Our First Writing Assignment of the Year

We use Excellence in Writing for our writing program. Last year, Mika used their student writing intensive, which is taught directly to the student via DVD. This year, I decided to finally watch the Teaching Writing: Structure and Style DVDs that have been sitting on my shelf so I can teach writing to both Mika and Sam myself.

Excellence in Writing is a program that begins with imitation and progresses to original works over time. You start out by using simple source texts, creating key word outlines, and writing our sentences using the key words. This results in paragraphs that look VERY similar to the original. However, over time you add in additional requirements like the addition of adjectives and adverbs, choosing strong verbs and avoiding banned words, and varying sentence structure. You also begin using multiple source texts for one assignment and writing from what you know.

I wanted to combine our writing with our history, science, and literature so I'm choosing to find my own source texts rather than using the themed sets sold by Excellence in Writing. Our first assignment of the year was to write a paragraph about the Grand Canal in China, which we just read about in our history. Our source text was a paragraph that I found in Kingfisher History Encyclopedia. Here's the paragraphs my children wrote:

Sam's

Started by the Sui dynasty and finished by the Tang dynasty, the Grand Canal was an enormous undertaking. It was 500 mi. long and allowed people to go from the Huangho River to the Yangtze River. It linked the major cities in the north to the rice-growing areas in the south. Road and sea travel were difficult for many reasons. The Grand Canal allowed safe transportation between north and south China.

Mika's

Started by the Sui dynasty and completed by the Tang dynasty, the Grand Canal was an enormous undertaking. It stretched over 500 miles from the Huangho River to the Yangtze River. It linked the major cities in the north with the rice-growing areas in the south. Road travel was difficult, and traveling by sea was dangerous. The Grand Canal allowed safe transportation in China.

As you can see, the paragraphs are VERY similar, but that's ok for the beginning of the program. They will morph into their own style as the year, and years, go on.