Writing Club

The other day I mentioned our new writing club and how much it has affected me. Well, I thought it would be fun to upload an excerpt or two from our short little writing sessions. The very first time we all got together, we all created several writing prompts and put them in a jar. My 10-year-old even got involved! He surprised me by grabbing a sheet of paper and asking, “How do you spell ‘insignificant’?” (Can’t wait to use some of his prompts!) Anyway, every time we meet, we draw from the jar randomly and write for five to ten minutes. Then we take turns reading our little creations. I knew from the beginning that there would be a lot of variety from us ladies (we are all from very different backgrounds), but I am always blown away by the depth of the ideas!

Anyway, here’s the one I wrote during our very first session (a month ago now). I have not edited it – with the exception of a spelling error – so it’s a little raw and underdeveloped. What stands out to me the most about my own writing (compared with the other ladies’ pieces) is my lack of descriptive detail. That’s something I need to be more aware of, I think. I will also try to get permission to post some of the other ones, or at least link to where you can read them:

Jenna peered through the portcullis into the night sky above. Something was happening up there. What could it be? Whatever it was, it was noisy. She could hear what sounded like big, short bursts of thunder as she tried to get a better view. 

Her nurse wasn’t in the room at the moment, so she decided to try standing. Moving through the pain, she first rolled herself into a sitting position, and then with all her effort, knees shaking as she grabbed the bedframe, she pulled herself to her feet. 

How long had it been? Months? Years? She had been content to lie in bed while nurse tended to her and brought her food. But Daddy had left with a handsome young woman a couple hours ago. They had seemed excited. Now something was going on, and she wanted to know what.

She leaned toward the portcullis, which was now eye level. She could see hundreds of people milling about on the shore. But more importantly, she could see more of the sky, and the bursts of color that were lighting up the harbor.

The writing prompt for this one was “fireworks over the harbor,” courtesy of my writing buddy over at https://bluepictureframe.wordpress.com/

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/72182050@N00/2654851160″>Fireworks Show</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

 

Math and Writing Curriculum Review, grade 5

I can NOT sleep. So I think I am going to write… Anyway, I wish it were because my mind was full of all kinds of helpful things, but alas, I just can’t sleep. So I am going to ramble a bit, and see what turns out. It seemed to work last time.

Our homeschool year has been turning out pretty well. We are sticking with Singapore math, only this year, I am beginning to think that I should have ordered the textbooks too. I have only ever ordered the workbooks and have always just explained things to Ian myself. This year, however, they seemed to have made a funny, almost random jump into algebra. Algebra with two variables, no less. For instance, here is one of his problems yesterday.

Lily and Sara each had an equal amount of money at first. After Lily spent $18 and Sara spent $25, Lily had twice as much as Sara. How much money did each have at first?

Now, I can only think of one way to solve this problem (well, two, by changing the definition of “y”): x – 18=2 (x – 25), where y equals x-25. Am I missing something? That is the way to solve it, right? Anyway, that’s all very well and good. I can explain it to my ten-year-old, and he can understand it. Well, he can follow it, and he thinks it’s ridiculously cool. “Ridiculous” being his word for it, lol. The only problem is, I don’t know if he is advanced enough to be able to think this way on his own. And we had to completely stop and talk about distributive property for a while. By that time, even though he was actually liking it, his brain was worn out, so we stopped. Today I am going to teach him how to keep equations balanced.

The biggest problem is, the Singapore math books made the jump from several pages of 8 * 6 + 14 and 7 * (13 – 6) – 19 (teaching the order of operations) to story problems like the one above. Makes me wonder what I’m missing when I don’t order the textbooks. Anyway, we’re going to keep plugging along at it, and I’m going to download some extra algebra homework to help it sink in. Because after yesterday and the day before, book 5A totally moves on to other topics, leaving algebra in the dust: long division, fractions, geometry, and ratios. I am still happy with my choice of math curriculum, but a little confused about the funny jump.

On a brighter note, his multiplication skills are improving in leaps and bounds this year. Whether that’s due to my spontaneous purchase of flashcards over the summer or whether his brain has just finally calmed down enough to let them sink in, I don’t know. We have always reviewed them aurally before now, so it might be that he is just more of a visual learner. But either way, this is definitely his year. 🙂

While we have been sticking with Singapore math since Kindergarten, we are trying something new for writing this year. I guess we never really had a curriculum just for writing before. It was always done in combination with his language arts. And he has always hated it in the past. And well, he still hates it, but he is doing so very well with this new curriculum, and I am hoping that it will begin to seem easy enough that he will hate it less and less. It is called Institute for Excellence in Writing, and it is expensive. However, I am beginning to think that it is the only writing curriculum he will ever need all the way through college. If that turns out to be the case, it will be relatively inexpensive. I bought the Student Writing Intensive Level A, and I really think that anyone could use it to teach writing to their kids, even if they aren’t strong writers themselves. Yes, it is that easy and methodical. That’s the thing. They’ve thought of a way to lay it out in a progressive, structured manner that is easy to follow and easy to grade. And I absolutely love it. In fact, after borrowing the teaching DVDs from a friend, and watching only the first one, I began to imagine ways that this curriculum could help me improve my own writing skills.

Let me give you an exercise that’s mentioned in the teaching video I watched. Take an excerpt from a piece of literature – prose or poetry, you choose – and make an outline that only includes the three most important words from each sentence. Now, put the original literature away and write your own composition based only on the words you copied. (Personally, I would wait a few days because of my photographic memory – It was always really hard for me not to plagiarize on accident.) Feel free to change the words if you wish, as long as the gist is the same. The idea is to actually try to improve upon the original. Not that the average person could improve Dickens, but if you did the same exercise for pages and pages, you might eventually word something better than he did, lol.

So in the first unit of the curriculum, students practice making key work outlines from short stories or paragraphs about animals. The next day, they write a paragraph based on the outlines they made. Simple way to begin, right? Then after that, they incrementally teach you ways to dress up your paragraph. I am really loving it, and Ian can do it easily enough. I also ordered a grammar book from them that I am liking.

Ok, for not having a clear direction when I began typing, I sure did talk alot! Well, hopefully this post will be helpful to some of you homeschoolers out there. And I would recommend the Institute for Excellence in Writing to absolutely anyone of any age who ever has to write, homeschooled or not.

 

A Prompt Disguised as Inquisitiveness

Begin by asking three really bizarre or open-ended questions. Be sure to include some dissimilar elements to force creativity. Take out three sheets of paper. Write all three questions 1 time on each sheet.  Answer the questions differently on each piece of paper and write a one-paragraph synopsis of a story that could be created from the answers. Next, choose the one with the most potential, and go for it!

Dial-a-Personality

Back in March, I posted a writing exercise entitled: Dial-a-Writing-Promt. Today, I am posting an exercise intended to help you get going when creating a character. In addition to including positive personality traits, I thought it would be good to choose something that you may find annoying in your character as well. Since none of us are perfect, this will help you create a well-rounded person. Have fun! Feel free to post G-rated short stories that you generated using the exercise!

Dial-a-Personality

Fill out the worksheet. Examples have been given to get you started. Use the last 4 digits of a phone number to determine the personality of your main character.

Character traits that we admire in people:

0. Optimism

1. Friendliness

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Character traits that we find annoying in others:

0. Chatterbox

1. Braggart

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Possible long-term or short-term goals:

0. Finish a term paper

1. ClimbMt.Everest

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Recent or past events that can affect a person:

0. Lost a job

1. Adopted as a child

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.