Kathleen,Kathleen wrote:HI! I am prayerfully considering having my son use the Ancient History and Literature for 9th grade. I am wondering if I could get a clearer idea of how the writing assignments are given. He has not really done this before. He is a great talkerbut has not really overcome the "fear of the blank page"! I wonder if there are ways to accomodate this?
Also, is it too much of a work load to expect the completion of Writing Strands 4 along with the other daily work?
Thank you for any and all suggestions!
Kathy
Welcome to the board! We've only done 2 weeks. You might find in the early parts of AHL with the first writing assignment (learning basics of an argumentative essay), it would be of great benefit to work alongside your son and help him out with ideas of what to say. Or, if he likes to talk, then you can let him talk, write down what he says (or type it while he is talking) and then let him copy his own words. He just might need a little more hand holding in the early going to get some confidence going.
is it too much to do WS 4 alongside? I would think that if he started in it several weeks ahead of the rest of school and did some intensive writing practice in the book with your guidance (almost a summer school course) and get through basic lessons with sentences, paragraphs, etc., then it might level out over the year to finish some lessons. You might want to call or email MFW office and ask to speak to a high school consultant to see what their specific ideas are to include that book for a 9th grader who needs more writing or has not done any writing.
The early weeks in AHL with writing will have student writing complete sentences to questions from Old Testament reading. We're talking 1-3 sentences to answer the question. And there is an introduction to Essay writing. It is very step by step in that first week And you'll have all year to grow in the skill. But that first week, they get to learn what topic sentences are, and what makes a good one. They get to learn about thesis statements and how to write 3 bullet points. It tells you step by step and says work with your parents. Then, we parents are given a check list of skills to look for and examples for grading. I remember my college freshman year with English Composition 101, we had a first essay that was baseline and we could really only go uphill from there.

So, if he is a great talker and talks in complete sentences, let him speak. You write it down, let him copy it. Or let him talk out loud first for the answer and then you can watch him write his words. He might prefer to type in word processing.
-crystal