After nosing around at Peace Hill Press, I may have to pull the dreaded "green book" back out, despite the kids' protests. I was reading about Susan Wise Bauer's new writing instruction book and I now see why there is such a heavy emphasis on sentence diagramming in First Language Lessons, Level 3. Even if we don't use it exactly as it's laid out, I'm thinking I may have to pull it back out and see what we can glean from it.
I now have Dr. Bauer's writing instruction book on my "take a much closer look" list for the curriculum fairs this year. I mentioned, in the comments on yesterday's post, that I highly recommended going to Dr. Bauer's seminar on kids and writing, if one had the chance. If you don't have the chance to hear her speak in person, be sure to go read some of the sample pages from The Complete Writer: Writing with Ease Instructor Text.
If you read nothing else, take a look at Chapter 3: The Three Stages. The sample text basically sums up much of what I got from the seminar of Dr. Bauer's that I was able to attend a few years ago. It may change the way you think about the way you approach writing in your homeschool.
I seriously want that book.
Thank you!
ReplyDeletethanks- I'll check out those links. :)
ReplyDeleteI recently looked at that book on Bauer's site as well and like it too, though I'll have to wait & see whether Book 2 is published in time for me to use it w/my youngest. I found her thoughts on writing very intriguing. They have definitely influenced my own thoughts and my homeschooling in the weeks since! They have mostly served to encourage me that I have been doing things right, for the most part, when it comes to my kids' writing. (Interestingly, her thoughts about writing in the middle years pretty well reflect the theories behind IEW, which I am using this year for the first time.) I have sometimes berated myself for not making my 13-y/o do lengthy reports like school kids do, but according to SWB, it's GOOD that I haven't. And you know, if *she* says it, it *must* be right. :-)
ReplyDeleteRe your previous post:
If you want to do diagramming w/o getting out the "dreaded green book", you can get inexpensive workbooks devoted solely to diagramming. That's what I'm doing for Spaz (13-y/o) this year, as a supplement to his grammar book. For Fuzz (10-y/o) I am introducing her to the idea of diagramming by taking a few of the very simple sentences from her Daily Grams and showing her how to diagram them- I don't feel the need to have her do it yet, but I figure it helps her in understanding sentence structure.
btw, like one of your other commenters on that post, I have always used Daily Grams w/o Easy Grammar- but I would only recommend that if you are very strong in grammar. Other than DG, my kids did no formal grammar until age 12-13. (Yes, I know SWB would not agree!) We just touched on a lot of things informally as they came up, but again, I knew I could get away w/that b/c grammar is a strong area for me. Spaz did not even do DG, except occasionally orally w/me; this is the 1st time he's really had "grammar" as a subject. Fuzz has frequently complained that Spaz gets to do grammar & she doesn't (yep, she's that kind of kid), so I got out the 5th-6th-gr DG and have just started doing that orally with her. (She'd be happy to do it independently as written work, but this forces me to do it w/her so I can teach as we go along.)
Well, you know, your other comments here were short so I thought I'd make up for them!
@40winkzzz
ReplyDeleteI've always been strong in grammar, too, so I don't have any problem with going over diagramming (or whatever) later on. I like the idea of those little books you mentioned. My kids got the simple diagramming pretty quickly, so I wouldn't mind just going over it a little quicker than they were getting it in FLL3.
Thanks for the suggestions.