Please help me teach my fourth grader how to write well.

[Anonymous]

I have a fourth grader who has always been a strong student who worked hard at school, but I am concerned because she writes very poorly and hasn't improved much over the past couple of years. She reads voraciously and most of what she reads is written well, but it doesn't seem to help her writing at all. Her school used a balance literacy approach and heavily relied on computers for ELA and I think it just didn't work for her. What are some ways that I can help her with spelling, syntax, and grammar? Any recommendations for resources such as workbooks that work well? We can't afford tutoring right now and I don't have a teaching background myself, so I'm hoping to find a structured approach that I can follow to help her improve.

[Anonymous]

To work on spelling have her do large motor skills at the same time. Jump rope or skip in circles around a room or bounce on a trampoline while spelling a word out.

[Anonymous]

B&N has a range of workbooks on the shelf. Go there in person and flip through pages to find one you like, buy it, and then spend 5-10 minutes/day with DC working on spelling. Online it is just too hard to figure out which workbook to buy. In person is much easier.

For pure handwriting practice, get the usual elementary school paper with lines (not college rule) at an office supply store. Then have DC copy sentences from a book or magazine. Do this daily, but only 5-10 minutes a day. Handwriting quality fir typical kids is mostly about them getting lots of practice.

[Anonymous]

My kid attends a school that I think does well with writing. In 3rd and 4th they had a spelling list each week and, for the week, had to write 10 sentences using the words. Underline the spelling word in the sentence. They had to be real complete sentences and could not start with "I" - no phoning it in with a sentence that was just "I like [word]".
Word list was 10-15 words, you didn't have to use more than 10 but at home we made a game of getting them all in there, and of making all the sentences about the same topic.

In 5th they moved away from a spelling list and focused more on parts of speech. Kid would have to write a compound sentence or use an adverb according to the prompt. Fifth was also when they started writing structured essays.

[Anonymous]

OP. Thank you everyone. I am going to try these recommendations.

[Anonymous]

OP this might be silly but you can also make it fun since she works hard with a beautiful cursive handbook. They can be age graded, and can introduce some tougher words, and are often broken up with pages to illustrate or color.

[Anonymous]

I love the spectrum series of workbooks. I'd look at both their writing workbook as well as their reading comp. Their vocabulary and language arts book are also good. We use their vocabulary book during the summer to review the past grades work. We work through their reading comprehension book during the school year.

You can buy them on Amazon, but if you go to Carson delosa's website, you'll get to flip through more sample pages than on Amazon.

https://www.carsondellosa.com/collections/brands/spectrum/spectrum-grade-4-workbooks/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwvpy5BhDTARIsAHSilyk0x8bF9H90lhwaAPTS7ozvQtdt5rPi9cOl_sjc8OH_jdySyyAchREaAtKEEALw_wcB

[Anonymous]

Start with a basic foundation in spelling and grammar now. Once kids know those grammar terms it's so much easier to correct sentences in essays. Also teach the concept of topic sentences and pithy theses - so great for just teaching how to THINK in addition to how to write.

Or if you really want to go intensive, IEW is probably the gold standard for writing homeschool curricula. You just have to be comfortable with the classics. https://iew.com/writing?search=true&search_categories%5B%5D=2&search_sort=sort_weight

[Anonymous]

We have my DS write in a diary every day. He writes 7 sentences about his day and we make sure he is using adjectives to describe things. He is now in 6th grade and a very strong writer.

[Anonymous]

Using the Killgallon method via sentence composing, mimicking and imitation is key. Building sentence sense via a linguistics lense (syntax trees) and building complexity will do wonders for your child's writing.

[Anonymous]

Good luck. I’ve gone through numerous writing tutors and purchased workbooks. Don’t waste your money.

[Anonymous]

Get the Writing Revolution book. The hochman method it describes is really good.

[Anonymous]

Rather than drilling and killing her, have her read whatever she's interested in. The more she enjoys reading, the better her writing will become. Really.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rather than drilling and killing her, have her read whatever she's interested in. The more she enjoys reading, the better her writing will become. Really.

This was the entire theory behind Lucy Calkins Units of Study, and it has been proven repeatedly to not work for most kids. Kids need to be explicitly taught writing as well as reading (and math, and science, and history). Exposure is good, but only in addition to direct instruction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rather than drilling and killing her, have her read whatever she's interested in. The more she enjoys reading, the better her writing will become. Really.

DP. Many many studies have shown the above does NOT work. Go listen to the "Sold a story" podcast.