Playing with Plutarch with the artful aid of alliteration

After I had read our Plutarch lesson & Bengy and Moozle had taken turns narrating sections, I had them both write out a number of words starting with the letter 't.'

'T' was the obvious letter to use as we're going through the life of Timoleon and just about everyone involved in the narrative has a name starting with that letter.

Then I asked them to write a short paragraph or verse relating to our reading using alliteration.

This was just a quick & rough exercise but they had a bit of fun.

Alliteration is enjoyable for a younger child to try - it's one of the more obvious and easiest poetic devices to use.

Bengy wrote:

Trustworthy Timoleon trusted
Tumultuous, tyrannical Timophanes
Who had a tendency to terrify
Tremendously true citizens
But Timophanes turned traitor
And Timoleon tried to tell him
To give his crown to the people
But tumultuous, tyrannical Timophanes
Laughed the trusted warnings aside
And so Timoleon, with tremendous tenacity
Therein killed Timophanes!

This is Moozle's (unedited) version where spelling goes out the window:

Timoleon tried to peswade his brother Timophanes to stop his tyranicall tyranny and thinking that his traterus tyranny would sucsed. He would be tyrannicly traiterus to the people, Timoleon said.
He already had a tyrannical aditude towards the peoples and it would not turn out well.

Edited copy:

Timoloeon tried to persuade his brother Timophanes to stop his tyrannical tyranny and thinking that his traitorous tyranny would succeed.
He would be tyrannically traitorous to the people, Timoleon said.
He already had a tyrannical attitude towards the peoples and it would not turn out well.

Charlotte Mason: How to Use Books

In Chapter 16 of School Education, Charlotte Mason gives us some hints about using good books in educating our children, while stressing that we should be careful not to let the devices we use
'come between the children and that which is the soul of the book, the living thought it contains.'

Putting aside a straight forward narration (the child or the teacher reads a given passage and then the child tells back what he has read or heard read) what other ways may be used to get a child to labour in thought over the ideas presented to him via a living book?

How do we get our children to
'generalise, classify, infer, judge, visualise, discriminate, labour in one way or another, with that capable mind of his, until the substance of his book is assimilated or rejected, according as he shall determine'?

I've had to learn much of this myself as I went along, filling in the gaping chasms left by my own interrupted schooling; picking up ideas along the way and putting them into practice with my own children; learning with them; challenging myself to read more widely.

Charlotte Mason mentions a variety of ways we can use books:

Give the points of a description;

Give the sequence of a series of incidents; 
Give the links in a chain of argument; 
Enumerate the statements in a given paragraph or chapter; 
Analyse a chapter, divide it into paragraphs under proper headings, tabulate and classify series; 
Trace cause to consequence and consequence to cause; 
Discern character and perceive how character and circumstance interact; 
Get lessons of life and conduct; 
Let the pupil write for himself half a dozen questions which cover the passage studied.

'...until they have begun to use books for themselves in such ways, they can hardly be said to have begun their education.'

I'm often asked if I have a teaching background mainly because I've home schooled all the way through high school. I don't but I've found a few 'teacher's helps' along the way that have given me ideas and helped me to get my children to labour with their minds without destroying the enjoyment of learning.

Here are some of them:

A Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason

This was the first book in the series that I read and I can't praise it enough. If you're starting out with older children this book is the one to read. Go to The Curriculum, Chapter 10 and there you'll find a variety of examples of writing by the students of CM's time. I was really inspired after reading this and gleaned some ideas which went really well with my 17 year old at the time.

Outlining

I've used Rod and Staff Grammar to teach outlining. Following the Plan (English 5) covers it thoroughly. After they are comfortable with the process I get them to outline the chapters from a book or take notes during a sermon on a Sunday and then write an outline for it at the beginning of the week.
Knowing the basics of outlining will help a student develop the ability to use the first five ways that CM suggests above. 

 I think my eldest was about 13 years of age when she did this after taking notes from a sermon:


 


A simple less formal outline from 10 yr old girl:

Some books lend themselves well to using this tool, for example, How Should we Then Live by Francis Schaeffer (around the age of 15 years and up) and A Young Woman After God's Own Heart (good for girls about 13 years of age and older). After a chapter is read they write an outline or summary.

Plutarch Guides by Anne White

I couldn't come up with these questions for the life of me and they've been the catalyst for some interesting conversations and opportunities to write as Anne often suggests topics for narrations.

Shakespeare

Some Shakespeare guides are often too explicit in their sidebar comments so I generally don't give them to my children to use but they have some good ideas for writing and I can always find them cheaply second hand. We're currently reading through The Winter's Tale and the other week my 14 year old used a suggestion from the Oxford School Shakespeare:

'Archidamus is most appreciative of the reception and entertainment offered to Polixenes in Sicilia, and he reports the details back to Bohemia. Write his report, either in a letter to his family and friends; or in an article for the national newspaper.'

Other guides I've seen that offer writing ideas are the Cambridge School Shakespeare and the Heinemann Shakespeare.

The Brightest Heaven of Invention by Peter J. Leithart explores six of Shakespeare's plays and suggests writing topics for each one. This was one of my daughters' favourite books. An excerpt of the book is here.

Another book by the same author and done in a similar manner is Miniatures and Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen. Thoughtful questions which present opportunities for writing topics are included and an excerpt of the first chapter, Real Men Read Austen, is here. I found this when my second daughter was about 15 years old & she enjoyed it thoroughly. The boys have surreptitiously watched the BBC Pride and Prejudice and secretly enjoyed it and I said they had to read Northanger Abbey because it was an AO Year 9 free read. They did but that's about the extent of their Jane Austen immersion. 

Poetry

Writing a poetic narration using the rhyme scheme of a poem they know
Choosing a ballad poem and changing it to story form
Writing about a subject using alliteration
Writing acrostic poems

Composition

When I first started homeschooling my three older children (now 25, 23 & 21 years of age) I hadn't read any of Charlotte Mason's books but used what I'd gleaned from Susan Schaeffer Macaulay's book For The Children's Sake, and what I could source for a reasonable price here in Australia. I found the two books below and they worked well for us. The Creative Writing course can be adapted to make it CM friendly and the second book works well as is and for those with large families it's well priced, uncomplicated & non-consumable. I have the 1992 & 1996 editions respectively although they've been revised since.

Wordsmith - A Creative Writing Course for Young People by Janie B. Cheaney

The author states that creative writing is basically 'expressing oneself' and the book is designed to sharpen language skills and then apply them. It comes with a Teacher's Guide, is written to the student and is designed for about Grade 7 and up. 90 pages.

There are three parts to the course:

Part 1 - concentrates on word usage with a brief overview of grammar, choosing words, pronouns and antecedents. I like how the author connects good grammar with writing and shows its effects.

Part 2 - active and passive voice, sentence structure.

Part 3 - figures of speech, story structure, writing assignments, revision, proofreading.

The teacher's guide has a suggested plan of study which covers 36 weeks and a short section called 'Writing all over the Curriculum' which I like and have gleaned ideas from. I used this for two of the girls who loved writing and they breezed through it. They published a newsletter with another home schooled friend for many years and wrote stories, poems and a variety of other newsworthy material, sending it out to family members scattered across the country and to others who asked for a copy, about 4 or 5 times a year. Although the writing assignments in the book could be substituted with others of your own making to make it more usable in a CM context, it is probably better only to use it with a child who loves writing.

Inspired after listening to Mozart's Sleighride:

Wordsmith Craftsman

This was written as a self-directed programme for Grade 10 and up. The book has suggested schedules for students starting in Year 9, 10, 11 or 12 and also has three parts.

Part 1 - writing every day: note taking, outlining, letters, summaries

Part 2 - paragraphs, writing techniques

Part 3 - the essay: structure, brainstorming, the topic, thesis statement. I think it walks through the essay writing process in a clearer way than some other books I've seen.

A short appendix contains a note taking form, a summary writing form, summaries of the steps used in the four types of essay writing and a list of common fallacies of argument with brief descriptions and examples.

93 pages.

Inspired by Ten Fingers for God: The Life and Work of Dr Paul Brand by Dorothy Clarke Wilson:

Preparing Homeschoolers for University/College Writing

It's been interesting to see how my children have coped with learning at a tertiary level when they've had no experience of institutional schooling. One of the first questions we were asked when people knew we were going to teach our children ourselves was, 'What about university?' Someone quizzed me about this when my eldest was only 2 years of age. We had no idea at the time what we'd do when we got to that stage and I was more concerned about how we would get them entry into university than how they would cope once they were there. I wrote about how we went about that here.
I thought that to gain entry into university you would obviously have to possess the skills needed to do the work required in a particular course. I found out that isn't necessarily the case.

Our daughter Zana is in her fourth year of a double degree - Bachelor of Education/Bachelor of Arts, majoring in English - and is employed by her university to tutor first and second year university students. Much of her time is taken up with helping them with basic things that should have been covered before they left school.
I asked her to share some thoughts on writing essays. Some of what she's written here might not apply to students in other degrees such as science related areas, but there are some general areas such as grammar, structuring an argument, punctuation, spelling, apostrophes and run on sentences that were issues for many of the students she worked with, regardless of the degree they were studying.

"Essentially you need to understand the structure of an essay (thesis statement, introduction, body, conclusion) & how to create an argument that clearly answers the question & stays on topic while incorporating research & secondary sources.

Be aware that academic writing very rarely uses first person, so don't get used to writing essays with "I think" etc in them. That's generally saved for reflection type assessment tasks.

Having an understanding of paraphrasing, referencing & some experience of a referencing style (eg Harvard or APA) would be very useful as this is an area most first year uni students really struggle with. In my first semester of face-to-face university, I had to use 4 different referencing styles. The fact that I'd done two  online units with Open University Australia & therefore knew how to reference using two of the main styles already was really helpful. Referencing guides are readily available by searching on google.

I tutor 1st & 2nd year uni students & I've found that even the students who are good writers will often fall down in these areas.

In relation to exam essays, timed writing is also useful, as often you could have anywhere from 2-12 essays within an exam, depending on the subject. Being able to write at a rate of 10 minutes a page will set you up very well for uni exams. The faster you can interpret a question, brainstorm & write, the better you will perform under exam conditions.

Some Ideas on Preparing for University Writing

--Analyse the question: what exactly are they asking for?

--Brainstorm/research.

--Outline: short sentences or bullet points. Means that you have a logical sequenced argument that you can then follow while writing to ensure that you stay focused & on topic.
--Writing
--Editing
--Proofreading
--Practice

Teach each of these areas specifically & gradually combine them together; keep a lookout for grammar & punctuation mistakes.

Get them to write using a variety of different topics. An essay on a factual topic will require different language & a different type of argument etc to that of an essay on literature"

SAT practice essays are great (even if you don't plan to do the SAT) because they make you think but require more general knowledge & logic than they do specific content knowledge. They're also timed (25min) which is good practice for writing concisely (we also used them un-timed, especially at first).
These are some examples from my daughter and son who were 14 & 17 years old at the time they did them.

 

 

 

I taught them to outline and they practiced taking notes eg. while listening to a sermon at church and then outlining it properly later.

A book like Writers Inc. or some other writing reference book and a grammar rules book is also helpful.

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