How do you teach them to be good writers?

[Laurlor]

My DD is in her room crying again. She's such a perfectionist and it's getting very tiring homeschooling her. She's writing to a prompt on any cause/effect she sees in Gulliver's Travels. Her first attempt was that he decided to go sailing and that if he hadn't, the rest of the story wouldn't have happened (that was the effect). All I said was, "Well, we need to work on this." and she's flipping out being so disrespectful and emotional. :cry She's doing 4th grade curriculum. She's a very strong reader and my hope is that that will eventually turn her into a good writer, but I just feel like I'm at a loss right now. At what age should I have expectations for her writing?

I've been watching these videos http://www.excellenceinwriting.com/, and so far I have mixed feelings about the concept.

Any advice???

[Love_Is_Patient]

It sounds like she needed to get some positive feedback. Start with what she got right--because she did point out that something happened, and that led to something else happening, even if she didn't express it very well. Then you can ask about other things that happened, and what effect they had. Once you've found several good examples together, ask her to add on to what she's written. Starting off by indicating that I'd gotten it wrong would crush me too.

[lenswyf]

I have no idea what would have happened if I was the one trying to get ds to write--he resists it. However, he is taking an IEW clas in our co-op and it's going really well. I was a big reader and writing came easily to me. Ds is a great reader, but he's more of an auditory learner, and he's also a boy. That translates into less patience for the written word if it isn't really, really interesting. Left on his own, he will write, "We played soccer. We won. It was fun." While I don't personally care for the IEW formula (feels restrictive, and I didn't learn to write with a formula), it has really helped ds to make his cryptic thoughts into a more interesting composition. The class has been a good way to push him into the water, so to speak, but it's been a long, long year!

Wordsmith gets rave reviews everywhere, and sounds like fun. If we don't continue with the writing class next year, I'll probably order this. It's affordable as well.
Writing Strands is also well reviewed and many of my friends use it.

[Leslie]

I'm a CM homeschooler, so my thoughts will reflect a CM perspective. The question was about cause and effect, and then there was writing - two different tasks. With CM, children begin by orally telling back something they've read, and then they transition to writing that down at around 4th grade. Asking them additionally for some kind of analysis (finding a cause and effect from the book) would come later.

I don't know if you can "turn her into a good writer." But she should be able to put her thoughts into words, and then transfer that to paper. Eventually (high school?) that will evolve into her own style.

Is she able to write down what she read - just a simple narrative, rather than any kind of literary analysis? With that, she has one task instead of two, and there isn't any "right" or "wrong" answer. It's just her remembering the story, finding the words, and writing them on the paper - more focus on the simple task of getting the words on paper. One CM mom said she even stopped reading her child's written narrations because her perfectionist child would get distressed when Mom found a spelling error - so she would have the child read the paper to her. And that was it - the lesson would end, there was success, the child felt satisfied. After getting used to doing this for awhile, then other things like style, analysis, form, etc, could be worked on.

You can read more about CM's method of teaching writing here:
http://www.amblesideonline.org/FAQ.shtml#language
http://www.amblesideonline.org/LangArtsScopeSeq.shtml

[Ellen]

To address the question in your subject line--
Give her writing tasks that are meaningful to her. "Cause and effect in Gulliver's Travels" isn't a prompt that I can imagine many elementary school kids being successful at or interested in.
What about her writing concerns you? Is it that you want her to expound more? I would back off the literary analysis prompts and do something more like what Leslie describes. I would also encourage plenty of real-world writing: letters, journals, etc. Find things to talk and write about that really interest her. The higher-level analysis will come with time, but pushing it now won't increase her skills or confidence. On the other hand, increasing her confidence now will help her be more willing to work on her writing as she gets older.

[Laurlor]

On the other hand, increasing her confidence now will help her be more willing to work on her writing as she gets older.


I think you're right about this. I'm going to work on it.

Thank you all for your help.