I often get emails and postings on our message boards that ask: “how long must I spend daily teaching this to my student? I am a busy mom, I have a toddler and a baby and I do not have much time.”<\/p>\n
I remember those days. I had a newborn infant (who incidentally was very ill), two toddlers and a 1st grader, and I wondered how I could possibly do it all. Truth is, I couldn’t do it all, something had to go. The difficult part is deciding WHAT has to go. For some moms the answer is self-teaching curricula, something we can hand to that oldest child, or to the two oldest children, and they can work on it and learn it on their own.<\/p>\n
Self-teaching curricula can be a life-saver, and a time saver, for a busy mom, and there are many wonderful things that your student can learn on his or her own, however, I don’t recommend this approach in the 3 Rs. <\/p>\n
Your student may be bright, but he or she needs instruction in reading, in writing, and in mathematics.<\/p>\n
“Why?” you may ask, “She is doing great with Teach-yoursef-X-Y-Z Writing Curriculum.”<\/p>\n
She may be doing well with the material, but writing is an art, and art has to be learned by apprenticeship, not by doing exercises in a scripted book. A writing assignment is not like a math assignment or a grammar assignment where you can look up the answer in the back of a book and if you got the answer correct, you know that you understood the material. Writing assignments usually ask you to describe something, explain a phenomenon, argue for or against a point of view, or in some other way articulate from your own understanding why a certain thing is the way it is. There is no answer key for this, but there are better or worse ways of going about the assignment.<\/p>\n
Tackling a writing assignment is a multi-faceted task.<\/p>\n
1. you formulate a response to the assignment
\n 2. you focus that response down to a thesis statement
\n 3. you decide which arguments best support your thesis statement
\n 4. you organize those arguments into an outline
\n 5. you write from your outline
\n 6. you edit your work until it says what you want it to say.<\/p>\n
Learning how to tackle a writing assignment requires guidance along all five steps above. If 1. 2. or 3. are poorly done, chances are that 4, 5,6, will not result in a well-crafted essay.<\/p>\n
All this requires an instructor. Even professional writers have editors who point out where they do not make sense, be that inside a convoluted sentence, or be that the entirety of the document written. — If professionals need support, how much our young students, who are new to the craft of writing.<\/p>\n
“But,” you protest, ” I am not a good writer myself. I have no idea how to teach writing.”<\/p>\n
I see a couple of different options<\/p>\n
1. you teach writing to your student, choosing curriculum like Classical Writing, which includes step-by-step instructions for mom on how to teach writing in one to four 30 minute sessions per week
\n 2. you hire out writing instruction to someone near you or to an online teacher or at the local school
\n 3. you co-op with other moms once a week and put your kids in a writing class in the co-op.<\/p>\n
The most important part is that students need to have guidance as they learn to write well. Writing is rarely a self-taught art. Only the most gifted and well-read students can master it that way. Most of us are average, and as such we need instruction and support as we figure out how to write well<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I often get emails and postings on our message boards that ask: “how long must I spend daily teaching this to my student? I am a busy mom, I have a toddler and a baby and I do not have … Continue reading