Gaging the quantity of writing in a day (third grade)

[Jessica Louise]

How do you decide how much writing to have your child do? I know that it is important to eventually build up a child's ability and endurance to write a lot. I don't want my child to hit a higher grade and simply be incapable of keeping up. However, we do have a little extra writing in our house, on a daily basis, due to having added in Rod & Staff English and an elective that my child is taking. I am just looking for a target, or a goal. How do I figure out if I should go ahead and include "Enrichment" copywork or poetry copywork on a given day, when we will always have a lot of writing? How can I make sure that I am expecting enough to build up endurance...without asking too much? Thank you!

[CarrieAnne]

For Literature enrichment, I have my 3rd grader complete one any day he doesn’t have a chapter assigned. Right now we are doing 3 chapters of Charlotte’s Web each week, so I pick and chose enrichments from the 3 chapters for 1 or 2 additional days. We spread copying a poem across an entire week so it’s easier to anticipate the daily tasks, but I also always do it after the poem is mostly memorized (so it’s easier to write) and save Friday for illustrating the poem. Everyone has fun drawing their poems so it’s the treat after writing it out!

I think it’s definitely a balance to figure out how much writing for my third grader. I set expectations each week and largely stick to them, but I will vary from week to week as I feel out how well I’m challenging without frustrating.

[smithamykat]

If you're writing answers in the study guides for literature, Greek myths, mammals (or any MP science), and a composition class (we did MP Intro to Comp), that is a lot of writing for a 3rd grader already! I think you could skip literature enrichment entirely and still be doing plenty to teach writing and build stamina as a writer. Personally, I did have my 3rd grader do the poetry copy work but we answered the questions about poetry orally. We did some but not all literature enrichment assignments, and like CarrieAnne I assigned those on days that he wasn't already writing in the study guide, usually Fridays. I would tell him to pick 2 that he wanted to do. If something came up and that day got really full, I would drop enrichment with no regrets.

[Jessica Louise]

CarrieAnne You make a great point. In my head, I saw the Enrichment as part of a particular lesson. It does make more sense to have a child complete an Enrichment activity on a heavy READING day. Thank you.

[Jessica Louise]

smithamykat Thank you!