Writing

I haven’t actually used these yet, but here is the information I have and some websites to check out.

Step Up To Writing can be ordered online from http://www.sopriswest.com. I am a homeschooler and bought the manual to use with my 5th grader this year ($50). It looks very good. I have seen this recommended for remedial work as well as regular, and it is suitable for about 4th grade up through high school levels. There is a classroom version with overheads, etc. for considerably more money.

I’m also planning to order Excellence In Writing, which gets rave reviews from homeschoolers for quality. This is a series of videos that basically teach the parent how to teach writing. The presenter works with children in the videos, and is supposed to be very kid-friendly. Many homeschoolers have their children watch the videos also. Some of the ideas, such as “sentence dress-ups”, seem to have counterparts in Step Up to Writing. The website for this program is http://www.edu-writing.com. There is an email support group for IEW users — would be a good source of information for you. Search for “IEW” at http://www.groups.yahoo.com. The set of videos and syllabus run about $130.

I have seen Inspiration software mentioned repeatedly by tutors as a very useful tool that helps organize ideas. It is basically a very handy graphic organizer. Website is http://www.inspiration.com.

Mary

it should be http://www.writing-edu.com

Mary

Hi Mary and Lois,

I am not familiar with the Step Up to Writing program either. Mary, could you give me an idea of how the information is presented in this program? I might want to use it to supplement what we’re already using. We’re using Level 3 of the Writing Strands series and I really like its presentation. For example, my dd worked on lesson #3 today, as follows:

WRITE AND REWRITE A SENTENCE

It may take you four days to learn to: 1. Write a simple sentence, 2. Make a simple sentence more complicated, 3. Connect a number of sentences together to make a story.

PREWRITING, Day One:

We all know that a sentence has a person, place or a thing in it doing something. A sentence looks like this: “The bug looked at the spider.”

The bug is a thing doing something. What he is doing is looking at a spider.

This exercise will help you write longer and better sentences. I will do the first exercise to show you how they’re done.

1. The bug looked at the ____________ spider. I had to think of a number of words that could go into that blank space that describe the spider. Here are the ten I thought I’d be able to use:

hairy, gray, hungry, wicked, pretty, big, scary, small, girl, ugly

2. Now I’ll do an exercise where I’ll rewrite the sentence telling what the bug looks like, and I’ll have to use one of the ten words the describe the spider. The one I chose to use is hungry.

The __________bug looked at the hungry spider.

Now I’ll have to think of ten words that will describe the bug:

small, hungry, frightened, fuzzy, mad, green, quick, sick, large, spider-eating

Using one of these words in my sentence, I came up with: “The spider-eating bug looked at the hungry spider.”

Someone’s going to be lunch here. Poor little guy.

WRITING:

You’re to write a short sentence like mine, “The bug looked at the spider.” Try not to write about a bug and a spider.

(your sentence here)

You’re to list ten words that could be used to describe your person, place or thing (the noun):

(your ten words here)

Pick one of these ten words and write it into your sentence.

(your sentence here)

2. Make another list of ten words that describe another part of your sentence.

This exercise continues to build until the student completes a very short story of about six sentences. The Writing Strand series is so well designed that many students can work through it themselves with simple guidance from their parent.

Blessings, momo

One of the best writing programs that I have used is Expressive Writing by SRA McGrawHill. It is very sequential and really teaches students how to write a clear concise paragraph. I used it last year with 6th grade LD students. They could not write a sentence at the beginning of the year and by February they wrote biographies of famous people by researching, outlining and writing (no copying). The reports were short but excellently written.

I just ordered IEW after reading more parent raves about the program.

I have Writing Strands here but have never used it. Step and IEW are, I would say, much more rigorous approaches to writing and involve much more actual teaching of the mechanics of writing. They both require a lot more parent involvement than Writing Strands.

You can find out more about IEW at http://www.writing-edu.com, by doing a search on the bulletin boards at http://www.vegsource.com, and by reading archived messages on the “IEWfamilies” email group at http://www.groups.yahoo.com. One thing I like about this approach is that it starts out with note-taking (teaches students how to take 3-word notes). Another is that it does a lot of work early on with stories rather than non-fiction. My daughter still much prefers “stories” to non-fiction.

Step seems to teach many of the things IEW does. Here are the chapters in the Step manual: (1) Intro, (2) Expository Writing: Mastering the Paragraph, (3) Special Paragraphs, (4) Multi-paragraph Papers, (5) Speeches, (6) Narratives and Imaginative Writing, (7) Finishing Touches: Striving for the Best, (8) Active Reading and Listening Strategies. Note-taking is addressed in chapter 2. There are quite a few pages of copiable forms that the student can fill in. For example, there are “bookmark” forms that show what appears to be a 3-word method for taking notes, many different practice guides for writing paragraphs, pages of sentences you copy and cut out and the student re-arranges into a paragraph, a form for writing a four-step summary paragraph, etc. Step teaches specific ways to “dress up” sentences (something that IEW is well-known for) to make them interesting.

You know how small and thin the Writing Strands books are, right? Step is a 3-ring binder (purple and green — rather appealing) containing about 2” of pages written for the teacher to use. No one could possibly use all of the material and exercises inside. Basically, you pick and choose as you go along. However, it is ordered so that you can work your way through the manual sequentially. There is a classroom version, but the manual ($50) is all that a homeschooler would need. Website is http://www.sopriswest.com.

IEW, in contrast, consists of about 6 80-minute video’s. You and your child watch the video and then go work on the exercises. The video’s are designed to teach the parent how to teach writing. I have heard that the video’s are very well-done and appeal to both child and adult. The syllabus is basically a training manual for the parent to work through, to understand better how to teach writing. One thing about IEW is that it gets to be expensive. The best way to start is with the $130 set of video’s, but it is very handy to also get an assortment of the written material, so you don’t have to go searching for appropriate materials to work from. I ordered the “articles” (non-fiction), fairy tales, fables, and Greek myths. IEW has a lot of reading to go along with the writing. For example, the child may have an assignment to read an article, make notes about it, and then re-write it in different words. One of the things that made me finally bite the bullet and order this program is the reports from a variety of parents that their children really *enjoy* learning to write using this program. One mother said her 10yo who used to hate writing now loves it (she does scribe for him). IEW is split into about 9 units. Note-taking is the first unit, I think unit III is re-writing, etc. The units are described on the website.

I have heard good reports about all three approaches to writing. I think that much depends on what exactly you want to accomplish and what your budget can handle.

Mary

Hi Lois, I use Step and Inspiration together to remediate writing difficulties. The first thing that I do is use Phono-Graphix to remediate their reading, teach an extensive grammar course (diagramming), then I teach writing. I really love the above mentioned programs. At the end of last year, my 7th grade self-contained English class wrote very good five paragraph essays, (their final). Both programs give the structure in writing that these students lack. Most of the time, due to whole language, these students just weren’t taught how to write. I don’t consider this a disability. If you are teaching students that are reading below grade level, teach them to read before you teach them to write. To quote a student, ” Writing is so much easier when you know how to read!”