Are we on track with writing?

[Heather in GA]

As my oldest approaches high school, I am becoming concerned that she will be unprepared for the amount of writing that will be required of her starting in ninth grade. I haven't decided if we'll do MP for high school or enroll with another classical program, but I want to be sure she will be prepared for the various options. In looking at ninth grade syllabi for MODG and Kolbe, I'm seeing a lot of "write a paper on..." every single week or sometimes more frequently. Will she be up to that?

As a seventh grader she is currently writing out answers for all questions in literature and science, and writing out just the comprehension questions for FMOG that are on the exams. We discuss the rest. She is also doing Chreia/Maxim with MA and doing very well. I should also mention that she does not enjoy writing in general, but she will get the job done when required.

If I were to say to her now, "Write a paragraph on..." or "Write a paper about..." she would be pretty clueless. Where have I gone wrong?

[Mrs Bee]

You're not necessarily doing anything wrong. If you think about it, the answer to a comprehension question, when done with care, is quite often the equivalent of "Write a paragraph on...". The other thing to remember is that the words "paper" or "essay" mean what a specific teacher says they mean - they do not really come with a unique, precise meaning. Most teachers - especially in 9th/10th grade, will spell out their expectations, so that students understand how they're to work - number of paragraphs, number of supporting quotes, word count, various dos and don'ts, etc. Quite often, "essays" requested in high school end up being quite short, 200 to 500 words. Something longer may be called a "paper" - I'm not sure my older kids have written anything beyond 1,500 words, and that just a couple of times. Sometimes, when you see the expression "Write a paper on..." it just means "Tell me what you know and think about...", which I think makes the whole thing more readily understood.

I think with MP, 8th grade might be the year when essays start being assigned in the literature guides, but I could be wrong. There has been *much* written on the Forum on how to go about teaching a middle schooler how to write an essay that states a thesis and needs to support it. Some students will need very little instruction, others will need to be taken by the hand, but in the end all need some practice. It was recently requested, in the upper school forum section, if MA could organize a summer intensive dedicated to this skill. There is also a class for juniors and seniors, Senior Thesis, that teaches how to write a long research paper. With my older kids we worked on The Lost Tools of Writing Level I, which I think does a very nice job of breaking down the parts of the classic persuasive essay (make your point, bring supporting evidence, state your conclusions) and of giving you ideas on how to work on each.

So there's more that you can do to prepare her, and it's good to ask yourself what to do, but again, I would not put it in terms of you doing anything wrong at all. I am a huge fan of years of practice in answering the MP comprehension questions in history/literature/classical studies, I think they are an excellent preparatory work: a student learns to understand a question that requires some thinking, because it goes well beyond asking for a specific piece of information. The student has to reflect on what he knows and has to use it to provide the answer in a logical manner. In this sense I meant that an answer to a comprehension question is like a mini-essay, it often requires the same kind of thinking and writing. So don't feel like you've been wasting time or doing anything wrong, you have not!

[jen1134]

Ended up in forum jail due to editing. Copy/paste version below:

There's a Rhetoric Essay Template in some of the 8th grade lit guides and a Central One Idea template as well (that one may not appear until 9th, I can't remember). They've been linked on the forum in the past so I'm dropping them both below. They're a great way to introduce and practice the concept of the modern essay. You would probably just want to walk her through it the first few times (or until she says, "I've got it, Mom.").

Rhetoric Essay Template (1).pdf
COI Essay Template.pdf

ETA: for longer papers she would just follow the template but add more supports/middle paragraphs

[tanya]

Hello.

It is really difficult for students to look at a blank sheet of paper and know where to begin, even with all the prep you have done. It's an intimidating process, so I would recommend doing a few assignments/paragraphs together before asking your student to do one independently. I remember when I was teaching that we practiced paragraph writing with my students giving me oral sentences that I would write on the board, then we would edit together, and they would copy onto their paper. Then I would proof their papers to make sure they had copied perfectly. Another thing I did several times was to give them a topic (from our literature or history studies) to write about, and then we put key words on the board or pros and cons of whatever it was. So we were talking it out before they had to write anything down. And they could use the information on the board as much as they wanted as they wrote their papers. I feel like my writers got better and better orally as we practiced this, and then that transferred pretty easily to independent writing. It's time-consuming, but I found it worthwhile.

Tanya

[Jen_NH]

I have my boys write paragraphs with the literature. When they were younger, we did a couple of the literature selections in a co-op. I would choose questions on quizzes or tests (that we weren't doing), and have them write a paragraph. In Anne of Green Gables, I had them write a 4 paragraph essay comparing and contrasting Anne's relationship with Matthew and Marilla. We worked on the 5 paragraph essay at the end of each work. With The Wind in the Willows, we spend the entire year on it. We spend 2 weeks on each chapter. They write a paragraph on one of the Socratic Discussion Questions. They write a 5-6 paragraph essay for the Central One Idea topics. We spend 3 weeks on those essays. (They read their other literature selections concurrently. I don't assign writing assignments beyond the student guide.) This is a heavily guided process, especially in the beginning. I taught them to take the question/topic and formulate a thesis statement out of it, which is the introductory sentence. I help them find 3-4 items from the chapter to back up their thesis statement. They have to find a relevant quotation to support it. We then work together to write a conclusion. The same process is repeated for the essay. It is hard to write introductory and concluding paragraphs. All of this takes time and effort. It takes a lot of practice to get good at writing. A great place to start with all of this is to answer the comprehension questions in the lit guides with well-formed complete sentences.

My older son is in the diploma program. Some weeks he has two essays to do, along with the Classical Comp weekly assignments. He is able to keep up and is receiving A's on those essays. All that effort is paying off.

[tanya]

Jen_NH,

This is such a perfect summary of how I would teach writing. I remember the first time my son had to do an 8-page paper for his modern history class. We literally had to do it together, and I remember thinking how much work it was. But I wasn't careful enough because I didn't notice that he didn't put page numbers on his index cards for his sources. So I had to go back through and help him find those references he had written down before he could actually write the paper. I didn't make that mistake again. But the time we spent together (minus that little mishap) was so valuable because from then on, he knew how to do it and could do it independently for the most part. I'll never forget that first paper though since I was heavily invested in it!

Thanks for these good guidelines!

Tanya

[Heather in GA]

Thank you, everyone, for your help.

[[email protected]]

Jen_NH Do you have a syllabus or plan you used for your Co-op class walking through the Wind and the Willows that you would like to share? That sounds wonderful.

[Jen_NH]

Jen_NH Do you have a syllabus or plan you used for your Co-op class walking through the Wind and the Willows that you would like to share? That sounds wonderful.

I sent you a pm.

[Enigma]

Jen_NH, may I please have a copy of your plans? Thank you!