by Elizabeth
I love to write, and I love to edit, but I was still lost when it came to teaching my own children the craft of writing.
I remember something Susan Wise Bauer said once. It was something to the effect of, “Good writers intuitively know how to construct sentences, paragraphs, and papers that are beautiful and logical, but they’re not sure exactly how they do it.”
That means that if writing comes easy for you, you might not know how to explain the process to someone else. But students who struggle with writing need explicit guidance. And so do their teachers.
That’s where writing curriculum comes in. But which one should we use?? There are so many to choose from! So today I’ll share some principles for writing instruction, along with practical resource ideas. I’d also love to hear about the resources you have used and loved (or loathed).
First, a little primer on the writing process. Susan Wise Bauer, whom I consider to be an expert on the subject, has explained in many places that there are two distinct steps to the writing process. The writer must first put an idea into words; they must have something to say. Then, they must put those words down on paper. These two steps aren’t necessarily related — at least not in the beginning.
The first step is really a thinking step. In fact, Bauer has said that bad writing isn’t a writing problem; it’s a thinking problem. The second step involves our physical bodies: we must hold the pencil or pen properly, we must know how to construct each letter legibly, we must know how to spell words (mostly) correctly, and we must put the words in the correct order on the page. Eventually we must know how to type quickly and accurately.
This is all quite complex work, which is why Bauer recommends developing the skills separately. For the thinking piece, she recommends oral narration, or a re-telling, of the selection. The student isn’t required to write anything down yet; they are just practicing coming up with something to say. The parent can either listen to the narration and write it down or just listen.
For the pencil-and-paper part, she recommends dictation and copywork. Copywork is exactly what it sounds like: copying sentences from another source. In general we try to choose beautiful sentences for copywork so that the child develops an appreciation of what good writing looks like and sounds like. (This is also why we read them living books and develop a read-aloud culture in the home, but that’s a topic for another article.)
Dictation is harder and involves more memory work. The teacher reads a sentence aloud (usually only once, but sometimes twice), and the student listens and records the sentence as they see it in their mind. Here they are remembering and recording at the same time, but they are not formulating original thought.
In the early years these can be combined if a parent writes down the child’s narration and then assigns copywork or dictation from that narration, but the two activities are not yet happening simultaneously.
Eventually the student will connect both parts of the writing process. They consider the thoughts they want to communicate while recording those thoughts on paper (or a screen) and also remembering to implement spelling and grammar rules as they write or type.
Bauer’s elementary writing program, Writing with Ease, is based on these two principles of narrating (thinking) and recording. I used this program in the early years and enjoyed it.
Later on, Bauer teaches that the student will need to come up with their own thoughts rather than retelling ideas through narration. This is a higher-level process and involves learning how to outline nonfiction works and beginning to create their own outlines and compositions. That program, entitled Writing with Skill, took a lot more time and energy from both me and my oldest child, so eventually I gave up on it and simply used the Sonlight writing assignments.
Now, I love Sonlight, but there are some weaknesses in their writing curriculum. The main issue is that it tends to focus too much on creative writing and not enough on expository writing. This weakness seems to work itself out around level 200 or so, when more of the assignments become expository in nature and fewer are creative. This is important because, as Susan Wise Bauer has explained in several places, not everyone needs to know how to do creative writing, but everyone needs to know how to do expository writing.
As I was transitioning my oldest to the Sonlight writing program, I continued requiring copywork from my younger students. Their copywork was usually in the form of poems and hymns. I also assigned daily written narrations based on their science and/or history reading. They would begin with just a sentence or so in 4th grade and move on to short paragraphs from there, gradually lengthening over time to longer and longer paragraphs.
In these years I used the following articles from Mystie Winckler as my “handbooks” for teaching writing. I printed them out and referred to them regularly:
How to Teach Your Kids to Write Well – No Curriculum Needed
The more I read about Charlotte Mason education, however, the more I realized I wasn’t doing narration right. True Charlotte Mason instruction requires narration after a single reading, which focuses the child’s attention and requires more of the mind. And the more I read about Charlotte Mason, the more I became convinced that her style of education is one of the best for children. Which means I could have taught writing better in the middle years.
So if you, like me, are convinced of the efficacy of Charlotte Mason principles but don’t know where to begin with writing, here are a few resources:
Karen Glass has written Know and Tell, an entire book about narration.
Cindy Rollins (one of my favorites!) writes about the magic of narration in her magnificent memoir Mere Motherhood.
If you’re short on time, you could read this article about narration to help you figure out if the approach is right for you.
And if you tend toward more a more classical style of education, you may want to check out the Progym. This particular program looks to be an excellent resource from some trusted voices in the homeschool world. (I love Schole Sisters and have learned a lot from them.)
Here are some practical recommendations in case you skipped narration or paragraph writing with a child who had difficulty with spelling or handwriting or some other skill involved in writing. As a homeschool teacher, I appreciated the step-by-step instructions, because I didn’t feel competent to develop them on my own.
Paragraph Writing for Kids by Ann Roeder is designed for students in 4th through 6th grade and teaches them how to write descriptive, narrative, persuasive, expository, and comparative paragraphs. It breaks down the writing process into very small steps – it takes a couple weeks to learn how to write each type of paragraph! But after the student has truly grasped the process for each type of paragraph, they can write another sample paragraph in one sitting. This workbook is especially good for students who are nervous about the writing process and lack the confidence that they can do it. By the end of this book, my student could confidently write paragraphs and was ready to move on to a more robust composition program.
Jump In: Middle School Composition by Sharon Watson is the next step in that process. In this program, students learn how to write entire compositions. Everything in Jump In is also broken down into small steps, which both my student and I needed. I recommend getting the teacher’s guide along with the student book.
At the same time, I know literary analysis is coming in high school, and I want my students to be prepared. One way to prepare them is to start having them think about story structure for some of their assigned reading in upper elementary or middle school. You can have a conversation about the ideas with your younger students, or if your student is a little older and thus more proficient in writing or typing, you can assign a short paper that covers just one or two of the ideas. Here’s my template for beginning literary conversations.
A discussion of writing instruction wouldn’t be complete without a mention of spelling and grammar. All About Spelling is, hands down, the best and easiest way to learn spelling.
Grammar is much harder to teach. I’ve tried so many programs, trying to fit the program to each child’s needs. What I’ve learned is that there are a lot of not-great ones out there. Two of the better ones are Shurley English and Rod and Staff English. Shurley is more fun, but Rod and Staff is extremely thorough (though at times too thorough – who really needs that many practice problems?!).
In case you didn’t know. . . .
In addition to my editing services, I also provide homeschool consulting. Whether you’re in the early years of home education or are wondering how to approach high school, I’d love to help you with your questions! I’m especially passionate about helping moms who are overseas. You can find the intake form here. I’m offering a discount until August 31, 2023.
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