DO YOU NEED A WRITING PROGRAM TO TEACH ELEMENTARY STUDENTS TO WRITE

Absolutely not. I didn’t believe it first, until I actually wrote Write from History.

First of all, Charlotte Mason made the program so easy. Copywork, narration, and dictation is really all that elementary students need. And you don’t need a writing curriculum to make it happen.

For copywork, select a sentence from literature that your student is reading. It can even be Frog and Toad. There are some really well written sentences in Frog and Toad. And they have months and seasons and all kinds of elements that children need to cover.

For narration, your student has to simply retell an experience that he or she has had. It doesn’t even have to be from a story. Practice first by having your child narrate his or her day. Have him narrate the adventure he had with his sister. He can even narrate a TV show. It helps him with recall, with putting his own ideas into his own words. It also helps him to practice speaking in one verb tense.

After your student has copied a sentence, try dictating it to him the next day. Or better yet, mix up the words and make a new sentence using words he already knows.

I made my Write from History books after I realized that I needed to have something organized for me that I didn’t have to think about. Plus I wanted it to be tied into our history lessons to help save us time.

But organized or not, any parent can teach an elementary student to write simply by using copywork, narration, and dictation. And it doesn’t have to follow a specific schedule or layout.

Just meet your student where he is and he’ll be fine. If your son can write two sentences, they have him write two. If he can do a paragraph easily in second grade, then have him do a paragraph. There is no magic schedule. The schedule should be set by where your student is, and with consistency he will learn to write well.