Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Can I teach writing?

Things aren't going well for my DD9 this year. She is spending all morning, 8:45 until 12:25 doing ELA. This is an hour more than last year! I am having a hard time believing that you need an entire hour more to teach 5th grade ELA versus 4th grade. She is miserable! Can I teach writing is my biggest concern? What do you use to teach writing to this age level? I have to decide by Thursday in order to send in my paperwork to the state. Thanks for any advice!

Hi, Melissa!

You can do anything--you are mother of 5!!

We like Michael Clay Thompson's language arts series from Royal Fireworks Press ( www.rfwp.com ). There are grammar, vocabulary, poetry, and writing books for each level (Island, Town, and Voyage are the names of the first three levels). There are pretty good samples on their site; there is also a yahoo group for homeschooling users of the curriculum.

A less formal, but very friendly, set of writing books we also like is the series by Ralph Fletcher ( www.ralphfletcher.com ). There are four nice little paperbacks, written directly to the student, with lots of good tips about creative writing.

Hope that will get you started, anyway!

peace
minnie

PS To get to the Fletcher books I mentioned, click on "Books," and then on "Books on Writing for Children." I notice that he also has several "Books on Writing for Teachers," none of which I've seen, but which I might investigate, too!

http://loreenleedy.com/

I don't think this is exactly what you are loooking for but it may inspire writing. Last summer, my DS9 took an online course and at one point he was stuck. The teacher suggested since he like to draw he should do that for his story. I think being inspired and making it fun encourages learning. There is a book about writing and drawing stories on this web site. Hope they have it at your library.

I guess I should clarify too. This is the time the PS is spending on ELA. We are considering whether to just homeschool all the subjects. I really need that extra hour!

oh you're trying to decide if you're going to HS full time and therefor can teach writing yourself?

Yes, DD9 currently attends PS for ELA and homeschools all her other subjects. They added four hours to her schedule this year for ELA. I get the impression that the teacher just isn't organized in putting ELA into a block of time. So my DD ends up sitting a lot while they complete other subjects. She is now doing higher level work at home and I need that time. Otherwise she comes home and after lunch starts her day at 1pm, with us needing to address all her other subjects yet! On top of that the social worker has assured me that the teacher isn't as good of a match but that there isn't anything they can do about that. I wanted my DD to be in school to address the social skills associated with her asperger's. But, with this ELA thing and the fact that they are cutting her speech to one day a week because of demand/budget I am seriously rethinking. She doesn't have any friends in school or any like peers. The past teachers have said that they don't have another student at her level.

I have always been concerned because I am not strong in ELA in the sense that I don't follow the rules. I wrote the paper, first draft being final draft and worked backwards. I did find that the SL core 6 we are using for history has an LA, although not very vigorous and they have an agreement with http://www.writeathome.com So that would be an option. We already do the literature and reader portions that would coincide. I could look at putting her into their middle school literature classes next year since her writing is just at fifth grade level right now and their classes are full this year. I don't have a problem with the other aspects of ELA.

Thanks for any and all suggestions!

We just started using the Michael Clay Thomas series LA curriculum this fall with DS8, but we LOVE it so far. It is specifically designed for GT kids and it is not taking us a lot of time. I had a former jr. high LA teacher tell me this GT 3rd grade curriculum looks like the content she used to teach to 7th and 8th graders. I'm glad we started the curriculum at the beginning.

My son also writes in a journal daily. He writes about everything - book reports, video games, trips we take, what he's learning in science, etc. We occasionally do dictation practice.

Another resource I've heard great things about that we may add in at some point is writing strands. The books are designed to be worked on independently.

http://www.writingstrands.com/home.asp

I'm sure you can do it! We are working at least 5th grade level in everything and are done in 2-3 hours for the whole day typically (although DS tries to drag it out some days).

5 hrs seems like a lot of time! Good luck!