Okay, book arrived today and there’s a bit at the beginning explaining her approach to teaching children writing, what she thinks should be introduced at what points, etc. Very classical in its approach, of course.

They are working on the middle school level book and there’s a high school level one to come, this is the elementary years (1st through 4th.) They also have written the First Language Lessons for years 1 through 4, same author, and those are grammar, narration, dictation, copy work, memorization.

I am finding it interesting and I like a lot of what she says, but this book is mostly an outline for how to cover the first four years of writing – the catch being that she believes in the first years students should be getting comfortable with seeing the written language and learning to write it literally. The actual pen to paper writing process, hearing proper speech and being able to write it down, etc. She thinks no creative writing or original work should be attempted (assigned, that is) until kids have the foundation down of being able to hear something and summarize it orally (narration) and see something and copy it exactly (copywork), hear something and write it down without seeing it (dictation) and hear something and be able to recall it orally (memorization.)

Those are the exact same things taught in First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind. The only difference being this provides the outline of work with increasingly long passages to narrate, copy, take by dictation, etc. Actually I don’t think this one even includes memory work.

Basically if using First Language Lessons you could accomplish the same thing by just making sure every day the child was practicing one of those areas – narration, copywork, dictation. Increase them in length and difficulty over time to ensure they are practicing proper grammar, punctation, capitalization, etc. She believes that’s the only necessary writing work a child should do in the first four years, though in the grammar book (FLL) she does include exercises like addressing envelopes, writing a thank you note, sending a business letter, etc. And she encourages you to have the children narrate stories from others and then dictate a couple sentences they can record and then play back to write down. Of course we should be reading a ton to the kids (or having them read) from the classics as well but she proposes no creative writing (at least not assigned writing) or essays or research papers until after fourth grade.

I’m trying to decide what I think of this? I’m very curious to see what her middle school book looks like and I don’t regret buying this – it is just $17 and includes a good outline to help me stay on track for writing exercises with the kids to supplement FLL. But there seems to be a lot of overlap as well…

Even more curious now to watch the DVDs for Excellence in Writing to see what that approach is. The author of Writing with Ease endorses the Excellence in Writing program for middle and high school age, even as she works to create her own program for those levels.

The author does say if kids want to spend time doing creative writing then by all means, encourage it – but don’t assign it as school work or they may get frustrated by the restrictions and grading and it will stifle their desire to creatively express themselves. Teach them the rules of proper grammar and writing and let them have fun with it as they want, then as they get older begin to assign essays. Outlines and drafts are introduced in middle school, one page essays and longer research papers in high school. She said 3 to 5 one page papers per week in high school and a couple lengthier papers per semester.

I do see the value in formally teaching writing – kids need to learn how to outline ideas, to summarize key points and skim and determine what is crucial and to present a well formed argument. I’m sold on that point. I think we’ll do the placement tests and I’m guessing C will start at the beginning of the 4th year and Mo will probably start with the first year to make sure she’s got that done, but we’ll skim through that and get to the second year.

We also plan to be better about having the kids narrate (literature, science & history lessons) and we’ll let them record their narration then write down a sentence or two from their own narration for dictation. We really want to encourage their creative writing, even if it’s not a formal lesson yet. We’re writing penpals, doing thank you notes, and giving them the Bare Books and other writing materials so they can have fun exploring. Sometimes we’ll still do things like writing our own poetry after reading poems.

I like that the book says if kids are struggling with the motor skills for writing then have them practice just enough each day to get those muscles working but to not discourage them. Even one sentence a day, and I’m having Mo and C do that with their scripture mastery & songs they do for memory work. I write it out at the start of the week (in cursive) and they copy a bit each day throughout the week (in theory – when I remind the. 🙂 )

I want to see if I can encourage more story telling from them, and we can record those stories on video or audio. I know that the handwriting/typing comes later and I want to encourage the creativity – I’m just trying to figure out the best way to do that. Excited to see the other program, too.

Constant refining process, learning to teach. 🙂

Update: After watching the IEW DVDs and purchasing that syllabus I decided to return the Writing with Ease as it’s duplicate work for First Language Lessons and I like the IEW program better. Thankfully I had the book only a couple weeks and it’s in new condition so I was able to set up an Amazon return.