Our Week in Review - The Writing Process

Last week, our three older children who are in the writing class at co-op completed their final assignment from unit 6 of IEW, which is learning to write a report from multiple sources. I was very excited about this final assignment, as they could each choose a topic of their choice and then write a 3 paragraph report, practicing what we'd learned in that unit. Since it was to be a 3 paragraph report, they then had to select 3 sub-topics to write about, one paragraph each. The "taboos" for this assignment were, they could not use the internet as one of their sources (learning to use the internet as a source of info will come later, for now it is just tooooo overwhelming, as so many links and so much info comes up whenever you google something), and they could not choose a biography of a person (same deal, too much info for now). I love how IEW encourages us, the teachers, to give them appropriate parameters for success.

Once they had each chosen a topic, we headed to the library. I gave them a mini lesson on how to use the on-line catalog to find books on their topic, when they didn't know specific titles ahead of time. Then we stood in the stacks and carefully looked at each book we pulled out to see if it would make good source material. Did it have a table of contents and/or an index? Did it have pages and pages of info on each sub topic, or rather a manageable amount? Did it have headers to show each topic?

Some books had information for 2 of the subtopics, but not all 3. So in order to have 3 sources for each of the 3 paragraphs, we ended up checking out about 6 or 7 books each. Son G chose to write about medieval times.


Son L chose to write about rainforests. In both pictures above and below, you can see the boys working on their outlines. We are learning that the outline is KEY. If you have a good outline, and you have worked to organize your thoughts on the outline, the actual writing is pretty easy. At the beginning of the year, they would both say to me, "can't I just start writing?" but now they have learned the value of the outline!


We used large 11x17 paper, folded to make 6 squares, for our outlines. They had one of these large papers for each paragraph. The 3 squares across the top were used for writing outlines from each of the 3 sources for that particular sub topic. We looked through the books we'd checked out to find which pages had info on which subtopics, and then I helped the boys by jotting down in the bottom of each of these squares the title of the book and the page numbers where info on that sub topic could be found.


Once the 3 top squares were filled out, they used the middle bottom square to make a "fused" outline. This is simply choosing which facts from the 3 top outlines are the most interesting and important to the writer, and then transferring them to the outline below. Each top outline only got 3-5 facts, but the fused outline could have 4-7 facts. The fused outline then became the working outline that they wrote from. Below is son L's fused outline for his paragraph on jungle layers (click on picture to enlarge).



I will admit this was laborious. For the boys and for me. :-) But the process of practicing is where learning takes place!

Our daughter G chose to write about the civil rights movement. This is also what we've been learning about in history. One of Marcia Somerville's (author of Tapestry of Grace) mantras is, read, discuss, write. In that order. We do lots of reading and discussing, but because we are going through all 9 IEW units in order this year, we have not always written about our history topics. In fact, rarely. So this was very exciting for me to watch G interact with our history material on a much deeper level. She did so much extra reading to find appropriate source material, and really thought hard about how she wanted to organize her paper and how she wanted to write it. She and the other 7th grader were given the option to write a 3, 4, or 5 paragraph paper, and she chose 5!

Here she is working on her paper in her room. Her fused outline is up on her magnetic board in front of her, and she is referring to that as she writes. She does virtually all of her independent work at this desk in her room.


Please forgive me for this proud homeschool mama moment, but I really am so proud of all 3 of them for working so hard on such a BIG writing project! The finished reports turned out very well. It was great for our character development too, to stick with a hard task and keep working at it little by little until it was done. And a public shout out to my friend Sally who taught the writer's class for this unit ~ well done Sally!!!! Thank you!