Posted by Mrs Ives on 9:34 Sep 16
In Reply to: Mrs. Ives, after reading your post below about writing, ... posted by Kimber
My 15yo did all of the Spectrum Phonics/Word Study workbooks for K-8. (Don't waste your time with the Writing workbooks.) I went up through 6th grade in these workbooks with my 12yo dyslexic and my 9yo - they have been working at the same level for the last year or so. This was working fine for the 9yo, but my 12yo 2E kid still has atrocious spelling. So, this summer I switched to Christian Liberty Press Spelling after viewing some that I ordered for a friend. Based on the vocabulary covered at each level, I needed to start with the 4th grade book. CLP actually covers the spelling rules in an easy to understand way, (meaning that my kids can do it alone) and they do such a good job at it that, for the first time, my 2E kid can actually remember the rules and is improving dramatically in spelling.
Now here is the part that you can't tell anyone... [glances around to make sure that the English teachers, Latin fanatics, school-at-home drones, and her mother aren't listening.] ...we don't do a writing program. I don't require book reports, journals, essays stories, or any other regular writing assignments, even in other subjects. All of their writing skills come from reading a LOT of well written books, along with the annoying habit we have of correcting each other's grammar when we speak. (Although I have to say that most of the correcting we do is on the pronunciation of words that we've picked up from reading but have never heard spoken. We get some very funny pronunciations at times.) This works for us because my kids like to chat about the books they're reading, which I suppose is what other people are talking about when they use the term narration. We don't need to do anything formal in this regard because you'd be hard-pressed to stop any of them from telling you all about whatever they're reading because they get so excited about their books. When they tell me about specific books they tend to model their speech on the more formal language of the specific book. It's really quite cute. Since their writing is very closely tied to their speaking, I can easily keep track of their writing potential in this manner. I used to make them write an essay twice a year about something from science or history on whatever they felt like. I just want a writing sample to have objective proof that they can write something coherent if the need arises, and to have something to throw into a portfolio just in case the school nazi's decide to check up on us.
My 15yo is my only high school level example so far, but he is proof that it can work. He finally had to start writing on command when he began Cornerstone Curriculum's World Views of the Western World. It's a very challenging curriculum even for gifted kids. I have no idea how average kids manage to complete the whole thing even if they stretch out the 3 years of study into 4 years. Anyway, there are writing assignments for this that require you to lay out your thoughts in a logical well-supported fashion that covered all of those essay skills that we never bothered with up until this point. It took him several essays to get the hang of it, but he was able to produce decent results after a couple of months, and was producing excellent results by the end of the first year of curriculum, which was about 7 months in real-time. A year and a half after beginning formal writing he easily passed the CLEP English Composition with Essay exam which meant that he didn't have to take Freshman Composition in college, and he scored well on the SATs even though he struggled with the coming up with something to say concerning the fluff subject that they came up with. (For future test takers: the longer the essay the higher the score. So if you are normally so eloquent and intelligent as to be able to get your point across quickly, get over it. Take twice as long as you normally do to make your point; repeat it and throw in a couple of more useless examples.)
The thing that I consider most important though is that all of my kids read and write for pleasure. I remember dreading reading and refusing to write anything by the time I got to high school. I began hating reading because I associated reading with having to write a book report or some other annoying "response to reading" type garbage. It took all of the joy out of it. I also found it nearly impossible to write on command. Assignments to write a poem were the most ridiculous. Poetry is an expression of beauty and thought that needs to be inspired from your soul. You can't just command someone to be inspired; you either have something to say or you don't. Add in the insistence that literature must be interpreted in particular ways, and I quit participating in English classes altogether. I worked my way down from honors classes to the remedial English class by my senior year, where they blissfully only care about grammar, punctuation, and spelling. It's a good thing too, or I never would have gotten the English credits needed to graduate. (English was also the only C grade I got in college. Perfect grammar, punctuation, and spelling, but my divergent views on the required literature were seen as evidence that I obviously didn't understand what I was reading. I also got kicked out of one class because I had a substantial percentage of the class vocally agreeing with me on interpretation and the professor said it was disruptive.) But back to my kids...they write for the joy of writing and because they enjoy sharing their writing with others. They read endlessly because they love learning new things and because they love imagining the adventures and mysteries that books contain. You can't artificially produce that kind of literature appreciation or writing experiences - so we don't.